Che Guevara's Enduring Legacy

Abstract

Che Guevara's most enduring legacy in Cuba has been his indelible contribution to socialist political economy and economic management. Between 1959 and 1965, Guevara set up the budgetary finance system to prove that it was possible and necessary to develop consciousness and productivity simultaneously in the transition to socialism. The system was openly articulated as an alternative to the economic management system operating in the Soviet bloc. Thus, Guevara took up the challenge at the heart of the revolutionary process: achieving economic development with equity from a position of underdevelopment without relying on capitalist mechanisms that would undermine collective consciousness and new social relations. His approach to this problem remains relevant today in Cuba, where his ideas are associated with the vitality of Cuban socialism. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, contemporary developments, reforms, and debates are still best analyzed in terms of their proximity to Guevara's theory of socialist construction.