Great Debate (Cuba)
쿠바 대논쟁
A public debate over socialist economic policy in Cuba from 1962 to 1965. After the failure of the Four-Year Plan for rapid industrialization, Fidel Castro invited Marxist economists from around the world to debate Cuba's path to socialism. Che Guevara argued that moral incentives and a centralized budget-finance system could bypass the capitalist stage by perfecting 'subjective conditions'; Carlos Rafael Rodríguez of the Popular Socialist Party advocated a Soviet-style self-financing system with material incentives and gradual transition. Charles Bettelheim opposed Guevara's line in favor of decentralized market elements, while Ernest Mandel sided with Guevara. Castro adopted a compromise: moral incentives over material ones, but industrialization was abandoned for a focus on sugar, leading to the 1968 Revolutionary Offensive and the failed 1970 ten-million-ton zafra campaign.
Related people
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) overview of the Great Debate, its two main positions (Guevara vs. Rodríguez), and aftermath
- es.wikipedia.org Spanish Wikipedia article with details on the debate's origins, participants, and the Revolutionary Offensive
- cadtm.org Ernest Mandel's role in the debate and the positions of Guevara, Bettelheim, and Mora