Some “independent” digital media of a journalistic or academic nature gain prominence in Cuba, especially among certain sectors of the Cuban intelligentsia, presenting themselves as “plural” and “alternative” platforms for public deliberation on the present and the future of the country. Those who publish in these spaces are constructing a "progressive" narrative that assumes as a common thread a discredited and, at times, markedly resentful, discourse regarding the Cuban political system. Despite its alleged “plurality”, it is difficult for us to find positions identified with the course of the revolutionary process in recent decades, even from a critical perspective. The same authors are those who publish in one and the other of these media, they quote each other, and they create a network that seeks to position itself within the media scene around Cuba. They try to influence public opinion, accumulating an intellectual capital that in some cases is already profitable, and a political one that perhaps, at some point, could become so. They try to socialize a particular way of interpreting the Cuban reality, which is becoming increasingly popular within their networks, without there being clarity of their effective scope.

There are nuances in the authors' discourse that can be considered within this current. Some of them are more interested in economic development and defend the free market, while others advocate more strongly for the empowerment of the so-called "civil society". Broadly speaking, it could be said that the gradient goes from those who yearn for the definitive liberalization of the Cuban economy, to those who, without declaring any ideological position, present themselves as defenders of the independent press, freedom of expression, other civil rights and certain social causes; even those who have their sights set on the possibility of an inflection in the Cuban political legal institutions towards a "democratic socialism" that is heir to the purest republican tradition.

Despite this variety, we distinguish a center around five fundamental aspects that mark the interests within this current of "progressive" thought, with a sign that is much more homogeneous than plural:

First, the defense of certain limited rights within current Cuban society, related to limitations on private property and the accumulation of wealth, free association, demonstration and expression, political plurality, direct voting and freedom of the press.

Second, the narratives are characterized by the denunciation of the vulnerability conditions that certain sectors of the population experience, that is, situations of poverty, unhealthiness, gender violence, among other problems that may be presented by the media as "social causes" that awaken great sensitivity.

Third, his judgment of the Cuban political system is based on holding him accountable in absolute terms, both for the limitations in the area of ​​rights and in the area of ​​economic development and living conditions of vulnerable sectors.

Fourth, the discussion about certain rights, or is carried out going beyond the socialist character of the system, such as, for example, the necessary state intervention on the processes of distribution of wealth and property; or it is carried out in a decontextualized way, insofar as the influence of the economic blockade and the American political, military and media siege are omitted, which delimits the conditions of possibility for the realization of these rights and for overcoming the existing economic difficulties . Furthermore, this discussion seems to ignore or, at least, treat as obvious the broad platform of effective rights that the Cuban population enjoys in conditions of equity, some of them, even, with a universal and inalienable character, a situation that speaks in favor of a clear and sustained political will of the Cuban system to dignify life on the island.

Fifth, finally, although these speeches do not use the same political jargon of the US right against Cuba, they are based on the same pivots of openness to the free market, of ironic criticism of the ineffectiveness of a blocked socialist economy and defense of a handful of rights. specific traditionally raised by liberal democracies, which makes this type of allegations very susceptible to being absorbed or co-opted by external interests and their employees on the island, as well as by the rest of the Cuban dissent. As part of this "progressive" current of thought, some Cuban intellectuals who define themselves as representatives of the "left" stand out. They speak in defense of a "democratic socialism", with nostalgia for the republican tradition present in other stages of the history of our country and, in general, discredit the revolutionary socialist process in Cuba. Despite their stance, skeptical at times, clearly hostile at others, regarding the current Cuban institutionality, and although sometimes they end up assuming aligned or, at least, convenient positions for the international right that attacks the country, and its political activists within of the island, it would be difficult to identify them as members of the open dissent. They are intellectuals educated in Cuba, with mastery of an important cultural heritage, who seem authentic when they declare themselves highly committed and concerned about a better destination for their country.

