Cuba, Che Guevara and the Problem of Socialism in One Country
The presidential elections in Cuba may have marked the end of an era. On the face of it, Raúl Castro’s decision to step aside symbolized, more than anything else, the departure of the revolution’s historical generation and the process of rejuvenation of the Cuban leadership—a process that had begun much earlier than the Western media cared to acknowledge. Detractors of the Cuban government have been quick to express their regrets over the unbroken continuity of its socialist project and to predict, once again, the island’s eventual return into the capitalist fold.
The disintegration of the Soviet bloc thirty years ago and every policy change by Cuba have triggered speculations that the breakdown of socialism, the wholesale introduction of economic liberalization, and the restoration of capitalism in Cuba are imminent. By adding pressure from the outside, the objective of the U.S. blockade of Cuba has been just that: the destruction of the Cuban revolution’s economic base. But looking at Cuba’s relative isolation in a world of consumerism, indifference, and reactionary politics—in addition to the policy adjustments it has already been compelled to make—one does not have to be an enemy of the Cuban model to cast doubts on its viability.
It is indeed legitimate to ask whether, in the long run, Cuba as a socialist society can “survive” in a hostile environment. Or rather, how Cuba, and therefore socialism in one country, can hold up and develop against the economic, cultural, and military encirclement of U.S. imperialism in particular and the capitalist system in general. Dialectically, external contradictions take effect by means of internal contradictions and, if it were not for the Cuban people’s persevering resilience, the U.S. embargo and other capitalist pressures could have been enough to seriously undermine Cuba’s political and economic independence.
The Political Economy of Socialist Transition
From the early days of the Cuban Revolution, strengthening the internal and external conditions of its survival has been of great concern to its protagonists, even though their approach has never solely been a defensive one. After the seizure of power, converting the rebel army into a more regular defense force was perhaps the easiest task. However, shaking up the economy and developing a planning system as the basis of Cuban society’s socialist transition has been a completely different story. At the time, two of the most delicate and urgent economic measures to be taken—industrialization and the transformation of the banking system—were assigned to Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
In November 1959, only two months after he had started to organize the Department of Industrialization at the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), Guevara also took on the presidency of the National Bank of Cuba. In this function, he directed six major operations to stop capital flight and regain control of the country’s financial resources: 1) the withdrawal of Cuban gold reserves from the United States, 2) the introduction of foreign trade licenses, 3) the nationalization of the banking system, 4) the termination of Cuba’s membership in U.S.-dominated international finance institutions, 5) the setup of a foreign trade agency, and 6) the pivotal replacement of banknotes. Following the first U.S. sanctions in October 1960, Guevara led a two-month trade mission to the Soviet Union, China, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and North Korea. At that point, he already had trade experience from his travels to Yugoslavia, North Africa, and Asia the previous year.
In February 1961, Guevara was instrumental in establishing the Ministry of Industries, which he headed up until his departure for the Congo four years later. Simultaneously, he continued to be active as a military commander and as one of the architects of Cuba’s new State Security Department that organized support to liberation movements in Latin America and Africa. The fact that he stayed at the Ministry of Industries for so long shows that he considered it necessary to domestically consolidate the revolution before turning to international projects. Despite its continental inclinations and Guevara’s own aspirations abroad, the Cuban leadership’s top priority was implementing and deepening the economic conditions of the country’s first phase of socialist transformation, while in no way neglecting international conditions impacting the revolution. Guevara only renounced his functions in the Cuban leadership when he was confident that the systems he helped put in place were mature enough to advance without him.
Before leaving for his final undertaking in Latin America, Guevara spent three months in a small summerhouse near Prague, codenamed Venkov (Czech for “the cottage”), preparing a book on the political economy of socialist transition. In one of his notes for the book, he posed and implicitly denied the rhetorical question: “First of all, can communism be built in just one country?”1 The question referred to statements by the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences in its Manual of Political Economy, which had been widely used for training government employees in countries receiving Soviet aid. The core of Guevara’s notes from this period revolve around a critical assessment of the Manualand his disapproval of the economic, social, and political consequences of Soviet practices—from V. I. Lenin’s New Economic Policy to the ensuing politics of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful coexistence.”
The book project fit in with the discussions Guevara had initiated during his years at the helm of Cuba’s Ministry of Industries, which came to be known as the Great Debate. While the discussions centered on advocating for the Ministry’s Budgetary Finance System over the so-called Autofinancing System or Economic Calculus applied in the other socialist economies, their scope included the fundamental issues determining the period of transition from a capitalist to a socialist economy, both from a Cuban and an international perspective. Moral values and “facts of consciousness” were Guevara’s major concerns, and his most comprehensive analysis of their significance in socialist development can be found in one of a series of articles published in the Ministry’s magazine, Nuestra Industria, throughout 1963 and 1964.2
In a Ministry meeting on October 2, 1964, Guevara cautioned his staff against conflating the definitions of socialism and communism, pointing out that socialism, as the period of transition between the capitalist order’s destruction and the building of communism, could not be conceived in a linear way. He reminded them that, “if you read Lenin attentively,” an additional period can be distinguished: a period of socialist construction that “moves from the establishment of workers’ power until the moment when society can be called socialist, i.e., when the means of production will all be in the hands of society, when there will be no exploitation of human beings by other human beings, etc. Rewarding according to labor will determine the period spanning from socialism to communism, while under communism rewarding will be according to need.”3
https://monthlyreview.org/2019/01/01/cuba-che-guevara-and-the-problem-of-socialism-in-one-country/
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