Perhaps nowhere else has the popular mentality been so taken with the idea of the market mechanism and automatic adjustment as in the United States. It is rather incrediblealthough admittedly something of a monument to the model itself—that in spite of two hundred years of Polanyi-type protective reactions to the market system—unions, cartels, counter-cyclical fiscal policy—Americans continue to be held in the grasp of this anachronistic ideology. The “typical American,” from migrant worker to President, may be aware of the fact that we do not live in a market economy, but he believes that something approaching perfect competition lurks unseen behind all activity as a guiding force and is therefore relevant, or that this is a system toward which we ought legitimately to be moving.

In their identification with Latin America, major foreign powers-including Japan—have always considered the Central American region-the zone of present-day Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica—of secondary or lesser significance. For more than three centuries Spain attached marginal importance to this area and during the last 150 years, the five states there have played minor, though occasionally dramatic, roles in U.S. relations with Latin America. For Japan, until quite recently, the region has rarely fostered more than the single interest of trade, and that with stuttering results.

Because of its potential as a canal route, Nicaragua first drew Japanese attention to the area, attention that entered the historical record in such roundabout fashion that it raised more questions than it supplied answers.

This paper discusses the Cuban stand in the socialist controversy on material versus moral incentives, placing emphasis on the role of economic, political, and ideological factors. The controversy is of fundamental importance for Marxist- Leninist theory, as well as for the implementation of such theory in socialist countries. Actually, the reference to “incentives” conveys the impression of a narrower scope than the controversy has been in reality. Internally, the type of incentives chosen affects crucial economic areas such as the method of planning, the allocation of resources, the distribution system, the use of money, the organization of the enterprise, and even the criteria for appointing managers. In the political sphere, the incentive decision affects political control, mass mobilization, people's participation in the decision-making process, and the degree of consensus.