Helen Yaffe explores impact of Che Guevara as an economist and politician.
In my first A-level economics class, at the age
of 16, I was taught these guiding principles;
people only produce if they can make a profit,
humans have infinite desires, while resources are
limited, so everything must be rationed through
the price mechanism demand and supply.
No concept of production for need or socialist
economics appeared on the curriculum. This was
the early 1990s, the socialist bloc had collapsed
and neo-liberalism was triumphant, or so we were
told. Over the previous ten years, British
Telecoms, the British water industry, British
Rail, British Gas and British Coal had been
packaged up and sold off to corporations and share holders.
Rational economic man, it was said, would ensure
efficiency through privatisation and competition,
even while, in the following years, prices rose
and accidents increased in these fundamental
services of the economy. Darwinism was recruited
to the cause, as underdeveloped countries were
forced to 'liberalise' their economies, selling
their natural resources to foreign investors,
rolling back the state, and removing obstacles to
the 'revolutionising' power of market forces. In
Latin America, the 'lost decade' of the 1980s and
the 'Washington Consensus' of the 1990s saw debt
crisis, restructuring and liberalisation plunge
millions more into destitution, with or without inflated GDP statistics.
Amidst this neoliberal onslaught, Cuba stood
almost alone. The collapse of the socialist bloc
countries between 1989 and 1991 cut off 80 per
cent of Cuba's trade, GDP plummeted by 35 per
cent and food shortages decreased caloric intake
by nearly 40 per cent. The crisis was exacerbated
by punitive laws tightening the US blockade in
1990, 1992, and 1996. Despite entering a 'special
period in time of peace', the Cuban revolution
did not renege on political commitments to
socialist welfare, state planning and the
predominance of state property, even while forced
to introduce pragmatic reforms limitted
concessions to market forces to stimulate the
economy and get vital goods to the people.
<http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Che-Guevara-The-Economics-of>Link
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