Wednesday, March 07, 2007 issue
Two summers ago, I got to spend a week in Cuba. Most of the island was
off-limits (including Club G'itmo), but I did get fairly familiar with
Havana -- it looked like at one time it was quite a bustling, attractive
city. Today it's stricken with poverty. Beautiful buildings are coated
in grime, and most of them have been converted into slum housing.
Beggars line the streets asking for handouts from European tourists. The
detrimental effects of Communism are on display in a thousand different
ways.
For instance, it's impossible to get good service at a reasonable price
while eating in Havana. The waiters and waitresses do not care whether
or not you're satisfied with the job they're doing, and they put forth
nothing more than the bare minimum of effort.
Even more than that, what struck me about the city was the attitude of
the people. There's a despair that hangs like a cloud of cigar smoke in
the air around Havana. As I interacted with the natives, I began to get
really depressed. In America we find it easy to argue about the economic
ideology of Communism because we don't often see the effect that it has
on everyday people who live under Communist regimes.
But I got to see up close the hopelessness and despair; I recoiled at
what it must be like to grow up in such a stifling environment; and I
concluded that it's silly to try to argue about the merits of such a
flawed system.
My experience led to a confirmation of some thoughts that I'd been
having for some time. My whole life, I've been told that money won't
make me happy. I've been told that the love of money is the root of all
evil, and that if I chase after money, then I'll miss a lot of the good
things that life has to offer.
Yet there I was in Cuba, seeing the end result of a society that had
chosen to eliminate the profit motive in favor of the collective
ownership of the masses; all I could see was sad, poor people who didn't
seem motivated to do anything at all. I thought to myself, "This is what
comes of not letting people earn their own money? Is this the society
that Karl Marx envisioned?"
I realized that not only is Communism economically unsound, it's
fundamentally immoral. To earn one's own living is not only a basic
human right -- I'm convinced that it represents one of our highest
callings as human beings. What I saw in Cuba were people that had been
robbed of that calling, and it was as if they had lost an essential part
of their humanity.
But capitalism respects that part of our humanity, that tiny spark of
creativity that drives people to pick themselves up out of the gutter to
achieve great things with their own profit as their only motivation. And
that's the great thing about America. It doesn't matter how we begin our
lives, because capitalism affords us the chance to live for ourselves
and no one else. We have the right (and the responsibility) to become
whatever it is we want to be, unlike the Cubans, who must work, not for
their own gain, but for whatever their government decides is fair
compensation. That's what gives the people in Havana their despair.
So I hope you see why I don't buy into the idea that the love of money
is the root of all evil. The quest for money through productive
achievement is the hallmark of a free society, and when a country (like
Cuba) denies the rights of its citizens to earn a living, then all
they've done is assure themselves of economic disintegration. Nothing
was more evident during my trip to Cuba.
I'll never forget what I saw, and I hope I never forget the lessons I
learned (For instance: Cuban cigars are very strong. I only smoked one
because it took me an hour and a half to do it; I was buzzed for the
rest of the day; and I hacked up black stuff for the rest of the trip).
Tim Weatherall is a junior in mathematics. He can be reached at
weather@utk.edu.
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