We will never see them pronounce themselves in the terms of the Miami right, worn propaganda from which they distance themselves: the caliber of their speech is another; it is a discourse, in fact, difficult to calibrate, at first approach. His rhetoric is attractive, but without clear affiliation to any project, or any other declaration of principles other than that of his faith in the ideals of republican purity and some of its formal categories. For most of their followers in the networks, it is enough to feel identified with them, when they confess their pain for a separate homeland due to migration; they place themselves as martyrs of a State that harasses them; they flatter the abundance of Miami and lament the deficiencies of Cuba; or they sit provisionally next to some social groups to cry what they present as their misfortune within the system. Symbols very aptly used in opinion articles laden with emotional springs, aimed at fibers of the heart of a nation, which even after six decades of the most important anticolonial revolutionary process in contemporary history, continues to struggle to resolve, in its subjectively produced ways , her main historical contradiction, the same since October 1868, that tension between the desire to be herself or to be in the image of a master. Because we must recognize that there are important sectors of the population in Cuba identified with the values ​​that the socialist project represents and that really want its continuity, but there are also some sectors identified with the values ​​of capitalism and its proclaimed fallacy of abundance, democracy and freedom.

In principle, no one could be against what a part of the "progressive" intellectualism in Cuba publicly desires: a political legal institutionality that guarantees greater freedoms, rights and opportunities for real participation for the people. However, the problem arises when they propose as a path towards higher quotas of democracy and rights, the well-worn groove of the formulas of the bourgeois institutionality, in a historical moment in which the categories they defend have become proven euphemisms that do not resolve the structural crisis of rights and democracy in capitalist societies.

It can be argued that the republican principles of greater rights and freedoms do not have to be exclusive to bourgeois societies, this will always depend on the references from where they are built. In this sense, although a part of "progressivism" in Cuba declares itself akin to the left, its speeches and references seem much closer to the social democracies. At this point in history it is known that the so-called "third way" is not at war against capitalism itself, only against its wildest expression. In other words, this conception is much more closely adjusted to the tolerance of a system based on exploitative relations, in accordance with the naive or interested idea that there is a "good" capitalism and a "bad" capitalism. However, there is no morality intrinsic to capitalism that can voluntarily control and self-correct the processes of exploitation and accumulation, to create a model that is kind to humanity and nature. This notion of a noble side of capitalism omits class struggle as a fundamental element within a system that uses all possible means to reproduce itself, and in its unlimited reproduction contains the negation of humanity and, at the same time, the need of rebellion.

The implementation of brakes, in certain moments and contexts, to capitalism, has only been the historical result of popular struggles against the system. The concessions, in terms of social demands, that have been extracted from it, must be defended perpetually, at the risk of being erased from history, since they are not part of the logic of their accumulation processes. This, because social rights, in reality represent disruptive elements that detract from opportunities for profit, so they can be perfectly dispensable and irrelevant within the “healthy” functioning of the economic system of capitalist accumulation, as has been amply demonstrated in socially devastated latitudes. for the interests of the capital.

Therefore, the total dismantling of social rights in some places and the existence of concessions wrested from the system in certain contexts based on collective struggle and sacrifice, are two sides of the same coin: the only brutal character of the system. That is why, with regard to socialism in Cuba, the rights related to free association, freedom of the press and demonstration, concepts that Cuban “progressivism” so much defends, taken in the abstract, without considering objective conditions and realities The concrete island that the island has been facing since January 1959, are liable to be co-opted by external and internal economic power groups to the island to impose a private and privatizing agenda according to their class interests, which would increase the peripheries that have already they exist and would make them unimaginably bloody. Cuba will not enter, due to the broad avenue of the bourgeois democracy model that defends Cuban “progressivism”, without its freedom as a nation and the project of a society for the humble being shattered. Direct voting in those countries whose constitutions exemplify "progressivism" in Cuba does not necessarily guarantee that the interests of those who vote are represented. The insistence of the "progressives" on "political plurality", which could translate into multipartyism and open a space for the real presence of "central" and "right" political currents, within the framework of a social project where it cannot there being more room than for the deepening of socialism, at the risk of destroying any autonomous project as a nation, would lead to the repositioning of a bourgeoisie in power, which will not hesitate or delay in restoring the mechanisms of class domination related to its economic interests, which would imply the liquidation of socialism.

