Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution

368 Pages·2009·5.5 MB·English

by  Helen Yaffe (auth.)

Che Guevara
Also by Helen Yaffe
Che Guevara’s Enduring Legacy: Not the Foco, but the Theory of Socialist Transition,
Latin American Perspectives, March 2009.
Review of Diana Raby: Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today,
Bulletin of Latin American Research, January 2009.
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: Rebel against Soviet Political Economy. Paper at the Economic
History Review conference booklet, University of Exeter, England, March 2007.
Che Guevara
The Economics of Revolution
Helen Yaffe
© Helen Yaffe 2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-21820-8
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First published 2009 by
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ISBN 978-0-230-21821-5 ISBN 978-0-230-23387-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230233874
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Forewordd by Meghnad Desai viii
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Revolutionary Consolidation and the Emergence of the BFS 12
3 The Great Debate 45
4 Education, Training and Salaries 70
5 Administrative Control, Supervision and Investment 100
6 Collectivising Production and Workers’ Participation 131
7 Science and Technology 163
8 Consciousness and Psychology 199
9 Critique of the Soviet Manual of Political Economy 233
10 Guevara’s Legacy in Cuba 257
Appendix 1: Ministry of Industries Organigram 276
Appendix 2: Living to Tell – Short Biographies of the
Principal Interviewees 277
Notes 290
Bibliography 331
Index 348
Acknowledgements
Between autumn 1995 and summer 1996 I lived in Cuba with my sister – an
austere time during the Special Period. Cubans dug deep to fifi nd what they
needed to survive, as individuals and as a socialist society. Thousands of
Cubans, young and old, carried out voluntary labour in the fifields and in the
cities, determined that their Revolution would survive the crisis generated by
the collapse of the socialist bloc and exacerbated by the punitive US blockade.
This gave us a fifi rst glimpse of the important relationship between consciousness
and production which lies at the heart of the economics of revolution and is
central to understanding Che Guevara’s work in Cuba.
The book owes its content to the many protagonists who worked alongside
Guevara in Cuba in 1959–65 and who patiently responded to my questions.
Without them it would not have been possible. This history is almost as
much their own as it is Guevara’s. Orlando Borrego Díaz showed endless
patience and encouragement, as the list of interviews in the bibliography
demonstrates. As Guevara’s deputy in Cuba, he provided a fascinating insight
into the challenges they faced in the process of socialist transition. Ángel Arcos
Bergnes offered me support and material from his own archive, and responded
to my endless enquiries with the enthusiasm for which Guevara had praised
him. Other important interviewees who allowed me to return for a second
interrogation include Enrique Oltuski, Edison Velázquez and Tirso Sáenz.
These revolutionaries share an exciting history as part of Guevara’s inner circle
and their cooperation was motivated by a commitment to Guevara’s theory
and practice, and the wish to disseminate knowledge about it.
Several Cuban compañeros from the younger generation encouraged and
facilitated the research in Cuba. Particularly, I would like to mention Rogelio
Polanco Fuentes who, despite his overwhelming responsibilities as director of
Juventud Rebelde among other posts, expressed great interest in the writing
of this book and did more than I could have expected to provide contacts
for me and organise interviews with revolutionary leaders. The Che Guevara
Study Centre opened its archives and Tatiana Martínez Hernández gave me
her own material and friendship. Kenia Serrano Puig and Nancy Coro Aguiar
showed concern, friendship and support. To my adopted Cuban families –
those of Yani, Mongui and Nilda – I am eternally grateful for hospitality during
my frequent sojourns on the island. I am grateful to the Cuban publishing
house Ciencias Sociales for permission to use material from their books, to
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Borrego for permission to devour the meeting transcripts and internal reports
he compiled in 1966, and to Granma newspaper for providing me with the
cover photo from their archives.
In London the fifi rst acknowledgement goes to Dr Colin Lewis at the London
School of Economics (LSE), who has defended the intellectual integrity and
authenticity of my endeavour since the outset and guided me towards academic
discipline. Likewise, I am obliged to Professor Meghnad Desai, also at the LSE,
who overwhelmed me with useful references and has written the foreword
for this book, and to Professor James Dunkerley, formerly of the Institute
for the Study of the Americas, who advised me on getting into print. The
research which led to this book was funded by the Economic and Social
Research Council. My gratitude goes to Taiba Batool for being so enthusiastic
about this publication, and to all her colleagues at Palgrave Macmillan who
have steered me through the editorial process, along with the team at Chase
Publishing Services, and Carol Brickley who helped me to compile the index.
I am indebted to Paul Bullock and David Yaffe for stimulating discussions
about the theoretical material. Appreciation goes to all my compañeros who
have shown that moral incentives can even function ‘in the belly of the beast’.
