Photo source: Andersont David Aparicio Mendoza – CC BY 3.0
Cuba and Cuban science have won global praise for producing their own highly effective Covid-19 vaccines. The achievement stood out among countries in the Global South. The achievement reflects Cuba’s development over decades of a formidable scientific institution dedicated to the development and marketing of biological products primarily aimed at health care, as well as food production.
The planning processes and strategies involved were unique, as were the resulting organizational forms. These special features relate directly to Cuba’s version of socialism.
In a speech on January 15, 1960, a year after the Revolution came to power, Fidel Castro noted that “the future of Cuba will necessarily be a future of men (Like this) of science.” The landscape would change dramatically.
The Cuban Academy of Sciences was re-established in 1962. It was followed by: the National Center for Scientific Research (1965); the Center for Biological Research (1982); the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (1986) with its 38 scientific institutes; the Immunoassay Center (1987); the vaccine-producing Finlay Institute (1991); the National Center for Biopreparations (1992); and the Center for Molecular Immunology (1994).
The “Scientific Pole,” founded in the 1980s in West Havana, now includes more than 40 research centers that employ 30,000 workers. BioCubaFarma was created in 2012 to facilitate commercialization. exports approximately 164 products from 65 centers. It operates 19 units abroad, as joint ventures or Cuban entities.
Dr. Agustín Lage-Dávila, longtime head of the Center for Molecular Immunology, writes about “whole cycle institutions” that perform research, product development, commercialization and export, all under one management. Export revenues are used to finance the activities of each institution and contribute to the national budget.
Exported products include vaccines against meningitis B, hepatitis B, hemophilus influenza type B, Covid-19, lung cancer (CIMAvax-EGF) and many other infectious agents. Other products include: interferons, erythropoietin, streptokinase, Heberprot-P (used to treat diabetic foot ulcers), diagnostic test kits and six non-vaccine treatment modalities for Covid-19.
Lage’s book on the origins, development, and maintenance of Cuba’s vast bioscience network was published in Cuba in 2013 and again in 2016. Monthly Review Press recently released a translated version of the second edition of the book, titled The Knowledge Economy and Socialism – Science and Society in Cuba. The various chapters represent articles that Lage, an immunologist, biochemist, cancer expert, had written for Cuban magazines. An additional chapter consists of Lage’s answers to questions raised by the first edition of the book. The clarity and readability of the English translation of the book is a plus.
The book is full of information, opinions, analyses, historical references and optimism, balanced by the broad recognition of major problems. Lage explains that after the Revolution, Cuba immediately began developing human capacities and initiating social progress. It did not wait for available funding, as is the practice in most countries.
As a result, the conditions were there for the construction of what Lage calls a knowledge economy. It would involve the export of scientific products, these in place of the natural resources and industrial base that Cuba lacks. Lage notes that organic products must be new and original in order to sell.
Cuba’s biotech industries function “without sterile fragmentation … (and) within institutional boundaries … (K)nowledge is captured and incorporated into tradable assets.” Collaboration works better than competition, Lage argues. Removing institutional boundaries promotes the integration of knowledge. The system favors autonomy over centralized decision-making; it is characterized by “layered” decision-making, “cross-fertilization,” and a shared sense of responsibility.
The contrast with capitalist forms of biotechnological production is striking, he suggests. There, financing is based on venture capitalism. Products and their value end up in private hands through patents, intellectual property protection, and regulatory barriers. Planning is short-term. Scientific creation is decoupled from ownership of results.
Lage repeatedly returns to the need to overcome a contradiction pointed out by Karl Marx, namely that of the social character of production and the private character of the appropriation of both the value of the product and the means of production. He refers to the “private appropriation of accumulated science and knowledge,” and to the appropriation of people in the form of brain drain.
As a socialist country, Cuba defends the social ownership of the means of production and the accumulated value of products. Socialism is a prerequisite, he argues, for a country’s economy to grow through science.
Lage emphasizes the contribution of Cuban culture and ideas of sovereignty to strengthening the project. Culture is expressed in ethical values, motivation, solidarity and a tendency towards unity. There is an “inseparable bond between sovereignty and socialism” through which “our daily tasks are part of a larger historical task.”
He adds that “we are moving closer to the knowledge economy… (and) approaching Marti’s ideal of ‘complete justice’ every day through every social program we successfully implement… In this way, we are building not only the spiritual and material well-being of our people, but also the defense of national sovereignty.”
Lage discusses the knowledge economy as it manifests itself at the local level, particularly in Yaguajay, near Sancti Spiritus, the municipality he represents in Cuba’s National Assembly. He mentions a “municipal socioeconomic development strategy” that, by involving nearby universities and research centers in “knowledge management,” has led to “qualitative changes” in health care, tourism development, computer use, housing promotion, and agriculture.
The ‘levers of socialism’ are particularly helpful: massive state investment in the creation of human capital, integration between institutions, links with social programs, exports linked to Cuba’s international agreements and solidarity programs, the capacity to innovate in the management of institutions, and the ‘political and social motivation’ of workers.
He acknowledges risks. Time is one; “building a knowledge economy … is the task of today, not tomorrow.” Rich countries are using “their accumulated economic advantages … to magnify those advantages and to erect new development barriers in poor countries.” He cites residual damage from the Special Period, old habits of “centralized corporate management,” brain drain, and pressure exerted “by the most powerful empire that has ever existed.”
As for American aggression: “They know… the potential of socialism. A country that grows its material wealth on the basis of the education and spiritual wealth of its people and on the basis of the equity that flows from social ownership of the means of production and from distributive justice would be too clear proof that the solutions to the problems that humanity faces today do not lie on the path of capitalism, nor in its subordination to the interests of the advanced capitalist countries. That is why they must show that our system ‘does not work’, hence the blockade.”
A cautionary note: A 2021 Columbia Law School report, eight years after Lage’s book was first published, cites Cuban statistics showing “a nearly 40% decline in exports of chemical and related products between 2015 and 2019… (And) medicinal and pharmaceutical products account for approximately 90% of total chemical exports.” It appears that revenues from biotech exports have declined.
