Great Debate (Cuba)

Che Guevara stands at the far right, while meeting with his chief ideological opponent Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, who stands in the center, at the Havana airport, 1965. Fidel Castro and Aleida March stand to the left, and Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado stands center right.

The Great Debate was an era in Cuban history retroactively named by historians, that was defined by public debate about the future of Cuban economic policy that took place from 1962 to 1965. The debate began after Cuba fell into an economic crisis in 1962 after years of internal economic complications, United States sanctions, and the flight of professionals from Cuba. In 1962 Fidel Castro invited Marxist economists around the world to debate two main propositions. One proposition proposed by Che Guevara was that Cuba could bypass any capitalist then "socialist" transition period and immediately become an industrialized "communist" society if "subjective conditions" like public consciousness and vanguard action are perfected. The other proposition held by the Popular Socialist Party was that Cuba required a transitionary period as a mixed economy in which Cuba's sugar economy was maximized for profit before a "communist" society could be established. Eventually Fidel Castro would implement ideas of both and use the moral incentives proposed by Guevara but also focusing on developing the sugar economy rather than industrialization.[1][2][3]

The Great Debate would result in somewhat of a compromise in which Fidel Castro used moral incentives rather than material incentives to motivate workers, and industrialization would be ignored in favor of a focus on the sugar economy. These policies would eventually culminate in the Revolutionary Offensive where the economy would be oriented in producing 10 million tons of sugar by 1970. The campaign failed and led to a reorientation of domestic Cuban politics.[4]

  1. ^ Kapcia, Antoni (2022). Historical Dictionary of Cuba. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. pp. 261–262. ISBN 9781442264557.
  2. ^ Cuba's Forgotten Decade How the 1970s Shaped the Revolution. Lexington Books. 2018. p. 10. ISBN 9781498568746.
  3. ^ Underlid, Even (2021). Cuba Was Different Views of the Cuban Communist Party on the Collapse of Soviet and Eastern European Socialism. Brill. p. 229. ISBN 9789004442900.
  4. ^ The Cuba Reader History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press. 2019. ISBN 9781478004561.