On Tue, 17 Dec 1996 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > engineering the creation of the "new man." Even it had been able > to do so, I think that Marx is right that socialism is a > self-creation of the people, not something that is shoved down > people's throats by an enlightened elite. > > for socialism from below, > Louis P.: There was no "socialism from below" in Cuba. Furthermore, there can be no such thing in countries like Cuba, China, Vietnam and Nicaragua. This slogan can only be meaningful in a country in which the working-class has developed politically and economically to the point where it can genuinely become the new ruling-class. This was the formula of the Communist Manifesto. History played a mean trick on classical Marxists, however: the countries of Western Europe have been prospering for the past and the workers are not a powder-keg ready to blow up against oppressive bourgeois rule. These are issues that we are discussing over on the Spoons marxism-international list and it is a rich discussion. On the Guevara question. What follows is the conclusion to a longer piece on Cuba written in reply to followers of Tony Cliff who had the impudence to argue that Cuba was not socialist. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Che Guevara had some of the most interesting insights into the problems of socialist construction since the days of Lenin. He is better known as a guerrilla fighter, but his essays on planning and other economic matters deserve to be better known. The main importance of Guevara is that he provides an alternative to the false dichotomy set up between Stalinist "planning" and the implicitly capitalist logic of "market socialism". During our fierce debate over "market socialism" on the Marxism list, any number of Guevara's statements could have been brought to bear on the discussion. Guevara was a stickler for accounting and controls, as was Lenin. At a speech given to a ceremony to winners of socialist emulation awards in the Ministry of Industry in October of 1965, he described the importance of controls: "Rigorous controls are needed throughout the entire organizational process. These controls begin at the base, in the production unit. They require statistics that one can feel confident are exact, as well as good habits in using statistical data. It's necessary to know how to use statistics. These are not just cold figures--although that's what they are for the majority of administrators today, with the exception of output figures. On the contrary, these figures must contain within them an entire series of secrets that must be unveiled. Learning to interpret these secrets is the task of the day. Controls should also be applied to everything related to inventories in a unit or enterprise: the quantity on hand of raw materials, or, let's say, of spare parts or finished goods. All this should be accounted for precisely and kept up to date. This kind of accounting must never be allowed to slip. It is the sole guarantee that we can carry on work with minimal chance of interruption, depending on the distance our supplies have to travel. To conduct inventory on a scientific basis, we also have to keep track of the stock of basic means of production. For example, we must take inventory of all the machinery a factory possesses, so that this too can be managed centrally. This would give a clear idea of a machine's depreciation--that is, the period of time over which it will wear out, the moment at which it should be replaced. We will also find out if a piece of machinery is being underutilized and should be moved to some other place. We have to make an increasingly detailed analysis of costs, so that we will be able to take advantage of the last particle of human labor that is being wasted. Socialism is the rational allocation of human labor. You can't manage the economy if you can't analyze it, and you can't analyze it if there is no accurate data.. And there is no accurate data, without a statistical system with people accustomed to collecting data and transforming it into numbers." Guevara had confidence that socialism could be built if the proper resources and management were allocated to the task. He believed in technology and progress. Like Lenin, he admired many of the accounting and management breakthroughs found in the advanced capitalist countries. Lenin was preoccupied with these matters immediately after the birth of the new Soviet state and minced no words about the value of strict accounting controls. In the "Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" written in the spring of 1918, Lenin said: "The state, which for centuries has been an organ for oppression and robbery of the people, has left us with a legacy of the people's supreme hatred and suspicion of everything that is connected with the state. It is very difficult to overcome this, and only a Soviet government can do it. Even a Soviet government, however, will require plenty of time and enormous perseverance to accomplish it. This 'legacy' is especially apparent in the problem of accounting and control--the fundamental problem facing the socialist revolution on the morrow of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. A certain amount of time will inevitably pass before the people, who feel free for the first time now that the landowners and the bourgeoisie have been overthrown, will understand--not from books, but from their own, Soviet experience--will understand and feel that without comprehensive state accounting and control of the production and distribution of goods, the power of the working people, the freedom of the working people, cannot be maintained, and that a return to the yoke of capitalism is inevitable." Those with a superficial understanding of Soviet economic history might assume that the link between Lenin and Guevara is Stalin. The popular notion we have of Stalin surrounded by technocrats planning out every last detail of each five year plan to the last turbine in the last electrical generating plant is nothing but a myth. Stalin was opposed to planning, accounting and controls. Stalin chose arbitrary target-dates for big projects and demanded their completion on schedule. His main interest was getting the job done, no matter how slipshod the results. Every plan submitted to him was speeded up. The professionals who prepared the plans were appalled. Eventually Molotov got rid of these professionals and replaced them with yes-men. The unplanned character of the Soviet economy forced continuous compensations and administrative controls. If a construction crew would not work twelve hours a day to complete a road, then additional foremen and cops were necessary to control them. As more and more bottlenecks appeared, more and more "interventions" were required to keep the whole ungainly machine going. Thus a command economy built on a centralized pyramid model grew up in the 1930s. This had nothing to do with Lenin's original intent. When the Cuban revolution was in its infancy, economists in the Soviet bloc were grappling with the aftermath of Stalin's command economy. Their tendency was propose that markets be