Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man. These, according to some accounts, were the last words of defiance uttered by Che Guevara before his execution on October 9, 1967 in Bolivia. He was 39.
If Felix Rodríguez, a CIA adviser with the Bolivian army who carried out his execution, thought that by killing Che he would bury his appeal and inspiration with him, he could not have been more wrong.
Forty years after his death, flags, banners, portraits, and the slogans of Che Guevara are carried on the mass demonstrations in the new revolt that is sweeping Latin America. A new generation of young people across the world wear Che’s image on t-shirts and baseball caps.
A fashion statement for many, but for others it is a political declaration. They identify with Che as a symbol of struggle, defiance, internationalism, and a better, socialist world. Che is justifiably viewed as a principled revolutionary fighter. In contrast, establishment politicians and institutions today are increasingly regarded as corrupt, unrepresentative, self-seeking careerists.
On the anniversary of his execution, it is apt to salute his struggle against oppression and also to draw lessons from his experiences, positive features, and mistakes. These are important for the working class in Latin America and internationally as capitalism enters a new era of crisis and turmoil.
Che Joins the Struggle
As an Argentinean medical student, Che undoubtedly could have secured a comfortable life. Yet, like the best of the left-wing radical middle class, he turned his back on such comforts and committed his life to fighting capitalism.
Che was drawn into political struggle mainly as a consequence of the poverty and the struggles he witnessed during his two famous odysseys in 1952 and 1953/4, depicted in the film The Motor Cycle Diaries.
As well as his encounters with socialists in Peru, communist copper miners in Chile, the magnificent Bolivian revolution, and a host of others, he was deeply affected by his visit to Guatemala. There he witnessed the struggles under the radical left-leaning populist government of Jacobo Arbenz.
Arbenz carried out significant reforms, which enraged U.S. imperialism and the quisling ruling class in Guatemala . A limited land reform was enacted and the hated U.S.-based United Fruit Company was nationalized. Like Bush today, U.S. imperialism was not prepared to tolerate any government that would not toe the line, especially in what it regarded as its own back yard.
By attempting to introduce some reforms without breaking from capitalism, Arbenz was trapped, giving the counter-revolution time to plot and organize, which they did. Arbenz put his faith in the “democratic constitutional loyalty” of the armed forces, and refused to arm the masses.
The Arbenz government was eventually overthrown by a CIA-backed coup, the first of a series of such interventions over the next four decades throughout Latin America.
This mistake was to be repeated two decades later in Chile when the Socialist Party President Allende put his faith in the democratic loyalties of Pinochet and the military, and agreed to a constitutional pact not to touch the officer caste and the military high command. Allende refused to arm and mobilize the working class to overthrow capitalism. As a result, thousands of Chilean workers and youth were drowned in blood in a military coup in 1973.
This flowed from the ideas of the reformist left and the stages theory of a gradual step-by-step policy to eventually replace capitalism. Such ideas have repeatedly allowed capitalism and reaction to bide its time, to prepare its forces to strike at an opportune moment and defeat the working class.
The experience of Guatemala led Che to look for an alternative way of combating capitalism and imperialism. But he was not drawn towards the communist parties. He was suspicious of the CPs and especially their policies of supporting Popular Fronts or Peoples Fronts. This policy put them in alliances with the liberal section of the national capitalist class. This wrong policy was justified by them on the basis that such a tactical alliance was temporary and necessary to be able to struggle against imperialism.
They did not have the objective of fighting for socialism but of firstly strengthening parliamentary democracy, developing a national industry and economy, and passing through a stage of capitalist development before it was possible to move towards the working class taking power.
This policy resulted in the communist parties holding back the struggles and demands of the workers, justified on the basis of not alienating the progressive wing of the capitalist class. As a result, in many countries the workers’ movement was effectively paralyzed and disarmed by this policy.
The application of this policy resulted in the establishment of a fascist regime under Franco in Spain in 1939. It was also to prove to be disastrous in Chile in 1973. Unfortunately, similar ideas are echoed today by the leadership of the movements in Venezuela and Bolivia.
The July 26 Movement
Che rejected this reformist stageist approach, although he had not developed a rounded-out alternative. He was drawn towards the struggle unfolding against the Batista regime in Cuba and joined the July 26 Movement in Mexico, which Che saw as a more combative arena of struggle.
