The Political Theory of Che Guevara

by Renzo Tramer Llorente

  53. See also “Graduación en la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:320.

  54. “Delegados obreros extranjeros asistentes al 1ro. de mayo,” in ibid., 4:177; “Graduación en la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” found in ibid., 4:325; “Discurso en el acto de graduación de la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 8:181–82.

  55. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 194; see also “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 348.

  56. “Reunión bimestral, enero 20 de 1962,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:146; “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 371, 348; “Reunión bimestral, febrero 22 de 1964,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:438.

  57. “Reunión bimestral, enero 20 de 1962,” in ibid., 6:146–47.

  58. For an explicit statement of this idea, see “A los obreros premiados por haberse destacado en la producción,” found in ibid., 3:72–73; see also “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in ibid., 4:70; and “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 370.

  59. This is one of the ideas that Guevara emphasizes in “Socialism and Man in Cuba”: “As I have already said, in moments of great peril it is easy to muster a powerful response with moral incentives. Retaining their effectiveness, however, requires the development of a consciousness in which there is a new scale of values” (found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 217).

  60. “Memoria Anual 1961–1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:689.

  61. “Reunión bimestral, enero 20 de 1962,” found in ibid., 6:147.

  62. “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 170 and 172.

  63. I discuss topics mentioned in this paragraph in chapter 5.

  64. Roberto Massari, Che Guevara: Grandeza y riesgo de la utopía, 2nd ed., trans. José María Pérez (Tafalla, Sp.: Txalaparta, 1992), 233.

  65. See Lenin, “Great Beginning.”

  66. Guevara makes the same point in “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 370.

  67. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 3, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1998), 37:812. John Roemer provides a useful, brief characterization of the Marxist view of self-realization as “the development and application of an individual’s talents in a way that gives meaning to life. This is a specifically Marxist conception of human flourishing.” He adds that self-realization is “a process of self-transformation that requires struggle in a way that eating a fine meal does not” (John E. Roemer, A Future for Socialism [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994], 11).

  68. He seems to mean something like “general essential interests,” to use one of Albert Weale’s characterizations of “needs” (Albert Weale, “Needs and Interests,” in Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy [London and New York: Routledge, 2000], 620), or “urgent rational preferences,” to use a formulation provided by Richard Arneson (Richard J. Arneson, “Is Work Special? Justice and the Distribution of Employment,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 4 [1990]: 1133).

  69. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 220.

  70. “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 469.

  71. “A New Culture of Work,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 146 and 150. In the original, Guevara uses the word necesidad, which can be translated as either “need” or “necessity.” Of course, “necessity” suggests an even more vital, critical requirement than “need”; indeed, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, defines “necessity” as “an urgent need or desire.”

  72. Karl Marx, “Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3:227–28.

  73. For one of the few occasions in which Guevara refers to work as a nonmoral need, see “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 308.

  74. Marx, “Gotha,” 87.

  75. “Reunión bimestral, marzo 10 de 1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:211; “Acto conmemorativo del asesinato de Antonio Guiteras,” found in ibid., 3:192. See also “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 128.

  76. “Reunión bimestral, enero 20 de 1962,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:149.

  77. See also “Curso de adiestramiento para funcionarios y empleados del Ministerio de Industrias,” found in ibid., 3:229.

  78. “To Be a Young Communist,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 164.

  79. References to works that discuss these aspects of US policy toward Cuba are provided at the beginning of chapter 5.

  80. “To Be a Young Communist,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 163.

  81. See Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3:274. Marx discusses estrangement, i.e., “alienation,” more generally in 3:270–82.

  82. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 213.

  83. It is perhaps also worth noting here that Guevara acknowledges in an October 1961 talk that “people do not like voluntary labor very much” (“A los funcionarios y empleados del Ministerio de Industrias,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:480).

  84. Incidentally, Lenin seems to agree with the proposition that voluntary labor is “the genuine expression of the communist attitude toward work.” He writes, “Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society . . . voluntary labour . . . it is labour performed without expectation of reward . . . because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good” (Vladimir I. Lenin, “From the Destruction of the Old Social System to the Creation of the New,” in Collected Works [Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965], 30:517). See also Lenin, “Great Beginning,” 427; and Lenin, “Report on Subbotniks Delivered to a Moscow City Conference of the R.C.P. (B.), December 20, 1919,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 30:286–87.

