111. “Discurso a las milicias en Pinar del Río,” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 5:76.
112. “Entrega de premios de la emulación socialista,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:252.
113. “Our Industrial Tasks,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 289.
114. Ibid.; see also “Inauguración fábrica de bujías,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:159.
115. “Clausura del Consejo de la CTC,” found in ibid., 4:134–35; “Intervención en una reunión,” found in ibid., 4:108.
116. “En la primera reunión nacional de producción,” found in ibid., 3:393.
117. “A New Culture of Work,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 148; “En la primera reunión nacional de producción,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:394.
118. Silverman, Man and Socialism, collects the most important contributions to this debate. For a discussion of Guevara’s positions in the debate, see Yaffe, Economics, chap. 3.
119. Preface to Silverman, Man and Socialism, viii.
120. Miguel Cossío, one of the participants in the debate, defines the law of value as “the general law of the distribution of labor in mercantile societies . . . [which] expresses that commodities must be exchanged according to the quantity of social necessary labor expended on their production” (“Contribution to the Debate on the Law of Value,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 243).
121. Yaffe, Economics, 53.
122. “On Production,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 113.
123. “Fragmento de la entrevista concedida al periódico El-Taliah (La Vanguardia) de El Cairo, abril de 1965,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 429. See also “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 5 de 1964,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana: “for me, the law of value is equivalent to capitalism” (6:577).
124. Guevara’s “On the Concept of Value,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 236. For one passage in which Guevara acknowledges that the law of value continued to operate in Cuba, see “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 201.
125. Ibid., 202.
126. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 165.
127. “Delegados obreros extranjeros asistentes al 1ro. de mayo,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:182; “XI Congreso Nacional Obrero,” found in ibid., 3:534; “Reunión bimestral, enero 20 de 1962,” found in ibid., 6:154.
128. “Plan especial de integración al trabajo,”found in ibid., 6:724. In the passage cited, Guevara is referring to enterprises within his ministry, but one could just as well apply this image to the economy as a whole.
129. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 206; Guevara’s “On Production Costs and the Budgetary System,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 115.
130. Guevara’s “On the Concept of Value,” found in ibid., 237.
131. Guevara’s “On Production Costs and the Budgetary System,” found in ibid., 115; Guevara’s “On the Concept of Value,” found in ibid., 237–38.
132. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 192.
133. Ibid. See also Guevara’s “Banking, Credit, and Socialism,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 304.
134. Guevara’s “On Production Costs and the Budgetary System,” found in ibid., 120; see also 118.
135. “Entrega de premios,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:70; see also “Reunión bimestral, febrero 22 de 1964,” found in ibid., 6:436.
136. “Reunión bimestral, octubre 12 de 1963,” found in ibid., 6:387.
137. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 192.
138. For a useful overview of the differences between the two systems, see Yaffe, Economics, 48. Yaffe also provides a helpful summary of Guevara’s budgetary finance system (ibid., 261–62).
139. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 155; see also 165. And see “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 370.
140. “Discurso en el acto de graduación de la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 8:180, 183–84; “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 356.
141. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 192.
142. “Discurso en el acto de graduación de la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 8:183.
143. “La necesidad de este libro,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 31.
144. “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in ibid., 125.
145. “La necesidad de este libro,” found in ibid., 31; “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in ibid., 345.
146. “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in ibid., 125; Luis Báez, Más esperanza que fe: Revelaciones de Roberto Fernández Retamar (Havana: Casa Editora Abril, 2006), 103. See also “Interview by Al-Tali-’ah,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 412.
147. Gerassi’s introduction to Guevara, Venceremos!, 47.
148. “Reunión bimestral, octubre 12 de 1963,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:389–90.
149. “La necesidad de este libro,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 31.
150. For some criticism of Guevara’s analysis and explanation of the failure of the Soviet model, together with an appreciation of his perspicacity in gauging the scope of the crisis in Soviet-style socialism, see Monereo, Con su propia cabeza, 114–16.
151. See, for example, “Entrega de premios a los 45 obreros más destacados del Ministerio de Industrias,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:157; “En la escalinata de la Universidad de La Habana,” found in ibid., 3:523; “Inauguración 2da. etapa combinado del lápiz,” found in ibid., 5:186; and “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 305, where the Spanish word is translated as “lighthouse.”
152. Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 123; see also 133.
153. Guevara, “Delegados en el Congreso Obrero,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:513; “Entrega de premios,” found in ibid., 5:75.
154. “Inauguración de la escuela de capacitación técnica para obreros,” found in ibid., 4:85; see also “Convención nacional de los consejos técnicos asesores,” found in ibid., 3:69.
