The Political Theory of Che Guevara

by Renzo Tramer Llorente

  39. Masetti, Los que luchan, 129.

  40. Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 34–35; see also “Speech to the Latin American Youth Congress,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 233; and see “What We Have Learned and What We Have Taught,” found in ibid., 61–62.

  41. Ibid., 62; and see “Discurso en el Banco Nacional,” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 4:61.

  42. “Memoria Anual 1961–1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:674.

  43. “Speech to the Latin American Youth Congress,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 234; see also 232.

  44. “Entrevista con estudiantes norteamericanos,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:473; see also “Con los visitantes,” 490 and “At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 342.

  45. In what follows, I shall be referring to some of Guevara’s own comments that confirm as much. But many of the works that deal with Guevara’s life prior to the Cuban Revolution demonstrate that he had a Marxist, communist outlook before he first set foot in Cuba. Jon Lee Anderson’s biography of Guevara, for example, makes this very clear; see, for example, Anderson, Revolutionary, 156, 166, 172, 181, 191, 198, 202, and 565.

  46. Cited in Gálvez Rodríguez, Che en Cuba, 293.

  47. “Discurso en Minas del Frío,” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 7:57; “Interview with Laura Bergquist (#2),” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 398.

  48. I cite from the English transcript prepared by Walter Lippmann and available at http://www.walterlippmann.com/che-032264.html. The audio of the interview, apparently in the form in which it aired in March 1964, complete with English voiceover translation, is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3wAQG6HUGQ.

  49. The joke has a number of different variants. Guevara himself tells the joke during an August 1963 meeting with Latin American visitors to Cuba (“Con los visitantes latinoamericanos,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:485).

  50. “Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 122.

  51. Guevara, Carta a Miguel A. Quevedo, 210. When asked during a television interview less than a month earlier whether he was a communist, Guevara responded, “If you think that what we do for the people is communism, then we are communists; if you ask me if I am a member of the Partido Socialista Popular [Cuba’s Communist Party], then I would answer no” (“Interview by Telemundo Televisión,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 377).

  52. Gerónimo Álvarez Batista, Che: Una nueva batalla (Havana: Editorial Pablo de la Torriente, 1994), 108.

  53. “Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 303; “A los compañeros argentinos,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:218; “Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard in the Anticolonial Struggle?” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 136; “Entrevista para la televisión suiza,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:124.

  54. “The Cuban Revolution’s Influence in Latin America,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 276; “The OAS Conference at Punta del Este,” found in ibid., 273; “Interview by Telemundo Televisión,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 378; “Graduación del primer grupo de soldados,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 2:34.

  55. For Guevara’s responses, see Guevara, “Cuba Will Continue,” 146 and 153; and see Guevara, Interview with Face the Nation, CBS Television Network, December 13, 1964, transcript available online at https://guevaristas.org/2016/07/15/interview-of-che-guevara-on-cbs-face-the-nation-transcriptvideo/.

  56. Guevara, “Cuba Will Continue,” 146.

  57. “The OAS Conference at Punta del Este,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 273; see also Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa,” 349. For a statement in favor of noninterference from the period in which Guevara did not yet openly acknowledge his Marxism, see “Entrevista con un periodista de Guatemala,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 2:132.

  58. Fernando López Muiño, “Vivencias con el Che: Viaje desde Cuba a Punta del Este,” in El debut continental de un estadista: Ernesto Che Guevara en Punta del Este, 1961, ed. Carlos D. González Torres (Havana: Editora Política, 2001), 49.

  59. This is the criterion mentioned by William Gálvez, a general in the Cuban military and author of several books on Guevara (William Gálvez Rodríguez, “Um exemplo superior,” interview by Viriato Teles, in A utopia segundo Che Guevara, by Viriato Teles (Porto: Campo das Letras, 2005), 161–62.

  60. “Discurso en el acto de graduación de la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 8:183.

  61. “Reunión bimestral, enero 20 de 1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:148.

  62. “A los ganadores de la emulación de alfabetización,” found in ibid., 3:500.

  63. Monereo, Con su propia cabeza, 33.

  64. Guevara’s “The Meaning of Socialist Planning,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism in Cuba, 103; see also 101.

  65. Guevara, Congo, 236.

  66. Hal Draper, The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” from Marx to Lenin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987), 26.

  67. Harold J. Laski, Harold J. Laski on the Communist Manifesto (New York: New American Library, 1967), 64.

  68. “A los obreros más destacados durante el año 1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:336.

  69. See, for example, “Informe de la Empresa Consolidada de la Electricidad,” found in ibid., 6:53.

  70. “Clausura del Consejo de la CTC,” found in ibid., 4:122.

  71. See “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 109. For the relevant passage from the “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” see Marx, “Gotha,” 95.

  72. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 219.

  73. “On Party Militancy,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 341.