  85. “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 307.

  86. Karl Marx, Economic Manuscript of 1861–1863, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1988), 30:267. Trotsky summarizes the standard Marxist view of the division of labor well when he observes that “the reconciliation of physical and mental labor . . . is the only thing that can lead to the harmonious development of man” (“A Few Words on How to Raise a Human Being,” found in Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life, 136).

  87. “XI Congreso Nacional Obrero,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:547; see also “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 470; “Clausura del Consejo,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:136; and “A los obreros más destacados,” found in ibid., 4:344. In light of passages such as these (and Guevara’s commitment to egalitarianism), it makes little sense to claim, as does Samuel Farber, that Guevara “ignored the hierarchical division of labor” (Farber, Politics, 67–68).

  88. “A New Culture of Work,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 147.

  89. Regarding this policy, see “Plan especial de inte
gración al trabajo,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:724–25; “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in ibid., 4:249; and Borrego, Camino, 352–53.

  90. See, for example, “Reunión bimestral, julio 11 de 1964,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:511; and “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in ibid., 4:250.

  91. Marx, Civil War, 334–35.

  Chapter 3

  1. See, for example, “Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard in the Anticolonial Struggle?” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, esp. 132–33 and 136–37; “Interview with Libération,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Speaks, 139–40; and “‘Pueblo de Bolivia; Pueblos de América’ (Una primera proclama inconclusa del Che),” in Guevara, El Che en Bolivia: Documentos y testimonios: Los otros diarios, ed. Carlos Soria Galvarro Terán (La Paz: La Razón, 2005), 2:188.

  2. “Interview with Jorge Masetti,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 364; Anderson, Revolutionary, 151.

  3. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Cuba Will Continue to Call Things by Their Right Names. Reply to General Assembly Debate, December 11, 1964,” in To Speak the Truth: Why Washington’s “Cold War” against Cuba Doesn’t End, by Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1992), 147; Ernesto Che Guevara to Fidel Castro, 1965, found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 387. One finds a very similar statement in “Inauguración de la INPUD,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:205.

  4. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition.

  5. Ronald Barker, “Internationalism,” in Dictionary of Theories, ed. Jennifer Bothamley (London, Detroit, and Washington, DC: Gale Research International Ltd., 1993), 282.

  6. Karl Marx, “Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1985), 20:13. The translation of the Manifesto included in the English-language edition of Marx and Engels’s Collected Works uses the words “working men” rather than “proletarians” (Marx and Engels, Manifesto, 519). But the word used in the original German version of the Manifesto is “proletarians” (Proletarier).

  7. Monty Johnstone’s “Internationalism” entry to Bottomore, Dictionary of Marxist Thought, 260.

  8. Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Petrograd City Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks),” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 24:160; Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party),” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 24:75.

  9. Vladimir I. Lenin, “Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions (For the Second Congress of the Communist International),” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 31:148.

  10. “A Party of the Working Class,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 176; “Conmemoración de la muerte del General Antonio Maceo,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:288. A more conventional definition of “proletarian internationalism” is provided by Jozef Wilczynski: “The solidarity of the workers in different countries among whom it is postulated there can be no conflicts once their common interests are clearly perceived and who constitute a single class united by their struggle against the bourgeoisie and imperialism” (“Proletarian Internationalism,” in Jozef Wilczynski, An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Marxism, Socialism and Communism [Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1981], 466).

  11. Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa,” 350.

  12. “En la asamblea de los tabacaleros,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 2:330.

  13. Jorge Ricardo Masetti, Los que luchan y los que lloran, y otros escritos inéditos (Buenos Aires: Nuestra América, 2006), 82; Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa,” 354.

  14. See, for example, Guevara’s April 1954 letter to his mother cited in Anderson, Revolutionary, 142, and his self-identification during his dialogue with a Bolivian army officer shortly before being executed (ibid., 735).

  15. Taibo, Ernesto, 498.

  16. Guevara often refers to himself as a Cuban and/or part of the Cuban people. For a few noteworthy instances of this self-identification, see Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa,” 350; Ernesto Che Guevara, Carta a Miguel A. Quevedo, Director de la Revista Bohemia, 23 de mayo de 1959, in Che desde la memoria, ed. Víctor Casaus (Havana, Melbourne, and New York: Centro de Estudios Che Guevara and Ocean Press, 2004), 210; and Guevara, “Cuba will Continue,” 147.