The July 26 Movement was at that stage quite a wide-ranging organization. It included a liberal democratic wing, whose objective was the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship and the establishment of a “democratic” Cuba but not, at that stage, the overthrow of landlordism and capitalism. Che emerged as a prominent representative of the movement’s more radical elements.
It was on December 2, 1956 that a small, badly-organized group of 82 guerrilla fighters, including Che and Castro, landed in Cuba and began what became a two-year guerrilla war. Culminating in the downfall of the hated Batista dictatorship, it led to the Cuban revolution.
Che’s heroic role was made all the more so by his life-long struggle with asthma. Every obstacle, hardship, and pain necessary to endure fighting a guerrilla war was exacerbated by his condition. Revolutionary determination precluded letting his health prevent him from playing a decisive role in the struggle.
Ebbing and flowing, the war progressed and the guerrillas won increasing sympathy from the peasants. In the cities, the anger and hatred against the Batista regime also approached a boiling point. As the regime collapsed, the rebels entered the cities on New Year’s Day 1959 and were greeted by the eruption of a massive general strike. The playground of U.S. imperialism, with its opulent casinos and brothels largely catering to U.S. businessmen and their sidekicks, was about to be closed down as a social revolution gathered momentum.
Socialism or Capitalism
In the early stages of the revolution, when Castro and Che entered Havana, it was not yet fully clear how far events would go. While Che was a committed socialist, Castro at that stage was limiting himself to a more liberal and humane capitalism.
But the revolution was driven forward by a series of tit-for-tat blows with the U.S., until three years later capitalism and landlordism were eventually overthrown.
This process was possible at that time because of a combination of factors, including massive pressure from the workers and peasants. U.S. imperialism, under President Eisenhower and his successors, refused to even attempt to embrace and influence the regime and instead imposed a boycott that has lasted until today. Alongside this were numerous assassination attempts on Castro.
Another crucial factor was the existence at that time of centralized planned economies in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Although these were ruled by vicious, bureaucratic dictatorships, they appeared to offer an alternative to capitalism.
These factors meant a nationalized centrally-planned economy was eventually introduced. Such a tremendously positive step forward had an electrifying effect across the world. Che played a crucial role in this process.
From the outset, he was pushing for the revolution to take a more “socialist” road and stressing the need for it to be spread internationally. He played an important role in drafting what was known as the Second Declaration of Havana, which was published in 1962 and makes inspirational reading even today.
Among other things, it answers the question of why the U.S. responded with such ferocity to the revolution on a relatively small island: [The U.S. and ruling classes] fear that the workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, and progressive sectors of the middle strata will by revolutionary means take power fear that the plundered people of the continent will seize the arms from their oppressors and, like Cuba, declare themselves free people of America.
The Role of the Working Class
Che undoubtedly aspired to the idea of the international socialist revolution, but his greatest weakness and his greatest tragedy was his lack of understanding of how this was to be achieved. He had been drawn towards the guerrilla struggle as a means of winning the socialist revolution rather than basing himself on the working class in the cities.
Even in countries where the working class in the cities comprises a minority of the population, its collective role and the consciousness that arises from its social conditions in workplaces means that it is the decisive class for spearheading and leading the socialist revolution. This was the experience of the Russian revolution in 1917.
In practice, this demonstrated that the capitalist classes in the neo-colonial countries are tied to both landlordism and imperialism and are therefore incapable of developing the economy, of building a stable democracy, or of resolving the national question. Historically, these tasks were solved by the democratic bourgeois revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries such as England or France, but in the modern epoch cannot be resolved by the capitalist class as Trotsky pointed out in his theory of permanent revolution.
Today, in countries where the tasks of the bourgeois revolution remain to be resolved, the tasks fall to the working class with the support of the poor peasants, which is linked to the socialist revolution and the need to spread it internationally.
However, in Cuba, because of the rottenness of the Batista regime and the political vacuum, it appeared that guerrilla struggle offered the way forward. A similar process later also developed in Nicaragua when the Sandinistas took power in 1979. While nationalizing about 25% of the Nicaraguan economy, the Sandinistas failed to overthrow landlordism and capitalism. As a result, over a period of time a creeping counter-revolution was eventually able to triumph.