  74. “The Working Class and the Industrialization of Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 241–43.

  75. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 219.

  76. According to Fernando Martínez Heredia, this statement was a source of scandal in the years following the publication of “Socialism and Man in Cuba” (Martínez Heredia, “El Che Guevara,” 255–56). Samuel Farber’s recent gloss on this statement (Politics, 81) confirms that it remains a source of scandal in some quarters.

  77. “The Role of Morality in Communist Production,” found in Lukács, Tactics and Ethics, 51.

  78. Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa,” 353. Guevara also noted on this occasion that people who did not have a favorable attitude toward the government were allowed to visit Cuba (ibid., 357–58).

  79. “Technology and Society,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 299.

  80. “Entrevista con estudiantes norteamericanos,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:478; Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa,” 345.

  81. “Technology and Society,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 299. For one expression of Guevara’s encouragement of robust discussion, see Guevara’s “On the Concept of Value,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism in Cuba, 238.

  82. Fidel Castro, “Discurso pronunciado como conclusión de las reuniones con los intelectuales cubanos, Biblioteca Nacional ‘José Martí,’” in Habla Fidel: 25 discursos en la Revolución, ed. Pedro Álvarez Tabío (Havana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado, 2008), 205. (The latter part of Castro’s dictum is often mistranslated, substituting “outside” for “against”; for a recent example of this, see Farber, Politics, 57.) Trotsky, incidentally, proposes a very similar “policy” in his Literature
and Revolution (14).

  83. See, for example, “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 5 de 1964,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:577.

  84. “Reunión bimestral, agosto 10 de 1963,” found in ibid., 6:368 and 370.

  85. For the circular, see “On Ideological Investigations,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 71. Regarding Guevara’s defense of Trotskyists, see Roberto Acosta Hechavarría, “An Interview with Roberto Acosta Hechavarría,” interview by Tano Nariño, trans. Gary Tennant and John Sullivan, in “The Hidden Pearl of the Caribbean,” Revolutionary History 7, no. 3 (2000): 246; and see Gary Tennant, “The Reorganised Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista) and the 1959 Revolution,” in “The Hidden Pearl of the Caribbean,” Revolutionary History 7, no. 3 (2000): 192 and 195. Concerning the incident involving the printing of The Permanent Revolution, see Ernesto Che Guevara, “An Interview with ‘Che’ Guevara, Cuban Minister of Industries, 14 September 1961,” interview by Maurice Zeitlin, in Cuba: An American Tragedy, ed. Robert Scheer and Maurice Zeitlin (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1964), 341.

  86. Guerra and Maldonado, Historia, 183.

  87. Guevara’s biographer Paco Ignacio Taibo II points out that between February and August 1962 alone there were 716 acts of sabotage organized by the CIA (Taibo, Ernesto, 438).

  88. For a recent overview of the effects of the embargo, see Salim Lamrani, The Economic War against Cuba, trans. Larry Oberg (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013).

  89. “En la Universidad de Montevideo,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:340.

  90. “Technology and Society,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 299. On the intensification of the class struggle after the triumph of the revolution, see ibid., 300; and see Guevara, Apuntes filosóficos, 175; see also “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 221. Lenin mentions the postrevolutionary intensification of the class struggle in “Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International”: “The proletariat’s conquest of political power does not put a stop to its class struggle against the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, it renders that struggle most widespread, intense and ruthless” (in Collected Works [Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966], 31:189).

  91. “Acto conmemorativo del asesinato de Antonio Guiteras,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:188.

  92. “A las milicias a su regreso de las trincheras,” found in ibid., 3:63.

  93. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Cuba and the U.S.,” interview by Leo Huberman, Monthly Review 13, no. 5 (1961), http://monthlyreview.org/1961/09/01/cuba-and-the-u-s/. Guevara says something similar in his interview with Maurice Zeitlin: “Our task is to enlarge, as much as is possible, democracy within the revolution and to liquidate the counterrevolution as soon as possible” (Guevara, “An Interview with ‘Che,’” 340).

  94. Such as Rosa Luxemburg: “All this resistance [from “the imperialist capitalist class”] must be broken step by step, with an iron fist and ruthless energy. The violence of the bourgeois counterrevolution must be confronted with the revolutionary violence of the proletariat” (“What does the Spartacus League Want?” found in Luxemburg, Rosa Luxemburg Reader, 352–53).

  95. For a typical example, see “Entrevista en el INRA,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 2:116.

  96. “Technology and Society,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 300.

  97. See, for example, “Reunión bimestral, enero 20 de 1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:155; “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 80.

  98. “Clausura de la Asamblea de Producción de la Gran Habana,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:455; “Technology and Society,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 300; see also “Informe de la Empresa Consolidada de la Electricidad,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:53.

  99. “The Cuban Revolution’s Influence in Latin America,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 291.

