Friday, January 2, 2009

Fidel Castro on globalization, circa 1985

In today's world, in the economic arena, noone is absolutely independent, not even the United States, nor Japan, nor Western Europe. They depend on oil, raw materials, and from many other countries they need markets, they need trade. No country is totally independent economically.

Fidel Castro
February 11, 1985 interviewed by Robert MacNeil for MacNeil Lehrer News Hour on PBS.

One hopes that economic protectionists today listen, at least, to Fidel.

2 comments:

  1. It should be pointed out that even the most “subdued” societies such as the Castro’s communist - Cuba, needed to be connected to the outside world. Without the support of “Mother Russia” and its natural resources Cuba may have had a different history. When Cuba turned its back on Democracy and the U.S. it turned to Communism and Russia.

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  2. I think my favorite part of the interview was when Presidente Castro brought up the situation in which the Cuban society became even "more egalitarian", to the point of providing for people based on their need instead of basing it on "the amount and quality of their work".

    He goes on to mention that they rectified things once they realized this had a negative effect. HAHAHA! This is when they realized that their society didn't yet have the necessary "Communist culture". I thought this was the whole point of collectivism, to provide to all equally. It seems to me that basing the support given on quality of work is a capitalist idea.

    What I don't understand is if el Presidente wants an egalitarian society, then how does he account for the fact that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT? He just said so himself...

    Thanks for the link though. I very much enjoyed listening to the interview. I can't say that he's much different than George Bush.

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