Cuba: The Historic Microcosm of Most New World Republics? Part 5

Part 4 touched upon rather uncomfortable similarities between pre-revolutionary Cuba and modern United States when it came to educational disparities. Part 1 explored a framework with which to compare evolution of similar societies based on land area they occupy. It hinted that some of the patterns that are about to occur in United States have already occurred in Cuba. What does that mean?

That means that educational and thus cultural gap in United States has not become as great as it was in Cuba right before the communist looting. The current US gap hints at what's to come rather than serve as an analogy to 1950s Cuba. We're in the early to medium stage of the cultural urbanization process that might sharply speed up as it gains momentum. Only in 1980s and 1990s did American educated start to slowly trickle back to urban areas from suburbia. True urban renewal began. Even then, only a few cities were recipients of the emigrating suburban talent (such as New York City). During that period we still saw some white flight into suburbia from proximity to non-white inner cities. The later suburban arrivals were whites that got accepted into American society late in the game such as Italians, Jews, and Slavs. In a way, they were moving against history since the evolution and improvement of best entertainment for educated professional class of people is primarily found in urban areas.

The American cultural gap between grad school whites and some high school/just high school non-whites is immense. Even if Soviet style mass schooling infrastructure starts to be built in every underdeveloped area, it will be a couple of generations until the gap starts to narrow sufficiently. As we have seen from the Soviet experience, many central Asians did not fully close the developmental gap with their white Siberian counterparts even with such forceful educational initiatives. Efforts in the direction of more forceful education are very difficult since America never fully organically desegregated.

Slavery in United States didn't end on its own after naturally burning out like it did in Brazil and Cuba. In Brazil and Cuba, poor white workers pushed to politically end competition from free labor in their own country. Some large urban capitalist businesses (that relied on more skilled workers) also wanted to eliminate competition from businesses that utilize free labor. A rural capitalist making same product as his urban competitor can increase profits by utilizing slave labor for janitors and construction workers to cut costs. Urban business, for which utilizing slave labor is more difficult if not illegal, cannot effectively compete and thus joins an alliance of poor whites and liberals to end slavery.

The biggest complicating factor for a smoother comparison of US to Cuba is how slavery ended. The above mentioned process never burned out naturally in United States since slavery was ended by Union bayonets rather than by voluntary adherence to local law. This is not to say that Cuba didn't have post-slavery de-facto Jim Crow and social discrimination for many years. It occurred but was milder like in American northeast in the 70s and was helped by large amounts of interracial marriage. The involuntary end of American slavery retarded conditions where poor whites and non-whites can start developing economic post-racial class solidarity and common political interests. As such, many modern uneducated whites still feel more nationally integrated and "American" than their co-equal non-white "other". This allows elites' appeals to nationalism to work better in southern states from which poor white American soldiers disproportionately come from.

Meanwhile, this allowed the American educational/cultural gap to widen even deeper and prevented society from thinking about the types of modernization efforts needed. If Confederate States of America successfully separated in 1860s then slavery would have naturally burned out in a few decades and the population would have become much more racially intermixed sooner. The military would have been much more intermixed as well and the sheer amount of rising mulatto elites would conspire with urban liberals to push Confederate States on a path to school, health, and infrastructural modernization. Late 19th century southern political resistance to occupation and national integration retarded the process by a century. Jim Crow prevented the artificial term of "American" (which is no different than the term "Soviet" or "Chinese" as far as multi-ethnic empires go) from applying to all sooner.

History caught up. Now Republican Party will have to become multiracial, redistributive, and in cahoots with empathies of urban liberals in order to survive. As it re-organizes (if it ever does), migration of educated to urban areas will be mostly complete. The sheer concentration of masters and doctorates diplomas in urban areas should start to resemble educational breakdown of Cuban 1950s society. The housing bubble collapse, weakening dollar, and greater competition for declining white collar jobs should speed up the process. By 2020s/2030s, the income divide between the countryside and urban areas will become enormous (that is if authorities manage to prolong capitalist world order a while longer). Many cities will not make it and will be abandoned to continuously shrink like Detroit while others will attract the best talent.

Since national elites will get to intermingle more, social cultural polarization amongst them will further alienate them from their rural or suburban roots. Suburbia at this point will lose its appeal as a safe peaceful retreat and many suburbias (not just those by abandoned cities) might become 21st century equivalent of slums. The contrast with new Euro style inner cities will become more shocking than today's contrast between Detroit and Manhattan's lower east side.

