Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution
by Helen Yaffe
Palgrave Macmillan, £17.99
ERNESTO “CHE” GUEVARA became a legend in his own lifetime and an international icon after his execution. His dream was an ambitious one – to unite Latin America and the rest of the developing world through armed revolution in order to end poverty and injustice. It is well known he was a revolutionary fighter, a military strategist, a philosopher and a medical doctor. Che’s work as an economist is less well known other than the old tale about Fidel Castro asking at a meeting: “Is anybody here an economist?” Che raised his hand: “I am,” he said. “All right, Che,” said Fidel, “You’re president of the bank.” Afterwards Castro approached Che and said: “I never knew you were an economist.” “Economist!” said Che. “I thought you said a communist!”
With the passion of an activist and the erudition of an academic, Helen Yaffe’s new book examines Che’s contribution to Cuba’s economic development and socialist political economy. Yaffe underpins her study by explaining the complexity of the economic decisions that faced the revolutionaries in the years after their victory: Cuba’s incorporation into the socialist bloc’s trade relations, its continued dependence on sugar as the main export and the use of outdated technology sent from socialist countries. Previous writers simply viewed these as political preferences with little acknowledgement of the severe limits placed on Cuba’s development by the US blockade and the denial of credit from Western governments.
As well as an unprecedented excavation deep in the Cuban government archives Yaffe conducts some first class primary research involving interviews with 50 of Che’s former colleagues during his work as president of the National Bank of Cuba from (1959-1960), head of the Department of Industrialisation (1959-1961) and Minister of Industries (1961-1965) and illustrates how he was the driving force behind the structural changes which “transformed Cuba from its underdeveloped semi-colonial status to political and economic independence and integration into the socialist bloc”.
From these sources springs a lost history. Yaffe recounts it with witty precision: dealing with Sino-Soviet relations, adjusting to the US blockade, Che’s critique of the soviet economic management model, the development of consciousness as a dialectical process and continuing policy experimentation are all analysed. His work on international and domestic political economy needed telling and in providing this fresh and informative analysis Yaffe does admirably.
This book should be read by all those Western economists who have led us into a recession with failed policies of competition, de-regulation and privatisation. Moreover, with the richest one per cent of the world’s population owning 40 per cent of the total household wealth it should be read by everyone interested in social and economic justice.
Enrico Tortolano