It seems that this conception of Cuban "progressivism", in defense of rights and liberties in the abstract, fails to see that, in the formal political space of capitalist societies, there is actually no effective difference between the "center" or the "left ”, Since the politics in turn is subordinated to the interests of capital, whatever its sign. The true left regularly fights outside and below, on the sidelines and against all the institutionality imposed. Multipartyism is transformed in practice into groups of economic and political power fighting for the resources of their countries to profit, depriving broad social sectors of opportunities to satisfy their basic needs. In countries with constitutions that recognize freedom of expression, social protests are violently repressed when they affect the interests of economic elites and journalists and human rights defenders are murdered with impunity. In this sense, the bourgeois political legal institutionality is characterized by stating formal rights and relative freedoms ultimately subordinate to the interests of capital. What rights are guaranteed for the poorest in many countries where the constitutions speak of democracy, human rights and political liberties in the same terms that the Cuban “progressivism” that defines the constitution in Cuba demands?

No right. Because it is not about formal concepts, it is about creating real conditions of possibility in the context of a certain project of society. Therefore, we do not recognize the conceptual order of rights and freedoms that “progressive” intellectualism advocates as opposed to socialism in Cuba (“political plurality”, “human rights”, “freedom of expression”, “freedom of the press”, “ freedom of association ", freedom of demonstration", "democracy"), not because they are themselves bourgeois concepts, because in reality they do not necessarily have to be, but, above all, because they are not capable of being fully realized within the models of society capitalist that "progressivism" occupies as a reference, that is, there is an inherent contradiction to that system between, the formal-rhetorical statement of rights and freedoms, and its real-practical concretion. And, because, to raise them, the "progressives" go over the history of Cuba, even if they declare themselves creditors to it; they override the geopolitical conditions faced by a project in socialist transition and its economic circumstances; They go above and beyond the sustained achievements of the revolution in terms of rights and freedoms, despite the fact that the country is in the midst of a military, economic, political and media siege that has lasted more than six decades. They pass over the space where freedoms and rights are in conflict, that is, the confrontation of two antagonistic models of society, a model based on profit and profit, based on the exploitation of labor at the service of accumulation of capital in a minority, and another that is based on distribution and equity at the service of the entire society.

Being this way, we criticize, the way in which these concepts of liberties and rights are used by Cuban “progressivism”, in the image and likeness of how they are permanently used in the discursive order that the bourgeois institutionalism imposes to legitimize itself, without necessarily being carried out in practice, since they are always limited by the narrow framework of the class interests of the dominant elite, that is, they always end up being rights and freedoms for a minority. Its only possibility of effective universal realization is within a society that transcends the order established by the bourgeois model and develops them from a new framework, overcoming the limitations imposed on capitalist society. In other words, where freedom is not reduced to opportunities for profit for a few, democracy is not limited to the imperative of the interests of those who have the money, freedom of the press is not reduced to the opinion of the owners of corporations. media on behalf of the owners of capital, freedom of association is not exclusive to the privileged, and freedom of expression is not limited to what is tolerated by the interests of the market.

The enunciation in abstract terms of each of these concepts, using as models the models of capitalist societies based on formal rights and relative liberties for the benefit of the interests of a minority, differs from what those same concepts can actually become in a model. of a socialist society that aspires to the effective realization of full rights and freedoms for all. In this sense, while the "progressive" discourses in Cuba import the concepts of liberties, rights and democracy as referents from the dynamics of bourgeois institutionality (characterized by regulating exploitative relations for the reproduction of a society divided into classes), with the purpose of judging a project in socialist transition (which, on the contrary, aspires to the suppression of the relations of exploitation and elimination of social classes), we can speak with justice of the use of bourgeois concepts or the bourgeois use of concepts .

When the "progressive" discourse, which defines itself as "left", appeals as a model and referring to elements of the structure, ideology and institutionality of capitalist society that must be overcome in socialism, it can be clearly identified as current conservative of intellectual thought, completely antagonistic to a true left position. What it does is recreate underdeveloped hybrids of the Cuban bourgeois institutional culture prior to the revolution. Therefore, it is the task of revolutionary critical thinking to unmask this type of rhetorical games from conservative thought disguised as "progressivism" or "left".

If there is something that must be fought in a socialist revolution, it is also the bourgeois appropriation of fundamental concepts for the development of its democratic character, each of the concepts and values ​​that serve to deepen socialist democracy must be socialized and radicalized in the process . Thus enabling the emergence of new ways of being of intellectual work, displacing the figure of intellectuals as a critical conscience of society, so well exploited by conservative trends, and assuming the revolutionary people critical action on their society (Martínez, 2001) .

