Lecture six : Socialism in one country or permanent revolution

2006

Mike Gonzalez’s latest book, Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution (Bookmarks, 2004), is published at an opportune moment, constituting a formidable challenge to all those who see in Che’s symbolism a guiding star for their political actions. When saying that the timing of this publication is the right one, I am thinking of the development of the anti-capitalist movement, which, in spite of its deepseated tensions and uncertainties, provides a real framework for revolutionary endeavours. Given the obvious fact that Che Guevara still appears as an icon and source of inspiration for many in that movement, this book deserves to be read and debated with passion and honesty. Gonzalez is well aware of this context: he seeks to trigger a fresh debate on Che Guevara and it is quite clear that he avoids the easy and laudatory tone so often found in writings on Che’s life. Certainly, Gonzalez does not intend to adjust his arguments to mainstream feelings on Guevara. On the contrary, his book s...

The Hispanic American Historical Review, 1974

Development in Practice, 2010

In this paper we show the connection between the repression of the Cuban Trotskyists from mid-1960 until their eventual banning in 1965, and the growing marginalization of the supporters of "Che" Guevara in the new revolutionary state apparatus as a result of the mounting pressure of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which was in turn a product of the growing alignment of Cuba with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. We review Guevara’s changing attitudes towards the Cuban Trotskyists, contextualizing them in the framework of the economic debates that took place in the Cuban leadership and of his own warnings over the danger of a restoration of capitalism, debates which resulted in his defeat, his resignation from his government posts, his departure from the island and his tragic death in Bolivia at the age of 39. But while the fate of a small internationalist working-class political tendency in Cuba coincided with that of the radical wing of the Cuban revolutionary leadership under the pressure of Stalinism, the Cuban regime never lost its character as an. “adoptive member” of the Stalinist family, and followed a peculiar path which characterizes it until today, a quarter of a century after the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union.

Sixteenth International Conference on "New Political Science" (Universidade de Havana), 2013

Latin America's Marxist thought starts a new period when Cuban revolutionaries conquer power. The Cuban Revolution influences and defines the political project of Latin America's left-wing politics, promoting significant changes inits practical acting. Amongst the various substrates of the left-wing impacted by thischange is the Trotskyist movement, which strives for new theoretical and practical formulations at the same time that it reaffirms its previously adopted positions. This article seeks to comprehend the analysis of Latin American Trotskyism based on two active organizations in the continent: the Latin American Bureau (BLA) and the Latin American Orthodox Trotskyism Secretariat (SLATO). We seek to analyze the specificities of interpretation in these two organizations and its contributions to Latin American Marxism.

Latin American Perspectives, 2009

Che Guevara's most enduring legacy in Cuba has been his indelible contribution to socialist political economy and economic management. Between 1959 and 1965, Guevara set up the budgetary finance system to prove that it was possible and necessary to develop consciousness and productivity simultaneously in the transition to socialism. The system was openly articulated as an alternative to the economic management system operating in the Soviet bloc. Thus, Guevara took up the challenge at the heart of the revolutionary process: achieving economic development with equity from a position of underdevelopment without relying on capitalist mechanisms that would undermine collective consciousness and new social relations. His approach to this problem remains relevant today in Cuba, where his ideas are associated with the vitality of Cuban socialism. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, contemporary developments, reforms, and debates are still best analyzed in terms of their proximity to Guevara's theory of socialist construction.

2018

The twentieth century and the passing of the new millennium confirm, dramatically, the need to reflect on how to build the Socialist Revolution from concrete potentialities, limitations, dangers and constraints, which are diverse but also common. This issue calls for the unprejudiced, honest and objective examination of the mistakes made in failed experiments and in the existing "socialist" models. In this context, the social sciences acquire a special significance, since they can offer answers through the examination of reality, and their perspectives, that allow to warn, to avoid or to solve errors that could hinder or make impossible the construction of the new society. The accumulated results indicate that to make socialism we cannot act and much think as we have done so far. The historical-social, theoretical-practical referents are not found in the collapsed experiments of Eastern Europe, nor in the former "real" Soviet socialism; nor on the roads that have...

In January 1962 Guevara told colleagues in Cuba's Ministry of Industries (MININD): 'In no way am I saying that financial autonomy of the enterprise with moral incentives, as it is established in the socialist countries, is a formula which will impede progress to socialism'.[1] He was referring to the economic management system applied in the Soviet bloc, known in Cuba as the Auto-Financing System (AFS). By 1966, in his critique of the Soviet Manual of Political Economy, he concluded that the USSR: 'is returning to capitalism.'[2] This paper will demonstrate that Guevara's analysis developed in the period between these two statements as a result of three lines of enquiry: the study of Marx's analysis of the capitalist system, engagement in socialist political economy debates and recourse to the technological advances of capitalist corporations.[3] At the same time Guevara was engaged in the practical experience of developing the Budgetary Finance System (BFS); an alternative apparatus for economic management in MININD.