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Ernesto
Guevara (1928-1967) was one of the most remarkable
historical figures of the twentieth century. He is
a cultural icon (just think of Madonna exploiting
his image in her latest album), and while many have
T-shirts and posters with his effigy, few actually
know what he stood for. His writings, his dedication
and commitment, his self sacrifice continues to inspire
all the oppressed fighting imperialism.
Originally
from Argentina, he joined Fidel Castro’s guerrilla
forces in the 1956-1959 struggle against the right-wing
US backed Batista dictatorship in Cuba. It is in that
context that he became an outstanding guerrilla strategist.
His ideas were later systematised by his French companion
Regis Debray in a famous book: “Revolution within
the Revolution”. Che Guevara bases his book on
Guerrilla Warfare: A Method (1963) on a number of
key arguments. The first is that popular forces can
win a war against an army with guerrilla tactics.
What has been done in Cuba can be done elsewhere,
whatever the odds. The Cuban model is not an exceptional
case, it can be universalised. Guerrilla will give
political leverage. “To have a guerrilla force
gives prestige. It makes it possible to raise one’s
voice and to impose oneself on the stage of power.”
(Regis Debray, 78) The second argument is far more
controversial. One does not have to wait for the right
conditions to be present before starting the revolution,
the insurrectionary nucleus (foco) can contribute
to making them appear. Guerrilla has thus a decisive
political role, it is a “focal point”, it
functions as a catalysing agent. “It is the
‘small motor’ that sets the ‘big motor’
of the masses in motion” (Debray, 83). It
will act as a stimulus to existing struggles and will
intensify the political crisis. Waiting for the “right
time” and the “right conditions” is
an opportunist excuse to delay the actual start of
the fighting until an ideal moment which never comes.
“If that had been our way of thinking, we
would never have initiated a revolutionary process.
It was enough for the ideas to take root in a sufficient
number of men for revolutionary action to be initiated
and through this action, the masses started to acquire
these ideas, the masses acquired that consciousness.”
(Castro, 222) Revolution do not happen, they are made.
This is why “the duty of a revolutionary is
to make revolution”. Minimal resources, little
initial popular support are no reason for not starting
the fight. The role of the vanguard is to contribute
creating the conditions needed for the seizure of
power “and not to await a revolutionary wave
that will appear from the masses.” (Che,
“Marxist Leninist Party”) As Castro said
in 1967: “Whoever stops to wait for ideas
to triumph among the majority of the masses before
initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary.”
(Castro, 222) What distinguishes the “true revolutionary”
from the “false revolutionary” is precisely
this: “One acts to move the masses, the other
waits for the masses to have a conscience already
before starting to act.” (ibid) One does
not have to first wait until people become revolutionary
or have the perfect political platform and then start
the fight, rather starting the fight first is the
best way to learn to become a revolutionary. Guevara’s
third argument is that in the underdeveloped countries
of Latin America, rural areas are the best battle
fields for armed struggle. Why? Because the bulk of
the population lives in rural areas. The country side,
rather than the city is the terrain most suitable
to people’s war. It is the “weakest point”,
as rural areas are far more difficult to control by
the central government, and the guerrillas can easily
hide and move around. Fourth, the peasantry rather
than the industrial working class constitutes the
base of the guerrilla. It has the highest potential
force for revolution. Che’s final argument is
that the guerrilla group does not need to be subordinated
to a political party. The revolutionary struggle should
be directed by those actually doing the fighting rather
than a central party organisation based in the cities.
The armed struggle of the guerrilla against imperialism
is capable of creating by itself, on the long run,
a vanguard capable of leading the people to socialism.
The guerrilla plays the role of the vanguard, it is
the nucleus of the revolutionary movement. It is necessary
for the guerrilla to take over the political functions
of the party. “A guerrilla force cannot develop
on the military level if it does not become a political
vanguard.” (Debray, 107) Those were the essential
ideas of Che Guevara on the revolutionary struggle.
Practice
has proved that most of these ideas were false. First,
the question of Cuban exceptionalism. Castro/Guevara/Debray
were wrong to believe that what had worked in Cuba
could also work elsewhere. The guerrillas were able
to succeed in Cuba due to very specific conditions
that do not necessarily exist elsewhere (in Ireland
for example). Exporting the Cuban model from Bolivia
to the Congo proved a real failure. Secondly, if Castro/Guevara/Debray
had a point that one did not have to wait for the
right time and the right conditions to start the fighting,
they fatally underestimated the risk of the guerrilla
foco ending in isolation with no support from the
mass of the population, ultimately leading to the
defeat of the guerrillas. This is what Guevara realised
too late; a few weeks before dying he wrote in his
diary: “We failed to recruit one single peasant.”