  17. “Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams (Message to the Tricontinental),” 357, and “At the United Nations,” 336, both found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader.

  18. See, for example, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Entrevisto (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1982), 121–22; and see Silva, “El hombre,” 93.

  19. Sinclair, Viva Che!, 184.

  20. “Social Ideals of the Rebel Army,” from Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 95.

  21. “Inmortalidad del Che,” Manuel Piñeiro Losada interviewed by Luis Suárez Salazar, from Manuel Piñeiro Losada, Barbarroja: Selección de testimonios y discursos del Comandante Manuel Piñeiro Losada, ed. Luis Suárez Salazar (Havana: Ediciones Tricontinental-Simar S.A., 1999), 111. See also Fidel Castro, “Discurso pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, primer ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario y primer secretario del PCC, en el Acto Clausura,” in Tricontinental/1966 (Havana: Secretaría General de la O.S.P.A.A.A.A.L., 1966), 156; and see Anderson, Revolutionary, 657.

  22. Guevara, Bolivian Diary, 190; Anderson, Revolutionary, 703.

  23. See, for example, Anderson, Revolutionary, 688 and 709.

  24. “At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria,” from Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 342 and 341; see also 344.

  25. Ibid., 347.

  26. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 169.

  27. See, for example, “The Philosophy of Plunder Must Cease,” from Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 320–21.

  28. “At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria,” found in ibid., 340.

  29. José Carlos Mariátegui, Ideología y política, in Mariátegui total (Lima: Empresa Editora Amauta S.A., 1994), 1:197.

  30. “Interview with Libération,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Speaks, 139–40.

  31. Anastas Mikoyan, “Más vale ver una vez que escuchar cien,” interview by Norberto Fuentes, in Posición Uno, by Norberto Fuentes (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1982), 171.

  32. “Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams (Message to the Tricontinental),” from Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 358.

  33. See, for example, “Discurso en el acto de graduación de la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” from Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 8:180.

  34. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 180.

  35. McLellan, Marxism, 259.

  36. Vladimir I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline, in Collected Works, vol. 22 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964).

  37. Guevara, Congo, 15.

  38. Significantly, Guevara contributed a brief note regretting Baran’s passing—as well as an editorial on his death from Nuestra Industria Económica (a journal published by Guevara’s Ministry of Industries)—to a memorial volume on Baran’s life and work (Paul M. Sweezy and Leo Huberman, eds., Paul A. Baran [1910–1964]: A Collective Portrait [New York: Monthly Review Press, 1965], 107–108). For Guevara’s comments on Baran’s Political Economy of Growth, see Guevara, Apuntes filosóficos, 299–301. For some examples of Guevara’s allusions to the concept of dependency theory, see, for example, “The Philosophy of Plunder Must Cease,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 311–12; “A los compañeros argentinos,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:216; and “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 470.

  39. Guevara, Congo, 230.


  40. Vladimir I. Lenin, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 23:115 and 114; emphasis in the original.

  41. “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” from Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 74.

  42. “A modo de Prólogo: Algunas reflexiones sobre la transición socialista,” found in ibid., 15.

  43. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 169 and 159. And see “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 93; see also pages 67, 73, and 96 from this same essay, and “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” 215.

  44. Ibid., 93. Page 70 of this text contains interesting remarks on the same phenomenon.

  45. “Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams (Message to the Tricontinental),” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 362; see also “Entrega de premios a ganadores en la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:77; and see “Fidel’s Trip to New York,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Speaks, in which Guevara calls the United States “the most barbaric nation on earth” (22).

  46. “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 305–6.

  47. Ibid., 309.

  48. “Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 299; “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” found in ibid., 83.

  49. “At the United Nations,” found in ibid., 337. Bolívar famously remarked, “The United States seems destined to plague us with miseries in the name of liberty” (as cited in George Black, The Good Neighbor: How the United States Wrote the History of Central America and the Caribbean [New York: Pantheon Books, 1988], 71).

  50. “Inauguración de la INPUD,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:206; “Discurso en el Banco Nacional,” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 4:66.

  51. Lenin, Imperialism, 298.

  52. Ernesto Che Guevara to [His] Parents, found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 384.