Reflections of Fidel

Trade, within a society and among countries, is the exchange of goods and services produced by human beings. The owners of the means of production appropriate the profits. As a class, they are the leaders of the capitalist state and they boast of fostering development and social well-being through the market. This they worship as an infallible God.

In every country there is competition between the strongest and the weakest; those with more physical energy, those who are better fed, those who learned how to read and write, those who attended school, those who have more accumulated experience, more social relations and more resources, and those in society who do not have these advantages.

Among countries: those with a better climates and more arable land, more water and more natural resources in the area where they are located, when there are no more territories to conquer; those that master technology, have greater development and handle unlimited media resources, and those that, in contrast, do not enjoy any of these prerogatives. These are the sometimes enormous differences between countries described as rich or poor.

It is the law of the jungle.

There are no differences among ethnic groups in terms of human beings’ mental faculties. This has been thoroughly proven by science. Today’s society is not the natural evolution of human life, but a creation of mentally-developed humans; without that society, their life would be inconceivable. Therefore, what is at stake is whether or not human beings will be able to survive the privilege of possessing creative intelligence.

The developed capitalist system, epitomized by the country privileged by nature to which European whites brought their ideas, dreams and ambitions, is today in crisis. But, it is not the usual crisis that happens once every certain number of years, or even the traumatic crisis of the 1930s; rather, the worst of all since the world started to pursue this model of growth and development.

The current crisis of developed capitalism is taking place as the empire is about to change its leadership in the elections that take place in 25 days; it was the only thing that remained to be seen.

The candidates of the two main parties who will decide these elections are trying to persuade the bewildered voters — many of whom have never bothered to cast a vote — that as presidential candidates, they can guarantee the well-being and consumerism of what they describe as a middle-class people, without the least intention of making real changes to what they consider to be the most perfect economic system that the world has ever known. It is the same world, of course, in the minds of each and every one of them, which is less important than the happiness of some 300 million people who account for less than five percent of the world population. The fate of the remaining 95% of humanity, war and peace, air that may be the fit to breathe or not, will depend to a great extent on the decisions of the empire’s institutional leader, whether or not that constitutional office has any real power in a period of nuclear weapons and computer-controlled space shields, in circumstances where every second counts and ethical principles are increasingly less important. Still, the more or less disastrous role played by presidents of that country cannot be overlooked.

Racism is deeply rooted in the United States, and the minds of millions of white people cannot accept the idea of a black man, with his wife and children, occupying the White House, which is precisely what it’s called: White.

It’s a miracle that the Democratic candidate has not met the same fate as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others who dreamed of justice and equality in recent decades. Moreover, he tends to look at his adversary with serenity and to laugh at the dialectic predicaments of an opponent who gazes into space.

The Republican candidate, on the other hand, who cultivates his reputation as a belligerent man, was one of the worst students in his class at West Point. He has confessed that he knows nothing about Mathematics, and presumably far less about complicated economic sciences.

There is no doubt that his rival surpasses him in intelligence and serenity.

Something McCain has the most of is age, and his health is not at all secure

I mention this information to indicate the eventual possibility — if anything should happen in terms of the candidate’s health, given that he is elected — of the rifle lady, the inexperienced former governor of Alaska, becoming president of the United States. It is obvious that she knows nothing about anything.

Meditating on the current U.S. public debt that President Bush is laying on the shoulders of the new generations in that country — $10.3 trillion — it occurred to me to calculate the time it would take somebody to count the debt that he, Bush, has practically doubled in eight years.

Somebody working eight hours per day, without missing a second, at the rapid pace of 100 one-dollar bills per minute, in 300 days of work per year, would need 715,000 years to count that amount of money.

I could not find a more graphic way of describing the volume of that sum of money that is now mentioned almost every day.

In order to avert a general state of panic, the U.S. administration has declared that it will secure deposits that do not exceed $250,000. It will administrate banks and sums of money that Lenin, with his abacus, could never have imagined counting.

We might be wondering now about what contribution Bush’s administration might make to socialism. But let’s not entertain any illusions. Once banking operations go back to normal, the imperialists will return the banks to private enterprise, as some other countries in this hemisphere have already done. The people always foot the bill.

Capitalism tends to reproduce itself under any social system because it is based on egotism and on human instincts.

Human society has no other alternative but to overcome this contradiction; otherwise, it would not be able to survive.

At this time, the flood of money being poured into world finances by the central banks of developed capitalist countries is dealing a heavy blow to the stock exchanges of countries that are trying to overcome their economic underdevelopment by resorting to these institutions. Cuba has no stock exchange. Undoubtedly, we will find more rational and more socialist ways of financing our development.

The current crisis and the brutal measures of the U.S. administration to save itself will bring more inflation, more devaluation of national currencies, more painful losses in the markets, lower prices for exports and more unequal exchange. But they will also bring to the peoples a better understanding of the truth, more awareness, more rebelliousness and more revolutions.

We will see now how the crisis develops and what happens in the United States in 25 days.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 11, 2008