HI Mike, > Thanks for all the back-handed compliments. ;D And > special thanks to Jurriaan for putting in excellent, > skilled labour time in answering some of the questions > which I've posed, most lately, the one about Fidel's > comment on unequal exchange.
Well of course we can talk about Marx's theory of economic exchange, which is also important, but the political question for me is whether or not comrade Castro's comment is in fact conducive to promoting better trade relations between his country and the European Union, if that's the aim. Because raising the standard of life in Cuba obviously depends a lot on this. he may be quite correct about the 400 million dollar profit, depending on how you evaluate gross and net income, but now what ? Often, the way commercial people would see it, is that they would say "well, sugar prices are just very low, they are by nature volatile, what can we do about it, there's nothing much we can do about it, all you can do is diversify production" But I have to think of Adam Smith's famous quote here, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary." Refer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4096789,00.html An investor can of course decide to buy sugar here or there, and the decision to buy it from Cuba rather than somewhere else maybe doesn't depend totally on acquisition prices, but also on other (political) considerations. The trade boycott against Cuba is to a large extent motivated, I believe, by a prejudice of Western Governments. They scream about "human rights" and democracy, but in reality Cuba is - quantitatively and qualitatively speaking - doing rather better than a heck of a lot of countries I could mention, with which the same Western governments DO engage in trade. So caricatures of Castro and false analogies such that "Castro is like Saddam Hussein" obscure what's really going on, it's just demonology. In foreign policy, the hysteria about the Cuban government turns the reality on its head: it is the whole terrible history of subversion of Cuban national sovereignity and trade boycotts/sabotage which engenders political paranoia, and which compels the Cuban government to take a strict, defensive attitude. But the real basis for political democracy in Cuba is a viable, growing economy and a stable convertible currency, so people have jobs and can plan a future. Without that, you can have any kind of political regime you like, but they would end up, sooner or later, doing much the same thing as Castro, or, (more likely) they would create a real mess (supposing that there was a regime change in Cuba, then under the contemporary conditions, all you would probably get is a kind of casino and tourist playground for rich Americans, while the ordinary Cuban craps out, has no job, and wants to emigrate. Because even if you had regime change, that still wouldn't raise world market prices for Cuban exports. All that would happen would be that, instead of the sugar production being controlled by the government, it would be controlled by Dean Foods, Kraft Foods, Unilever, CSR or Nestle or whatever, who would rationalise production and put more people out of work. Castro isn't talking about national sovereignity for a joke, he is talking about the future of his people, in a world where "globalisation" in reality means just that the travel industry captures 10 percent of the world Gross Product, whereas the majority of the world aren't even in a position to buy travel, at least not international travel. The principal commodity exports of Cuba are sugar, nickel, tobacco, fish, medical supplies, citrus fruit, and coffee; the main trading partners of Cuba in recent years are the Netherlands, Russia, Canada, Spain, and China. The Netherlands is one of the largest, if not the largest, importers of Cuban products. But there are around a hundred countries which produce sugar, and Cuba, although about the fifth largest exporter, is only about the tenth largest producer, Cuba's sugar production is completely dwarfed by Brazil for example. Except for fish and medical supplies, the other export commodity prices remain pretty low. Karl Marx's analysis shows that, historically speaking, the world development of capitalism created a world division of labour and production, which is to the advantage of the industrialised, richer countries, who traditionally not only can outcompete the rest of the world with higher productivity (what Marx called the "artillery of cheaper mass-produced commodities") but also effectively or explicitly block parts of international trade by poorer countries, and invest only there where it suits them. This is not necessarily because Western businessmen are bad or prejudiced people, or that it is a conspiracy, but because international competition and rivalry does not permit any other pattern of investment. But in reality "free trade" does not appear to be so free, and it is motivated by all sorts of considerations which have nothing to do with trade in itself. But the real challenge is, given that this is so, what would you actually do to change it ? When I was at university, you still had something like "development theory" but these days that tends to mean more "where do I get my sex and my money from". If you accept the neoliberal idea of "let the market pick the winners", then no theory is necessary anymore - or so it seems (in reality of course "the market" is an abstraction - people have to do something to make accounts balance). In countries such as Malaysia and Cuba, the government takes the position, that it must take a very active role in influencing economic development, because if they do not do it, there will be more unemployment and poverty in their country. From this point of view, it doesn't really matter whether they are communists, muslims, christians or whatever, they have to contend with the same objective reality. In New Zealand, they took the opposite view, they just let anatomy rule, but they end up with more and more debts, and more and more social inequality and poverty. I was among the first people to condemn that strategy publicly in 1984-85, and warn people about it, but of course in politics, it's not a question of being correct or proven correct, but having the correct position at the correct time. It's easy to be too forwardlooking or too backwardlooking in that sense. So, to cut a long story short, the answer to your question is really that anatomy does rule in parts of the world, but in other parts of the world the mighty greenback rules. And that is an obstacle for the "love thy neighbour" principle that Jesus Christ recommended in the fight against the pharisees. Jesus had a certain amount of balls, because he threw the money-changers out of the temple. Even so, he ended up being crucified, which suggests that his aggressive campaign against Jewish huckstering, and his ambivalent attitude towards Roman imperialism ("render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's" - this is more diplomatic than anything else, reflecting the balance of political forces) was not without its problems and pitfalls. To understand the real nature of the human problem, refer to this popsong lyric: The best things in life are free But you can give them to the birds and bees Now give me money That's what I want That's what I want, yeah That's what I want Your love gimme such a thrill But you're lovin' don't pay my bills Now give me money That's what I want That's what I want, yeah That's what I want The brilliant German Marxist thinker Elmar Alvater captures the Zeitgeist very well: "If neither the procedural rationality of the market nor the programme and practice of planning have been able to solve socialization deficits and the drift into anomie, and if the material side of industrial (and postindustrial) progress fails to appear in the shape of individual and social wellbeing, then fundamentalist answers naturally suggest themselves in the first instance. These are to be found everywhere in the world today, even if 'the causes, forms and consequences of the fundamentalist flight from modernity always differ... according to the time, place and prehistory of the triggering contradiction.' (...) Fundamentalism is mounting an attack on the Western rationality which has variously manifested itself in the Western world of the market and the socialist camp of economic planning. The evident limits of that attack cannot be countered merely by reliance upon a market rationality liberated from 'command structures'... Market economy arose, as we argued at the outset, through the 'disembedding' of economic rationality from existing social bonds. Today we witness the overburdening of the earth's ecosystem and the sharpening of social problems in the southern and eastern parts of the planet - not to mention the unsettled social accounts in the 'rich' capitalist countries. Nowadays the further evolution of society is possible only if the economic rationality of market procedures is firmly embedded in a complex system of social, non-market regulation of money and nature." (Elmar Alvater, The Future of the Market; an essay on the regulation of money and nature after the collapse of actually existing socialism, transl. Patrick Camiller, p. 244-260). Jurriaan
