The name of Che Guevara was recently in the news again as an ex-officer of the Bolivian military claimed to know where the dead guerrilla's grave is. Guevara was a heroic revolutionary icon throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A famous poster of him wearing a jaunty beret adorned many radical walls and protest tee-shirts. The popular perception of Guevara is as the idealist or utopian dreamer of the Cuban revolution compared with the more tough-minded and pragmatic figure of Castro. But behind the mythology, who was the man, what did he stand for and what is the socialist view of his life and work?
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928. Graduating with a degree in medicine from Buenos Aires in 1953 he commenced an extensive tour of Latin America, ending up in Guatemala in 1954. He was there when the leftist, reform-minded Arbenz regime was overthrown in a CIA-organised coup. At this period of the cold war the agrarian programme of Arbenz, which threatened extensive American land-holdings, was viewed as a prelude to "communism” by the suspicious Eisenhower administration. Forced to leave Guatemala from the vindictive new authorities. Guevara moved to Mexico City and continued mixing in radical political circles. Anti-American sentiment was commonplace amongst Argentinean intellectuals at the time and the Guatemala episode must have accentuated it with Guevara. He considered himself a revolutionary Marxist but more accurately could be described as being in the Leninist tradition. While in Mexico he met the exiled Fidel Castro who was organising a rebellion against the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. Che quickly agreed to join Castro’s “army of liberation" known as the July 26th Movement.
Cuban Revolution
The rebellion began in 1956 and was based amongst the peasants in the Sierra Maestra. Guevara’s reputation as a heroic fighter dates from this era of mountain struggle where he was a leading military commander in Castro's forces. The historical context to the conflict was that Cuba did not achieve independence from Spain until 1902 and from then until the eventual success of the rebellion in 1959, it was in effect a US protectorate. American business interests dominated the economy and the US government retained the legal right to intervene in Cuban affairs. This was a major irritant to patriotically-minded Cubans and it meant that amongst left-wing nationalists, capitalism was always erroneously identified as being synonymous with American imperialism. The Cuban Communist Party—with the Soviet Union—regarded the 26th July Movement as radical populists fighting against political dictatorship and excessive American interference, being in favour of vague goals to promote social justice. Castro's regime eventually aligned itself with the Soviet Union more as a reaction to Washington’s paranoia rather than out of intrinsic ideological commitment.
Upon the overthrow of Batista, Guevara became Director of the National Bank and than a de facto Minister for Industry. He was prominent in the nationalisation of the foreign controlled sugar production, oil refining, banking and mining industries. He combined these roles with a roving ambassadorship to developing countries seeking to gain international support for Cuba and investigating opportunities to propagate the Cuban revolution. Gradually however his influence waned in Havana and by 1965 he had become almost irrelevant. He criticised the Soviet Union’s treatment of its allies in the developing world saying that in extracting hard-headed trade concessions, they were acting little better than “capitalist” countries. This outspokenness embarrassed Castro. Furthermore he advocated the paying of an equal wage to all Cubans and the use of "moral incentives" to encourage productivity, as a path that would eventually lead to a moneyless society. These arguments were dismissed by the regime in favour of wage differentials and bonuses. Feeling that his talents as a theorist of guerrilla warfare could be put to better use elsewhere, he left Cuba and by 1967 ended up in Bolivia. There with a tiny band of fighters he tried to emulate the Cuban revolution. Despite his initial optimism, the Bolivian peasantry proved to be indifferent and support was unforthcoming. The Bolivian army tracked down the insurgents and in October 1967, Che Guevara was captured, shot and immediately passed from history into myth.
On one level socialists can sympathise with the life of Guevara; from his travels he became aware of the poverty and oppression of the majority of the people in Latin America. This made him a social critic and he was determined to do his part to change society. Undoubtedly the Cuban revolution in which Guevara played a major role brought some initial benefits to the people of the island. The worst forms of worker exploitation (widespread prostitution, the plight of landless labourers) were ended and advances in health and education were tremendous by comparable standards. But side-by-side with this went political oppression; the independent press was closed down, trade unions became an adjunct to the state, there was imprisonment and sometimes execution of political dissidents. Workers were expected to put in long hours in dangerous conditions to satisfy Castro's various industrialisation schemes. In a further parallel with Stalin these dictatorial measures were always justified by reference to an external threat. More recently over the past ten years with the ending of Soviet aid, the fate of the Cuban workers has worsened considerably under the Beijing-like gerontocracy of the Havana leadership. In the popular mind Che Guevara is never linked with this repressive state apparatus though he was an important element in its construction. Ironically too, while Guevara has always in the west been associated with the libertarian “student counter-culture", the regime of which he was a member carried out a severe and ultimately fruitless campaign against western pop music, “decadence" and homosexuality. In fact gay people have been treated particularly harshly in Cuba.
Confusion about the basis on which society is organised meant that Guevara was destined to become part of a doomed experiment in social change. That this same process has repeatedly happened to so many reformers is of immense frustration to socialists. We have a number of reasons for opposing the politics espoused by Che Guevara. We would point to the mistaken Leninist equating of capitalism with imperialism which as in so many other cases inevitably led down the blind alley of nationalism. A good illustration of this is that for the past thirty years in Cuba the 19th century patriotic figure of Marti has been invoked by the establishment as often as Marx.
Another disagreement lies in seeing military action by the self-chosen few as the force to change society. Socialists are not pacifists and have genuine sympathy for those fighting political dictatorship but we recognise that the only meaningful transformation that can occur in society is when the majority of the people on a world-wide basis make a conscious voluntary decision to re-organise their lives and change the system that they live under. At the heart of our difference with Guevara was his belief that an equal wages society would be the spring to a socialist summer. The essence of socialism is a moneyless society; the break with using a means of exchange must be distinct and irrevocable. Equal wages and labour vouchers must inevitably lead back rather than forward as they are based on, and assume, capitalist consciousness continuing.
Denouncing Che Guevara with the easy benefit of hindsight would be facile. Socialists are keen to analyse and discuss such people's lives for the lessons to be learnt. We understand that historical figures like Guevara, Lenin, Garabaldi and Connolly cannot be wholly held responsible for the societies that arose in their wake. Such an approach overestimates the role of the individual as opposed to the political/economic/cultural factors prevailing at the time. Hindsight does show us though that without a proper understanding of the material basis of society any attempts at social change, no matter how initially laudable they may be, will certainly fail.
Kevin Cronin
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