I am grateful for the unconditional love and encouragement received from
Daniesky, Susie and Leo, and to Max and Ella who bring me much joy. Finally,
thanks to my parents Ann and David, who, in the words of Guevara, are ‘true
revolutionaries motivated by great feelings of love’, who brought me up to
think critically and, most importantly, to care.
Foreword
Meghnad Desai
GUEVARA THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara is a romantic fifi gure. He is perhaps the best loved or at
least the most paraded global icon that the Revolutionary left can claim. Even
more than the bearded founders of the movement, Che Guevara caught the
imagination of the 1968 generation. He was young, handsome, fashionable
and then he died in a jungle in Bolivia fifi ghting American Imperialism single-
handedly. So he went on posters and T-shirts and adorned many walls and
waists. He was ‘one of us’ – we, of course, the torchbearers of the Red
Revolution. From our comfortable bedsits and even our mortgaged houses
we could see ourselves in guerrilla fatigues, cigar chomped in our mouths,
battling the enemy just as he did. Then we went on to have another drink.
In adoring Che Guevara the radical chic of the Sixties divorced him from
his milieu which was the Cuban Revolution. The daily unglamorous tasks of
keeping the Revolution alive, to feed the citizens, clothe them and nurse them,
to meet the expectation that a socialist revolution is not just about guns and
about fifi ghting American power, but about achieving prosperity, more than
capitalism can promise for the mass of the people. This is the boring task of
the Revolutionary.
Socialist Revolutions have only occurred thus far in poor countries
characterised by an underdeveloped capitalism with low productivity,
insuffificient accumulation, feudal and monopolistic concentration of power and
an impatient populace who support the Revolution with hopes of something
better, quickly. The fact that profifi ts come from exploitation of workers is
axiomatic for the Revolutionary. But once the Revolution has happened and
the exploiter has been removed, comes the crucial discovery. Even if all that
profifit reverts to the workers, it is still insuffifi cient to improve matters much.
The problem of underdevelopment is not just that there is exploitation, but
that there is insuffifi cient output to meet basic needs even if all share equally.
The problem of the Revolution is to use the methods of capitalism – hard
work, effifi ciency, elimination of waste and idleness, discipline at work – to
accomplish the gains which socialism promises.
It fell to Guevara as one of the principal members of the cadre to think
about this problem. In a way, it is the task of how to be a good capitalist
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for socialist ends. But it is also a task of examining whether the methods of
socialism can be different and indeed better in terms of raising productivity
than the methods of capitalism. This problem was fifi rst seen clearly by Marx
in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, his one and only ‘policy’ paper, in
which he commented on the draft programme of the newly united Social
Democratic Party of Germany which had claimed to follow his teachings. His
prose is tough and he discards the delusions of the ‘leftists’.
Right at the beginning, he denounces the proposition that ‘Labour is the
source of all wealth’. All product is not the product of labour, he warns at
the outset. Nature is just as much the source of use-values. Further, there is
always the task of replacing the wear and tear of equipment – of constant
capital – from the available output. There is also the task of reinvesting surplus
for raising future output. Marx, in other words, tells the Workers’ Party that
the realities of capital accumulation are inescapable even if political power
passes to the workers.
Lenin was the fifi rst leader of a Workers’ Party who had to face the question
concretely in an economy ravaged by war and famine. His speeches and
writings in the 1917–23 period are full of reflfl ections on the problem of how
a transition from capitalism to something better has to be accomplished. Thus
he writes:
Keep regular and honest accounts of money, manage economically, do not be lazy,
do not steal, observe strictest labour discipline – it is these slogans justly scorned by
the revolutionary proletariat when the bourgeoisie used them to conceal its role as
an exploiting class that are now, since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, becoming
the immediate and principal slogans of the movement.1
Cuba was, of course,sui generisas a socialist country. It was the fifi rst country
in Latin America, a mono-crop economy dependent on sugar and an enclave
of the USA dependent for the purchase of sugar and for income from tourism,
etc. It was also only an island. Thus, while China was also poor and under-
developed, it was a continental economy. Russia in 1917 was a large economy
with much power. Cuba had to work hard for a double independence – from
the USA and from international capitalist relations.
It is in this aspect that Helen Yaffe has put us all in her debt. She has dealt
with Che Guevara’s work as a political economist charting new ground while
fifighting on two fronts. She has delved into the archives in Cuba and also drawn
on the broader literature on the subject of the economics of transition. The
debate on the law of value which reverberated through the early years of the
Cuban Revolution is covered with a thoroughness and understanding which
will stand the test of time. It is a topic which has been covered only partially,