My Life

In Fidel Castro's autobiography, My Life with Ignacio Ramonet (2007, Penguin Group, Australia), several things caught my notice:

• Castro realises the importance of price signals in a mixed economy,
• Ethics as a primary economic driver instead of seeking riches, and
• Che's impatience with building a revolution.

Castro realises the importance of price signals in a mixed economy

On p. 601, Castro discusses the effects of subsidies in d encouraging wasteful use of resources. He gave an example of a home restaurant being subsidised to the tune of USD1,000 per month in electricity costs alone. Castro is then asked about these subsidies, is he going to do away with them:

No, but we've raised electricity rates for people who use the most. To discourage excess usage among those who waste it, whatever their current financial status. Abd also, little by little, we've got to let go of these subsidies, which may be acting as a brake [on the economy] today.

Which is why, from now on, only essential, vital things will be subsidized or free. We won't be charging for medical [or health] services, or educational services, or things like that. But we are going to have to charge rent. We'll see how much. There may be some subsidy, but what a person pays in rent over a number of years has to be close to the cost of the house or apartment. Everything is within our reach, everything belongs to the people; the only thing that's not permissable is wasting or squandering riches selfishly and irresponsibly. Zero waste.

We are also gradually creating the conditions that will make possible the disappearance of the coupon [i.e., rationing] book. We are gradually creating the conditions that will take that coupon book, which was essential under given conditions, and which now just gets in the way, and change it. Without commiting abuses, without starving anybody to death; just on the basis of the simplest principles: the coupon book has to disappear. On the other hand, some salaries and pensions, the lowest ones, have been raised. People who work and produce will be getting more, they'll be buying more goods and services; people who worked for decades [i.e., retirees] will be getting more and having more things. Many abuses will be ended. Little by little, the culture medium [as in a Petri dish] will be removed, the conditions that allowed many past inequalities will be done away with. Once nobody has to be susbidized, we'll have made considerable progress in our march towards a just and decent society.

Emphasis Mine

What is true in Capitalism is now being recognised as true in Socialism: efficient allocation of resources requires realistic prices to reflect the true cost of the resources being used. And rationing cannot be subsituted for consumer decision making.

Ethics as a primary economic driver instead of seeking riches

On p.599, Castro has been describing the corruption that has been thriving in Cuba:

...

So things like that are going on. And, generally speaking, we know about it, although a lot of people are thinking, 'The Revolution can't fix this; no, there's no way in the world anybody can fix this. There's just no fixing it.' Well they're wrong - the people themselves are going to fix it, the Revolution is going to fix it.

Emphasis Mine

This is usually given as a specious argument for the continuance of Capitalism: people have always been greedy, so why not go with the flow?

When Castro is asked how is going to be achieved? (pp.599-600), he says:

First of all, it's a question of ethics. I've thought a lot about the role of ethics. What is a revolutionary's ethics? All revolutionary thought begins with a little ethics. But it is also a question of life-or-death economics. This is one of the most wasteful, spendthrift countries in the world when it comes to fuel. Nobody here knows what petrol costs, nobody knows what electricity costs, nobody knows the market price of it. Why, even houses - we wind up giving peop;e houses for free. Can Cuba solve its housing problem by giving away houses? Some people used to buy them. They were the owners, they'd paid fifty pesos a mont, eighty pesos - which, if you sent it off to Miami, would be worth like three dollars! After years passed, they'd paid less than $500, and some then sold them for $15,000, $20,000... And who brought those houses? Was it the proletariat? The poor? Many poor people got their houses free and then sold them to one of the nouveaux riches. Is that Socialism?

Emphasis Mine

Here Castro confronts the basic economic question of price signals in a market that allows buying and selling. His response is that people should choose the ethical path over getting rich. However, the Capitalist's argument about people's nature would hold firm.

Che's impatience with building a revolution.

On p.297, Castro is asked:

Did Che tell you, explain to you what his plans were with regard to Bolivia and Argentia? Did he share that with you?

He was impatient. What he proposed to do was very difficult. So then, because of our own experience, I told Che that better conditions could be created. We suggested that he needed more time, not to get impatient. What we wanted was for other groups, less well known than he was, to take the initial steps, create better conditions for what he wanted to do. He knew what life as a guerilla was like; he knew you needed tremendous physical stamina, physical strength, you needed to be a certain age, and although he overcame all his own shortcomings and had a will of iron, he knew if he waited much longer he wouldn't be in the best condition.

...

Emphasis Mine

This is probably an implied criticism that Che put his ego before revolutionary ideals. Instead of doing the hard slog of getting other people to develop their revolutionary consciousness, Che wanted to accelerate it by his personal intervention.

Earlier on p.296, Castro said that he had pointed to Che that:

Look, there are factors of a subjective nature that change history. Sometimes objective conditions exist for revolutionary change but the subjective conditions aren't there. It was the factors of a subjective nature that prevented the revolution, at that time, from really spreading. ...

Emphasis Mine

This ego problem is manifest in the idea of a vanguard party in which the members come to consider themselves better than anyone else because they a better revolutionary consciousness.

Instead of realising that a revolutionary consists of the leading members of the workers, they consider the party members to be leading the workers. The practical difference is that the party seeks out leaders and learns from their experiences in order to develop their own leadership skills. The other way tends to rely on obliterating competing leaders within the workers' movement.