Thirdly, Castro/Guevara/Debray overestimated the importance
of the country side. Guevara was also wrong in thinking
that urban warfare was a mere by-product of rural
guerrilla activity. It doesn’t make sense at
all to concentrate on rural guerrilla in countries
like Argentina, where the majority of the population
lives in urban areas. Finally, the opposition between
party and army has proved to be a false debate. Their
roles can be complementary, not opposed.
Once
Fidel Castro was in power in 1959, Che served as President
of the National Bank and as Minister for Industry.
Between 1963 and 1965, Cuban Communists had a major
debate regarding the problems faced by the Cuban economy.
As Minister of Industry, Che made an important theoretical
and political contribution. Che Guevara exposed his
economic ideas in his essay “Socialism and Man
in Cuba”. Traditionally, Communists believed
that they had to set up a socialist economy first,
and once that was successful, a true socialist mentality
would develop in the workers. So the priority is industrial
development, productivity, and material incentives
can be used to reach that aim. Che disagreed. The
idea of rewarding individuals with material incentives
to boost production serving collective ends is a contradiction.
This will give rise to pro-capitalist tendencies and
ambitions. He argued that it was impossible to build
a socialist society with capitalist methods. “Pursuing
the wild idea of trying to realise socialism with
the aid of the worn out weapons left by capitalism
(the commodity as the basic economic cell, profit
making, individual material incentives, and so forth),
one can arrive at a dead end…To construct communism
simultaneously with the material base of our society,
we must create a new man.” (Socialism and
Man in Cuba) Productive forces should be developed
by socialist methods. The emphasis should be on the
development of a revolutionary consciousness rather
than material incentives or economic efficiency. He
believed that “in a relatively short time,
the development of conscience does more for the development
of production than material incentive.” (Budgetary
System) As Castro said in 1968 the slogan is: “Creating
wealth with political awareness, not creating political
awareness with money or wealth.” (Castro,
406) To achieve this, economic planing must do away
with the law of value (profitability) and people have
to work for moral incentives rather than material
ones (promotion of voluntary work etc). Guevara’s
point is that if everybody works just to make more
money rather than for the well being of society, and
if economic decisions are based on profitability rather
than social utility then there is no real qualitative
difference with how people behave within a capitalist
society. For Che, “There are no other alternatives:
either a socialist revolution or a make believe revolution.”
Socialism is more about the creation of a “new
individual” than the growth of the productive
forces. Whatever the utopianism and the ascetism of
his proposals, Guevara’s great contribution is
that economic production cannot be separated from
the production and reproduction of communist social
relations and consciousness. The economic base
of socialism will only be successful if developed
in parallel with conscious political and ideological
struggle against individualism, etc. It is thus not
hard to understand why Cuba generated such enthusiasm
during the 1960s. Here was a society that was trying
to do away with economic profitability and material
incentives, and was engaged in creating a “new
man”. However, the difficulties faced by the
Cuban economy prompted a limited reintroduction of
both law of value and material incentives.
Guevara
resigned of his official positions in 1965 and went
to create new guerrilla fronts against imperialism.
A foreign policy of armed revolution goes hand in
hand with a domestic policy of development through
moral incentives. In 1965, Che declared in Algiers:
“There are no frontiers in this struggle to
death. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of
what occurs in any part of the world. A victory for
any country against imperialism is our victory, just
as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all.
The practice of proletarian internationalism is not
only a duty for the people who struggle for a better
future, it is also an inescapable necessity.”
In October 1966, he opened a new guerrilla front in
Bolivia. He died trying to create “two, three,
many Vietnam” (1967). His internationalism was
remarkable. He concluded: “Wherever death
may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that
this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive
ear, and another hand may be extended to wield our
weapons, and other men be ready to intone the funeral
dirge with the staccato chant of the machine gun and
new battle cries of war and victory.”
Castro Speaks,
edited by M.Kenner and J.Petras, Penguin Books,
1970
Sheldon B Liss, Fidel! Castro’s Political
and Social Thought (Boulder: Westview Press),
1994
Rock Against The Blockade, The Streets Are Ours:
Revolutionary Cuba, Larkin Publications, 2001
Regis Debray, La Revolution dans la Revolution
et autres essais (Paris: Maspero, 1968)
Ernesto Che Guevara, Le Socialisme et l’Homme
et autres ecrits (Paris: Maspero, 1968)
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