  100. See, for example Michael Löwy’s foreword to Pericás, Che, 9. And also see the following: Löwy, Marxism, 77–78, n. 15; Donald C. Hodges, The Latin American Revolution: Politics and Strategy from Apro-Marxism to Guevarism (New York: W. Morrow, 1974), 167–69, 171, 174; Pericás, Che, 218; Massari, Che Guevara, 116; and Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdés’s introduction to Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 20.

  101. All of the passages cited in this paragraph come from Leon Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution, found in Leon Trotsky, “The Permanent Revolution” and “Results and Prospects” (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), 132–33, 276, and 278–79; emphasis in the original.

  102. “A los obreros más destacados durante el año 1962,” which is found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:336, seems to suggest as much.

  103. See Marx, A Contribution to the Critique, 263.

  104. See Trotsky, “Permanent Revolution”, chap. 6. And, for some relevant passages from Guevara, see “A los obreros más destacados durante el año 1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:336; “Clausura de la Asamblea de Producción de la Gran Habana,” found in ibid., 3:459; and “Memoria Anual 1961–1962,” found in ibid., 6:674. Regarding the change of mentality, see “Technology and Society,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 302.

  105. See, for example, “Delegados obreros extranjeros asistentes al 1ro. de mayo,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:182; “Entrevista a la revista Economía mundial y relaciones internacionales,” found in ibid., 5:116; “The Philosophy of Plunder Must Cease,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 323; and “On the Cuban Experience,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 372.

  106. “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 79 and 82.

  107. “Conferencia en el salón de actos del Ministerio de Industrias,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:388. For an earlier—November 1961—statement regarding the importance of “helping our brother nations who are fighting for their liberation,” see “Delegados en el Congreso Obrero,” found in ibid., 3:514.

  108. Guevara, “Pueblo de Bolivia; Pueblos de América,” 188.

  109. From “Trotskyism,” Tamara Deutscher’s contribution to Bottomore, Dictionary of Marxist Thought, 547. As Jozef Wilczynski puts it, “permanent revolution” “is sometimes taken as synonymous with Trotskyism” (from “Permanent Revolution,” found in Wilczynski, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Marxism, 430).

  110. Anderson, Revolutionary, 596; Pericás, Che, 206; and Massari, Che Guevara, 112–13. Massari implies that those who made the accusations may not really have been students (113).

  111. Roberto Massari says that as late as December 1964—essentially the end of Guevara’s life and work in Cuba—Guevara had read practically nothing by Trotsky (Che Guevara, 114).

  112. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 156; “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 5 de 1964,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:566; “A modo de introducción: Carta de Che a Armando Hart,” found in Guevara, Apuntes filosóficos, 25.

  113. Guevara, Apuntes filosóficos, 347.

  114. Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa,” 340–41.

  115. “Entrevista con estudiantes norteamericanos,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:478; “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 5 de 1964,” found in ibid., 6:566. The Revolution’s Technical Advisory Councils (Consejos Técnicos Asesores) were apparently one target of Cuban Trotskyists’ criticism. For Guevara’s rejection of this criticism, see “La economía en Cuba,” found in ibid., 3:171.

  116. Guevara, Apuntes filosóficos, 345.

  117. “Entrevue avec ‘Che’ Guevara,” Quatrième Internationale 14 (1961), 92; Borrego, Camino, 249. The “Entrevue” article tells us a bit about the Uruguayan Trotskyists’
view of the Cuban Revolution in 1961 but very little about what Guevara said at his meeting with them.

  Chapter 5

  1. Alan Bullock’s pronouncement represents a typical expression of the widespread misconception that Guevara had scant interest in the mechanics of a viable socialism: “He was more attracted by the liberation of the Third World, especially his native Latin America, than by making socialism work” (“Guevara,” 293).

  2. Volume 6 of El Che en la Revolución cubana, whose contents I have already cited on numerous occasions, includes a fairly extensive selection of reports and other documents produced by Guevara in his capacity as head of the Ministry of Industries.

  3. K. S. Karol, Guerrillas in Power: The Course of the Cuban Revolution, trans. Arnold Pomerans, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1970), 47.

  4. “On the Cuban,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 364; see also “Plenaria Nacional Azucarera [b],” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:311–12.

  5. “At the United Nations,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 335. For information on terrorist activities against Cuba, see Keith Bolender, Voices from the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism against Cuba (London and New York: Pluto Press, 2010); Jesús Arboleya Cervera, El otro terrorismo: Medio siglo de política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2009); Salim Lamrani, ed., Superpower Principles: U.S. Terrorism against Cuba (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2005); Fabián Escalante Font, Operación exterminio: 50 años de agresiones contra Cuba (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2010); and the illustrated history edited by Juan Carlos Rodríguez Cruz, Cuba, la historia no contada (Havana: Editorial Capitán San Luis, 2003).