introduced in order to make these top-heavy economies more efficient. They thought that the market could make better investment decisions than a bureaucrat. In many cases, the market socialists took inspiration from the NEP of the early 1920s. Wlodzimiers Brus, a Polish economist, wrote the following: "The adoption of the New Economic Policy partially changed the situation among theoreticians. It became necessary to work out theoretically the function of the forms of market relations between city and countryside, along with the consequences stemming from the resurgence of the commodity-monetary economy in the socialist sector itself (economic accounting). Analysis of the market and of the conclusions for planning was to occupy an important place in both economic policy and theoretical discussions. The question of money was taken up. The first signs began to appear at the time of a change in opinion among Marxist economists on the relationship between the plan and the market. For some, the idea that the market and commodity-money forms were the opposite of planning began to be transformed into the conception of the market as a mechanism under the plan." Guevara resisted the temptation to adopt NEP-like mechanisms. He saw the consequences of market reforms in Eastern Europe in the mid- 1960s and understood their underlying capitalist logic. On a trip to Yugoslavia in 1959, he characterized the situation as one in which, "In broad strokes, with an element of caricature, you could describe Yugoslav society as managerial capitalism with socialist distribution of the profits." The model for Cuba would not be the NEP or current- day Yugoslavia or Poland, but the original vision Lenin had for the Soviet Union: planning within the context of a socialist and egalitarian society. Guevara laid out his main ideas on socialist construction in a so-called "budgetary finance system." According to Carlos Tablada, author of "Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism", Cuba would draw upon the following measures to make a planned economy work: --advanced accounting techniques that permitted a better system of controls and an efficient, centralized management; as well as studies and practical application of methods of centralization and decentralization by the monopoly corporations; --computer technology applied to the economy and management, and the application of mathematical methods to the economy; --techniques of programming production and production controls; --use of budgetary techniques as an instrument of financial planning and controls; --techniques of economic controls through administrative means; --the experience of the socialist countries. Che summed up the spirit of the system as follows: "We propose a centralized system of economic management based on rigorous supervision within the enterprises, and, at the same time, conscious supervision by their directors. We view the entire economy as one big enterprise. In the framework of building socialism, our aim is to establish collaboration between all the participants as members of one big enterprise, instead of treating each other like little wolves." If accounting and controls was all there was to Guevara's concept of socialism, we would be unimpressed. After all, isn't what the United States and other advanced capitalist countries going through today nothing but an exercise in bottom-line mentality. Wouldn't Guevara's seeming obsession with efficiency and control crush the human spirit? At the same time he was writing articles on the necessity to introduce technology into the Cuban economy, students at Berkeley University, many of whom were sympathetic to the Cuban revolution, were demanding not to be "mutilated, folded or spindled." The mid-1960s were a period when large-scale computing had begun to be felt everywhere, including the liberal arts universities. Key to understanding the relationship between the overall goal of efficiency and the importance of putting people first can be found in Guevara's approach to the Marxist category of value. It would be value that would mediate between society and the economy. Simply put, Guevara believed that the law of value operates as a "blind, spontaneous force" under capitalism. Socialism, on the other hand, would allow conscious action upon the law of value in accordance with an understanding of the greater needs of society. In his Manual of Political Economy, Guevara spells out the way the socialist state can make use of the law of value. "We consider the law of value to be partially operative because remnants of the commodity society still exist. This is also reflected in the type of exchange that takes place between the state as supplier and as the consumer. We believe that particularly in a society such as ours, with a highly developed foreign trade, the law of value on an international scale must be recognized as a fact governing commercial transactions, even within the socialist camp. We recognize the need for this trade to assume a higher form in countries of the new society, to prevent a widening of the differences between the developed and the more backward countries as a result of the exchange. In other words, it is necessary to develop terms of trade that permit the financing of industrial developments even if it contravenes the price systems prevailing in the capitalist world market. This would allow the entire socialist camp to progress more evenly, which would naturally have the effect of smoothing off the rough edges and of unifying the spirit of proletarian internationalism. We reject the possibility of consciously using the law of value in the absence of a free market that automatically expresses the contradiction between producers and consumers. We reject the existence of the commodity category in relations among state enterprises. We consider all such establishments to be part of the single large enterprise that is the state (although in practice this has not yet happened in our country). The law of value and the plan are two terms linked by a contradiction and its resolution. We can therefore state that centralized planning is the mode of existence of socialist society, its defining characteristic, and the point at which man's consciousness is finally able to synthesize and direct the economy toward its goal--the full liberation of the human being in the framework of communist society." The legacy of Che Guevara is found in his deeds and his words. The Cuban revolution is a continuing monument to the determination of the Cuban people to choose a socialist model. Study of the Cuban revolution will provide rich examples of not only how to organize to take power, but how to use it beneficially. I strongly urge others to study Che Guevara's writings and Marxist studies of the Cuban revolution, such as James O'Connor's. This is a revolution that needs our help. The more intelligent our understanding of Cuba is, the better prepared we are to defend it. Defense of these last bastion of socialism will also help us to sustain the cause of socialism elsewhere. With all of its flaws, Cuba remains an alternative to the misery and oppression of the semicolonial world.
