Monday 13 October 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
The Law of the Jungle
Havana (Prensa Latina)
The leader of the Cuban
Revolution Fidel Castro
warned the developed
capitalist system,
epitomized by the
country with a
privileged nature where
the European white man
brought his ideas,
dreams and ambitions, is
today in a crisis.
"It is not the usual
crisis happening once in
a number of years; 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,"
Fidel Castro stressed in
an article for the
Cubadebate website.
The current crisis and
the brutal measures of
the US administration to
save itself, he warned,
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
conscience, more
rebelliousness and more
revolutions.
Prensa Latina is posting
below the full text of
Fidel Castro´s
reflections.
THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE
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 and
they boast of fostering
development and social
wellbeing through
market. This they
worship as an infallible
God.
In every country there
is competition between
the strongest and the
weakest; the ones with
more physical energy and
better fed, those who
learned how to read and
write, who attended
school and have more
experience accumulated;
the ones with more
extensive social
relations and more
resources, and those
within society who fail
to have these
advantages.
Now, as far as the
countries is 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 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 no differences
between ethnic groups,
however, 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 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.
The developed capitalist
system, epitomized by
the country with a
privileged nature where
the European white man
brought his ideas,
dreams and ambitions, is
today in a crisis. But,
it is not the usual
crisis happening once in
a number of years; 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; it
was all that was left to
see.
The candidate of the two
main parties that will
say the last word in
these elections are
trying to persuade the
bewildered voters --many
of whom have never cared
to cast a vote— that as
candidates to the
presidency they can
secure the wellbeing and
consumerism of what they
describe as a people of
middle class 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
respective minds, is
less important than the
happiness of over three
hundred million people
who account for less
than five percent of the
world population. The
fate of the remaining
ninety-five percent of
human beings, peace and
war, the fit or
unfit-for-breathing air,
will highly depend on
the decisions of the
administrative leader of
the empire, whether or
not that constitutional
position has any power
at a time of nuclear
weapons and space
shields moved by
computers in
circumstances where
every second counts and
when ethical principles
keep loosing their
value. Still, the more
or less nefarious role
of the President of that
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 looking at his
adversary with serenity
and of smiling at the
dialectic predicament of
an opponent gazing into
space.
The Republican
candidate, on the other
hand, who likes to
enhance his reputation
as a belligerent 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
less of the complicated
economic science.
The truth is his
adversary surpasses him
in cleverness and
composure.
Something McCain has
aplenty is age, and his
health condition is not
safe.
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
lady of the riffle, the
inexperienced former
governor of Alaska could
become President of the
United States. It can be
noticed 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 he
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
thousand dollars. It
will be managing banks
and such funds as Lenin
would never have thought
of counting with an
abacus.
We might be wondering
about the contribution
of Bush’s 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
business as some other
countries in this
hemisphere have already
done. The peoples 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
countries which resort
to these institutions in
an effort to beat their
economic
underdevelopment. Cuba
has no Stock Exchange.
We shall certainly find
more rational and more
socialist ways of
financing 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
conscience, more
rebelliousness and more
revolutions.
We shall see how the
crisis develops and what
happens in the United
States in twenty-five
days.
Fidel Castro Ruz |
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