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On 9/17/10 7:20 PM, dan wrote: > You don't quote similar descriptions of visitors in the 60s to Cuban > factories, describing the problems of adapting Czech, Polish and Soviet > ready-made factories to Cuba. You don't even quote Che Guevara's famous > outburst (he was minister of industry at the time) : "This is all shit ! > We've been had by the USSR ! The factories they sold are worthless. > Moving away from sugar cane, industrialzing, and what do they give us ? > The Polish factories make tooth paste that's harder than cement, the > Soviet factories make bottles that leek and the Czech factories make > dolls that look like witches ! This is an insult to the people !" And your point is? I think that most subscribers understand that Cuba and the USSR clashed over any number of issues, from the economy to guerrilla struggles in Latin America. In any case, if you agree that the Cuba that Boorstein described *existed*, then we are making progress. > > The industrialization policy was a disaster, which prompted the Cuban > government to return to reliance on sugar cane as the main crop produce > for exportation to the Soviet Union in the 70s. Whereas 40% of the sugar > cane fields had been destroyed in the earlt 60s, the policy was reversed > so that by the early 80s, thanks to the sugar for oil policy of the > CARECON, Cuba exported 10 million metric tons of sugar/year in the > record crops of the early 80s as against 6 million metric tons in the > 50s. Since the fall of the USSR, Cuban sugar production has fallen to 4 > million metric tons per year. I understand all this, but I am not sure what this has to do with our differences. Cuba exists in a capitalist world. Perhaps if the Cuban revolutionaries had read their Rudolf Rocker, they would have learned how to migrate the island to an egalitarian communist galaxy where such problems do not exist. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
