Trade, within a society and between 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. They boast of fostering development and social well-being through the market. This market they worship like an infallible God. In every country there is competition between the strongest and the weakest; on the one hand, those with more physical energy and better-fed, those who learned how to read and write, who attended school and have more accumulated experience; the ones with more extensive social relations and more resources, and, on the other hand, those in society who lack these advantages.
Now, as far as the countries are concerned, there are differences between those with a better climate 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; the ones mastering technology, having greater development and handling unlimited media resources and, on the other hand, those who, on the contrary, do not enjoy any of these prerogatives. These are the sometimes-enormous differences between the rich and the poor nations.
It’s the law of the jungle. There are, however, no differences between ethnic groups, when it comes to the mental faculties of the human being. This has been thoroughly proven by science. The present society is not the natural way in which human life evolved, but rather it is a creation of the mentally developed man, without which his life would be inconceivable. Therefore, what is at stake is whether the human being will be able to survive the privilege of having a creative mind. For, the developed capitalist system, epitomized by a certain privileged country where the European white man brought his creative ideas, dreams, and ambitions, is today in a crisis.
But, it is not the usual crisis happening once every few years. It’s not even the traumatic crisis of the 1930s, but the worst of all crises since the world started to pursue this growth and development model. The current crisis of the developed capitalist system is taking place when the Empire is about to change leadership in the elections to be held in twenty-five days. That was the only remaining question. The candidates of the two main parties that will have the last word in these elections are trying to persuade the bewildered voters — many of whom have never bothered to cast a vote — that, as candidates to the presidency, they can secure the well-being and consumerism of what they describe as middle-class people only, even though they are not planning to introduce any real changes to what they consider the most perfect economic system the world has ever known. The same world that, in their minds, is less important than the happiness of over three hundred million US people who account for less than five percent of the world population. The fate of the remaining ninety-five percent of humanity – peace or war, air fit or unfit for breathing, will mainly depend on the decisions of the chief executive of the Empire, whether or not that constitutional position has any real power in an era of nuclear weapons and computer-activated “missile defense” systems in circumstances where every second counts and when ethical principles don’t count.
Still, the more or less nefarious role of the President of that certain country cannot be overlooked. Racism is deeply-rooted in the United States where the mind of millions of people can hardly reconcile with the notion that a Black man, with his wife and children could live in the White House, which is precisely called White. It’s a miracle that the Democratic candidate has not met the same destiny as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others who only a few decades ago dreamed of justice and equality. He is in the habit of calmly making eye-contact with his adversary and of smiling at the contradictory predicament of his opponent who stares off into space. The Republican candidate, on the other hand, who likes to bolster his reputation as a bellicose man, was one of the worst students in his class at West Point. He has confessed that he did not know any mathematics. It can thus be assumed that he knew even less of the complications of economics. The truth is his adversary surpasses him in cleverness and composure. Something McCain has aplenty is age, and his health condition is not secure. I am bringing up these data to indicate that eventually – if anything went wrong with the candidate’s health, in case he is elected – the rifle lady, the inexperienced governor of Alaska – could become President of the United States. It can be observed that she does not know a thing.
Meditating on the current US public debt – $10,266 trillions – that President Bush is laying on the shoulders of the new generations in that country, I took to calculating how long it would take a man to count the debt that Bush has doubled in eight years. A man working eight hours a day, without missing a second, and counting one hundred one-dollar bills per minute, during 300 days in the year, would need 710 billion years to count that amount of money. I could not find a more graphic way to describe the volume of money that is practically mentioned every day now. In order to avoid a general state of panic, the US administration has declared that it will secure deposits that do not exceed $250,000 dollars. It will be managing banks and such sums of money as Lenin, with an abacus, could never have thought of counting. We could well ask ourselves about the contribution of the Bush administration to socialism.
But, let’s not entertain any illusions. Once the banking operations go back to normal, the imperialists will return the banks to the private sector, 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 selfishness and on man’s instincts. The only choice left to human society is to overcome this contradiction; otherwise it would not be able to survive. At this time, the ocean of money being poured into the world finances by the central banks of the developed capitalist countries is dealing a hard blow to the stock exchanges of the poor countries, which resort to these institutions in an effort to overcome their economic underdevelopment.
Cuba has no stock exchange. We shall certainly find more rational and more socialist ways to finance our development. The current crisis and the brutal measures of the US administration to save itself will bring more inflation, more devaluation of the national currencies, more painful losses in the markets, lower prices for basic export commodities and more unequal exchange. But, they will also bring to the peoples a better understanding of the truth, a greater consciousness, more rebellion, and more revolutions.
We shall see how the crisis develops and what happens in the United States in twenty-five days.
