Che Guevara

Eric Toussaint looks at the great public debate on the nature of the economy that occurred after the 1959 Cuban revolution, involving Ernesto Che Guevara, Alberto Mora, Ernest Mandel, and Charles Bettelheim.

Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski and Adrianna Nowak reconstruct the long Cuban struggle to preserve revolutionary autonomy within an unequal alliance with the Soviet Union.

Helen Yaffe - As Minister of Industries in Cuba between 1961 and 1965, Che Guevara addressed the challenge of increasing production and labour productivity in conditions of underdevelopment and in transition to socialism, without relying on capitalist mechanisms that undermine the formation of new consciousness and social relations integral to socialism. Under capitalism, Guevara noted, competition for private profit drives the application of science and technology to industrial development, revolutionising the productive forces. Socialist governments must find alternative methods.