155. Engels, “Introduction,” 201.
156. Ibid.
Chapter 6
1. See, for example, A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1988), 59.
2. For example, Besancenot and Löwy, Che Guevara, 33 and 34; Massari, Che Guevara, 116; Alonso Aguilar Monteverde’s “Mi imagen del Che,” found in Almeida, et al., Che siempre, 39; Pericás, Che, 199; Peter McLaren’s “The Future of the Past,” foreword to Löwy, Marxism; and Flávio Koutzii’s “Che: O contexto histórico e a história do contexto,” found in Flávio Koutzii and José Corrêa Leite, eds., Che 20 anos depois (São Paulo: Editora Busca Vida, Ltda.: 1987), 62.
3. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 226.
4. “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 327.
5. Ricardo Napurí, “Thirty Years since the Death of Ernesto Guevara: An Interview with Ricardo Napurí,” interview by José Bermúdez and Luis Castelli, trans. Alejandra Ríos and Philip Marchant, in “The Hidden Pe
arl of the Caribbean,” Revolutionary History 7, no. 3 (2000): 268. Napurí does not mention the year, but it would seem to be 1960. Napurí’s anecdote suggests that Roberto Massari may overstate the extent of Guevara’s unfamiliarity with Trotsky’s works in 1964 (see my earlier note in chapter 4, note 111).
6. See the anecdote mentioned in Yaffe, Economics, 81.
7. Anderson, Revolutionary, 585 and 596. The Argentine Communist Party held a similar view (ibid., 581).
8. Farber, Politics, 16–17; Massari, Che Guevara, 203. I personally heard Guevara’s politics characterized and defended as “anarchist” during a panel at the 2000 Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City.
9. Luis Vitale, De Martí a Chiapas: Balance de un siglo (Santiago, Cl.: Ed. Síntesis y CELA, 1995), chap. 7.
10. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 211.
11. Hodges, Latin American Revolution, 168.
12. Ibid., 169. Löwy reaches a similar conclusion (Marxism, 77–78, n. 15).
13. “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 5 de 1964,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:567.
14. “Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard in the Anticolonial Struggle?” found in Che Guevara Reader, 136; “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 93–94. See also “Conferencia televisada,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:43.
15. Taibo claims that Guevara’s views on Trotsky and Trotskyism began to change slowly following his November 1964 trip to the Soviet Union (Ernesto, 497). While this seems to be the case, it does not mean that Guevara ever came to hold a generally positive view of Trotsky.
16. Cited in Anderson, Revolutionary, 191. On at least one occasion in Mexico, Guevara called his daughter Hilda “my little Mao” (ibid., 202).
17. “A New Old Che Guevara Interview,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 368.
18. Anderson, Revolutionary, 579–80.
19. Ibid., 584.
20. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 176.
21. Pericás rightly notes as much (Che, 204), and Castañeda makes essentially the same point (Compañero, 86).
22. As regards his early admiration for Stalin, see, for example, the letter cited in Castañeda, Compañero, 62. Guevara recommends the reading of Stalin’s works in “Conferencia ofrecida,” 176, and, more implicitly, in “A modo de introducción: Carta de Che a Armando Hart,” found in Guevara, Apuntes filosóficos, 24.
23. Farber, Politics, 16.
24. “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 214.
25. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 174.
26. Monereo, Con su propia cabeza, 115; Besancenot and Löwy, Che Guevara, 74–75.
27. Karol, Guerrillas, 47; see also Karol’s “Cuba’s Road to Communism,” New Statesman, May 19, 1961, 778.
28. From Gerassi’s introduction to Guevara, Venceremos!, 45.
29. See, for example, Díaz and López, “Ernesto Che Guevara,” 145; Besancenot and Löwy, Che Guevara, chap. 1; Aguilar Monteverde’s “Mi imagen del Che,” found in Almeida et al., Che siempre, 39; Valdés Paz’s epilogue, “Notas,” in Monereo, Con su propia cabeza, 123; José Dirceu’s “O resgate do humanismo pelo marxismo,” found in Koutzii and Corrêa Leite, Che 20 anos depois, 223; and Clive W. Kronenberg, “Manifestations of Humanism in Revolutionary Cuba: Che and the Principle of Universality,” Latin American Perspectives 36, no. 2 (2009).
30. “Revolutionary humanism” is the term preferred by Löwy (Marxism, 8), María del Carmen Ariet García (El pensamiento político, 143), Massari (Che Guevara, 203), and Luis Suárez Salazar (“Che: Artista de la lucha revolucionaria,” in Pensar al Che, vol. 1, ed. Alfredo Prieto González [Havana: Editorial José Martí, 1989], 142), among others. For one commentator who prefers the term “socialist humanism,” see Vitale (Martí, 200).
31. Valdés Paz’s epilogue, “Notas para un epílogo,” to Monereo, Con su propia cabeza, 123.
32. T. B. Bottomore, introduction to Karl Marx Early Writings, trans. and ed. by T. B. Bottomore (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), viii. Marx identifies communism with humanism in Manuscripts of 1844, 296 and 341–42. Eugene Kamenka’s “Marxian Humanism and the Crisis in Socialist Ethics” (in Erich Fromm, ed., Socialist Humanism [London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 1967]) is still useful as a brief overview of Marxist humanism.
33. Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3:182.
34. “En la primera reunión nacional de producción,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:433.
35. Ibid., 393.
36. “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 310; “Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution,” found in ibid.,123.
37. “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 5 de 1964,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:562. “Informe de la Empresa Consolidada del Petroleo,” in ibid., 6:74.
38. “Acto conmemorativo del asesinato de Antonio Guiteras,” found in ibid., 3:192.
39. “Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams (Message to the Tricontinental),” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 356.
40. Löwy suggests that this may be the case (Marxism, 8; see also 14). I have analyzed Ponce’s views on humanism in Renzo Llorente, “El aporte de Aníbal Ponce a la crítica del humanismo moderno,” Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, no. 60 (2013).
41. Fromm, Socialist Humanism. To my knowledge, Guevara himself only uses the term “socialist humanism” once, and in an almost parenthetical manner; see “Entrega de premios a ganadores en la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:79.
42. Michael Löwy’s “O humanismo do Che,” found in Koutzii and Corrêa Leite, Che 20 anos depois, 97.
43. Ibid., 97; 106–10.
44. Castro, “In Tribute,” 24; Alasdair MacIntyre, “Marxism of the Will,” in Alasdair MacIntyre’s Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings 1953–1974, ed. Paul Blackledge and Neil Davidson (Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2008), 378.
45. See, for example, Alonso Aguilar Monteverde’s “Mi imagen del Che,” found in Almeida et al., Che siempre, 42; María del Carmen Ariet García, El pensamiento político, 185; Hart Dávalos’s “El Che,” found in Almeida et al., Che siempre, 15; Gadea, “A Ernesto Che Guevara,” found in ibid., 173; and Eduardo Galeano and Tomás Borge, “Eduardo y Tomás, robles de raíz milenaria,” interview by Iosu Perales, in Perales, Querido Che, 49.
46. “The Role of Morality in Communist Production,” found in Lukács, Tactics and Ethics, 48.
47. Even so, Steven Lukes never mentions Guevara in his comprehensive survey Marxism and Morality (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
48. “En el salón teatro de la Universidad de La Habana,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 2:61.
49. Sáenz, El Che ministro, 142.
50. Juan Valdés Paz, “Todo es según el color del cristal con que se mira (Comentarios a La vida en rojo de Jorge Castañeda),” in Che: El hombre del siglo XXI (Havana: University of Havana and Editorial Félix Varela, 2001), 112.
51. Monereo rightly emphasizes this fact (Con su propia cabeza, 107).
52. Elster, Making Sense, 531; emphasis in the original.
53. Fernández Buey, “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara,” 17; Bonachea and Valdés’s introduction to Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 27–28 (emphasis in the original). See also MacIntyre, “Marxism”: “In Guevara . . . it is the voluntarist component of Leninism which is appealed to as never before” (377).
54. Farber, Politics, xviii; 118. See also 19ff.
55. See for example, Monereo, Con su propia cabeza, 45; an
d see also González, Che Guevara, 168 and 149–50. Lukács also seems to believe that Guevara was guilty of voluntarism (Record, 171).
56. I say “generally” because some do take issue with the “moralization” discussed in the preceding section.
57. Bonachea and Valdés’s introduction to Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 28; González, Che Guevara, 168.
58. “Entrega de premios,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:71.
59. In addition to the passages cited in the text, see, for example, “Entrega de premios a los 45 obreros más destacados del Ministerio de Industrias,” found in ibid., 4:142; and “On Party Militancy,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 351.
60. Guevara’s “The Meaning of Socialist Planning,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 103.
61. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 194.
62. Guevara’s “The Meaning of Socialist Planning,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 102.
63. Ibid., 103.
64. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 195; Guevara’s “The Meaning of Socialist Planning,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 103.
65. Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 165; Guevara’s “The Meaning of Socialist Planning,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 103 and 101.
66. Marx, “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy,” 182.
67. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 195.
68. Guevara’s contention that, while “the contradictions between the development of the productive forces and the relationships [that is, “relations”] of production that would make a revolution imperative or possible (viewing the country as a whole, unique and isolated) might not exist objectively,” these contradictions do exist on a world scale (Guevara’s “The Meaning of Socialist Planning,” found in Silverman, Man and Socialism, 103) is also relevant to the charge of voluntarism: the attempt to carry out a revolution in circumstances in which a contradiction between the forces and relations of production has yet to occur is surely a less “voluntaristic” enterprise if these circumstances are embedded within a larger system in which such a contradiction does exist and makes a revolution necessary and unavoidable. In short, assuming that there is some organic relationship between the larger (macro) system and the local (micro) conditions, one is at least appealing to objective circumstances on some level.
The Political Theory of Che Guevara Page 29
