Great Debate

At first, Che was not assigned a role in the revolutionary state, but was eventually assigned to oversee the departments in charge of Industrialization and Agrarian Reform. In Che’s early Cuba, he nationalized various economic sectors, thus abandoning capitalism, and much to the US and it’s imperialistic businesses distain, embraced socialist economics. Instead of being a horrid transition, it would actually become a helpful boost to Cuba’s economy. The size, variety, and stability of Cuba’s economy has been attributed to Che’s work. Despite his antagonism toward the US and it’s imperialist policies, he was blinded by his ideology when it came to effective aspects of the previous economy. He would borrow elements of many business administrative designs in the form of what would be called the BFS. Che was fine with appropriating effective outputs of the previous capitalist system, which would put his views increasingly in contrast with the USSR’s more ideologically derived antipathy with many things associated with certain capitalist economic outputs, even things like accounting technologies. (“Guevara and the Great Debate” 16).

In the period before the economic restrictions by the United States government were initiated, Cuba’s economy was quickly advancing including in technological production as a result of Che’s more flexible ideological leanings. This would change the first year of the 1960s when the United States economic restrictions would require the island to develop closer ties with the Soviets who were eager to share their lesser quality materials and methods to the newly Marxist-Leninist nation. Che would not make their alliance a completely pleasant one, as the two countries had quite different interpretations of Marxist ideology. The soviet’s system was increasingly, and somewhat contradictory, embracing capitalist methodologies in order to boost their economy for what was thought would be a communist period. Unfortunately for their hopes, it would eventually lead back to capitalism later on. Che would eventually come to the opinion that what was called “market socialism” took only the worst of both systems and was not an ideological turn he was willing to support. For Che, his trust laid more on the writings and ideas of the original Marxists, than those of later revolutionary theorists such as Lenin. His writings became increasing hostile to the Soviet’s system and led to what historians have term the Great Debate (“Guevara and the Great Debate” 14-18).