Based on his experience in Cuba, Che wrongly attempted to replicate a guerilla strategy first in Africa and then in Latin America. Conditions were entirely different and the working class was in a much stronger position with more revolutionary traditions and experience. The lack of a rounded-out, conscious understanding of the role of the working class in the socialist revolution was undoubtedly Che Guevara’s biggest political weakness.
Lessons for Today
The recent coming to power of a series of radical left governments, especially of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, represents an important step forward. The setbacks faced by the working class internationally in the 1990s mean these developments are especially significant. Chávez and Morales have carried through important reforms and taken some measures against the ruling class and the interests of imperialism. Yet, if capitalism is not overthrown, they can also face defeat and the threat of reaction.
So far, the spontaneous movement of the masses from below has held the threat of reaction in check. However, while capitalism and landlordism remain, reaction can prepare to strike again.
While it is very positive that both Morales and Chávez today speak of socialism, the crucial question is how to achieve it and overthrow capitalism. Neither government has yet gone as far as Allende in Chile, or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, in encroaching on the interests of the ruling class. Evo Morales, faced with attempts at reaction, is making the same mistake as Allende and is speaking of the “democratic” and “constitutional” loyalty of the military high command and is leaving them intact.
Planned Economy
Even today, ravaged by both the loss of economic subsidies as a consequence of the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the effects of the U.S.-imposed boycott, the gains of the Cuban revolution are to be found in the form of one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Within a few years of the revolution, illiteracy was abolished and free healthcare was available to all. One teacher per fifty-seven inhabitants makes the teacher-pupil ratio one of the best in the world.
The same can be said of doctors. 73% of operations carried out in Pakistan following the catastrophic 2005 earthquake were undertaken by the 2,600 doctors and health technicians sent by Cuba. Life expectancy in Cuba is 75 years, while in Russia, where capitalism has been restored, it has plummeted to about 58 years for men.
None of these gains would have been possible without Cuba’s planned economy and the revolution. The Committee for a Workers’ International supports all the gains of the Cuban revolution, yet at the same time the initial form the revolution took had consequences for the nature of the regime that was established.
What Type of Regime?
The government led by Castro and Che after the revolution enjoyed overwhelming support. However, the absence of the organized working class consciously leading the revolutionary process meant that a genuine workers’ and peasants’ democracy was not established.
Although elements of workers’ control existed in the factories, there was not a genuine system of democratic workers’ control and management. Consequently, a bureaucratic, top-down regime developed.
Che was instinctively against any privileges being taken by any government official or representative. In Cuba, he was very harsh with those in his department who attempted to take even the most minimal perk.
Travelling to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, he was repelled by the lavish lifestyles of the bureaucrats and the contemptuous attitude they adopted towards the working class. Bureaucratic features present in Cuba increasingly frustrated him.
Despite reacting against the horrific, monstrous bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR and Eastern Europe, he did not develop a clearly-formulated alternative to it or see how to fight it. But he was undoubtedly searching for such an alternative. He was later denounced as a Trotskyist by the Soviet bureaucracy.
Che and Trotsky
According to some reports, Che was carrying The Revolution Betrayed by Trotsky in his knapsack in Bolivia. Indeed, Che was introduced earlier to some of Trotsky’s writings. The former Peruvian Air Force officer Ricardo Napurí, who had refused to bomb a left-wing uprising in 1948, gave Che a copy of The Permanent Revolution when he met him in Havana in 1959. The Cuban revolutionary Celia Hart, whose father, Amando Hart, fought with Castro and Che and was a government minister, says that it was Che who convinced her to study Trotsky.
A willingness to discuss and explore different ideas and opinions was a feature of Che’s character. Unfortunately, despite reading some of Trotsky’s writings by the time of his premature death, Che had not drawn all the necessary conclusions to develop a coherent and rounded-out socialist alternative to Stalinism.
To do so required a massive leap in understanding. His isolation, without the contact, discussion, and exchange of ideas that are part and parcel of membership in a party, along with the absence of a broader international revolutionary experience to draw on, made such a leap extremely difficult.
The deficiencies in Che’s understanding had tragic consequences for his own life and in the dead-end model of guerrilla struggle. Yet his positive features and lasting legacy as a symbol of uncompromising, self-sacrificing, incorruptible struggle serve as a source of inspiration for a new generation. If the lessons of his mistakes can also be learned, then his determined struggle for an international socialist revolution will be achieved.