ABSTRACT
Social science writing on Cuba, like the revolution itself, has become sober and solid. Gone is the euphoria of the first flush of revolutionary fervor and counterrevolutionary fever. The area of Cuban affairs invites ideological polarization. Any analysis is suspect and scrutinized from the standpoint of the analyst instead of how well it explains the Cuban system. Cuban communism was increasingly defined by its leadership in terms of ideal pretensions rather than actual achievements. The tendency to adopt the language of moral incentives has less to do with revolutionary romanticism than with the Cuban political structure and with economic necessities of an island economy under seige. The profound difficulty with doctrines based on moral incentives is not only in the term moral but in the nature of incentives. Admittedly, rewards can be in terms of satisfaction and payment, and the Cuban regime had every right to frame its goals in terms of increased satisfactoriness of the labor process under socialism.