Furthermore, capitalism and its political legal institutions have amply demonstrated its failure to realize the aforementioned rights and freedoms in every corner of the world. Where capitalism has strictly triumphed, its triumph has represented for the majority of peoples exploitation, devastation, dispossession and extermination, that is, the destruction of entire cultures and societies. Cuban "progressives" will always be able to say that Cuba will not necessarily have the same fate as those in the south, and that even all those in the south have not fared as badly. And right there, they will be mistaken again, thinking that capitalism has a "good" side and a "bad" side, looking at the West with the hope that Cuba can do as well as the elites of the colonial powers, while the whole world falls apart.

The historical colonial powers are always set as referents of how good the capitalist system and the social democracies can be. The liberal thought, that they are doing well because they have managed to develop a benevolent capitalism and the south is doing poorly because of the large amounts of corruption that exist, is a widely spread thought among important sectors of society in the south. Many progressive intellectuals in Latin America cite as good examples the social progress made in some of these economically developed capitalist societies. But the positive achievements in terms of rights and freedoms within these societies are precisely thanks to the brakes that for historical reasons (welfare states) have been imposed on the mode of capitalist accumulation. Although it is not possible to forget that in order to maintain their economic hegemony, the elites of those governments, abroad apply the same wild modes of exploitation and implement the characteristic mechanisms of capitalist domination over the politics of other countries, even using violence to suppress rights and freedoms of other peoples. Capitalism is a global system in a unipolar world, therefore, it is the system responsible for the order of things that we are assisting on our planet. The wealth of the most economically developed societies today rests on a system that, in order to reproduce itself, is destroying the majority of the world population and nature. No matter where we live, we cannot turn our backs on that reality.

"Progressivism" in Cuba echoes a clearly colonial thought, forgetting which side of history we should be on and that, with the poor, because we are, we should cast our luck. With the same illusion, the dazzled Cuban annexationists looked to the North at the time when Martí confessed to having known how turbulent and brutal he could be and how much he despised us, hours before he died, and we already know where that chapter in Cuban history ended.

We know that "progressivism" now wants to rewrite it, and tell that the bourgeois republic was so good, despite its ills, because it was a republic, but together with the recognition of the relative progress it represented, we can never forget that by fighting against Effective ways in which that republic was consolidated, the most valuable young Cuban rebels of the time lost their lives.

In the end, they are not doing, in their own way, something that the narrative of the international right has not done before with respect to Cuba and does not continue to do: a reading of Cuban socialism, under the prism of the order of rationality emanating from liberal democracies. Despite defining themselves as exponents of "left" thinking, we reiterate that they represent a conservative line within contemporary Cuban intellectual thought, openly in contradiction with the new forms of organization of social life that have been experienced in Cuba since the triumph of the revolution and that will have to continue reinventing themselves, because socialism, unlike capitalism in all its variants, is a system still to be built.

Regarding Cuba, it is not about defending a government as an end in itself, nor the interests of a group in power. It is about safeguarding the conditions of possibility for a socialist society project to be carried out that guarantees the rights of the people, or what is the same, defending the sovereignty and independence of a nation, which, although they want to obviate it, faces a permanent siege , precisely for not giving up or giving up on that endeavor. The war against the Cuban Revolution has been the price that has had to be paid simply for being free and consistent. If any group comes to put at risk the sovereignty of the nation, being in power or not; if at some point the true rights enjoyed by the people were trampled on in the interest of a minority; if dispossession, exploitation, contempt for the value of human life, humiliation, annexationism, subordination to the powerful of the north, were to impose themselves as a rule in power and the revolution were thus betrayed, it would be necessary to take to the streets Now, yes, the constitution allows it or not, to resume the course of history; not the course of the history of domination and repression that began in 1901, even if there was a republic, but the history of national sovereignty and dignity of human life, which began in January 1959.

Undoubtedly, Cuban socialism has to be radicalized, it has to do it towards the deepening of social equity and the improvement of the mechanisms of political participation, but it has to create its own ways of achieving it. It is true that in this attempt there are examples where to look, but they are not those of liberal democracies. The anti-capitalist left movements in Latin America, for example, are doing a lot in this regard, why not look there, when they look at Cuba.