In the first half of the 20th century, Havana had more entertainment for an advanced urban aristocracy such as stripclubs, more hedonistic nightlife, and an amazing cosmopolitan cuisine. That's one of the reasons it became a tourist attraction in an era when plane tourism was dangerous and expensive. However wealthy Americans didn't go to Havana because they could indulge in socially liberating hedonistic gratification at the expensive of poor peasants. They went because they saw the sophisticated urban wealthy educated Cubans at the stage of development which will be reached by wealthy educated Americans in 2020s/2030s and so on (using the model of analysis developed in part 1).

In a way, visiting Americans were able to taste futuristic advanced hedonism of their great grandchildren. That's not saying that the general poverty of the rural Cubans did not create appeal of sex workers and such. Cheaper sex workers and wonderful beaches however exist throughout other Latin American countries and were just a garnish on the Havana steak. Cuban nightlife/entertainment was years more advanced than one that existed in the prudish New York City or Las Vegas. Things that are only now appearing to become more publicly popular amongst children of American rich (such as sexual swinging) happened amongst European wealthy and educated as far back as 19th century and beyond. Cuban urban class (living in 20% of the best housing in the country) was already as "spoiled" (in the eye of Puritan morality) and socially conscious/accepting/tolerant as middle class New Yorkers 1-2 generations from now.

What do we mean by socially conscious? As we saw in part 4, even though the wealth of urban areas controlled politics, it was in their best interest to spend large amounts of money on modernization. Russian elites know that the best way they can achieve more wealth/power domestically and internationally is to develop the countryside. Government leadership will understand that US will further and further fall behind EU (in sheer power) if drastic modernization efforts are not started. If Republican party reorganizes into a populist force, it'll prod the cities to modernize quicker. If it doesn't then serious modernization efforts should still begin in US once the situation beyond city borders gets desperate enough. We now have mass decentralized electronic media to shame sensitive city dwellers into accepting higher tax burdens more quickly. Numerous white collar workers should begin to organize into politically powerful Cuban industrial union equivalents. Once again this assumes that Barack Obama manages to reform and thus preserve American capitalism for a couple more decades.

As Cuba and Russian Empire have shown, if 5% of population is surrounded by functional illiterates then the illiterates can be swindled out of a lot of money and resources through conspiracy and social construction. Cuba's corruption was unstoppable since those in charge mingled together in the same close urban area and devised new schemes for the country and how to make money. The only thing that allowed a power vacuum to develop is some elites deciding to not share the spoils, having too much power, and the infighting that occurred.

United States might be beyond ability to engineer peaceful decline into the 21s century at this point. That is because modernization efforts on the scale needed require:

1) enormous national resources
2) united political center
3) a lot of political capital
4) popular legitimacy
5) solid economic base

and most importantly

6) time and patience over generations

Even then they are potentially very destabilizing. They can create psychological sense that government is incompetent, not doing enough, corrupt (which it will be, Iraq war and bailouts are just appetizers), and too weak to do what is needed. Elite adherence to tradition and constitutional law (so far done relatively successfully in US) gets strained enormously in such an environment.

If technological stop gap measures for education (like advanced internet learning) are not found, then we are looking at potentially devastating turn of events. We might even see some violence in future years once some elites find out how to exploit the rural discontent and find allies in urban areas. With fertility rates of the uneducated higher, the task becomes more difficult by the day. It is doubtful that a great nuclear power will be allowed to be greatly destabilized from within by EU/Russia/China but their cooperation is not guaranteed considering China and Russia are facing similar problems. Hopefully exponential progress in technology will allow us to find solutions to manage the national decline peacefully so United States of 2020s and 2030s meaningfully contributes to European economy. Cuban rural population looting the cities, taking over residences left by those fleeing to Florida, and providing education/healthcare for themselves violently under guidance of urban elites (who betrayed their urban educated neighbors out of desire for power) serves as a lesson. It probably wont get to that point in US any time soon or if it does it'll take on a brand new strange form. However we can learn from how an old, progressive, wealthy, and growing American republic with a lot of potential ended up dying. Now instead of having skyscrapers Havana still has cars driven from its golden civilizational age.