The Political Theory of Che Guevara
The Political Theory of Che Guevara
Renzo Llorente
London • New York
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Copyright © 2018 by Renzo Llorente
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
978-1-78348-716-5 (cloth)
978-1-78348-717-2 (paperback)
978-1-78348-718-9 (electronic)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Contents
Introduction
1 The New Human Being
The Transformation of Human Nature
The New Human Being and Communism
The Nature of the New Human Being
A Strategy of Debourgeoisification
Challenges to Guevara’s Concept of a New Human Being
Was Guevara the New Human Being?
2 The Problem of Work
Work as a Problem
Reconceiving Work
Voluntary Labor
Moral Incentives
Guevara on Work: An Assessment
Some Neglected Aspects of Guevara’s Philosophy of Work
3 Internationalism and Anti-imperialism
The Contours of Guevara’s Internationalism
Guevara’s Conception of Imperialism
Armed Struggle
Guevara’s Internationalism and Anti-imperialism Today
4 Socialism, Communism, and Revolution
Socialism and Communism
Guevara’s Conception of Revolution
Accelerating Development
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Containing the Counterrevolution
The Significance of Guevara’s Views on Socialism, Communism, and Revolution
5 Consolidating the Revolution and the Building of Socialism
The Cuban Transition to Socialism in Context
The Value of Unity
The Duties of Revolutionaries
Worker Empowerment and Workers’ Rule
Guevara’s Economic Philosophy
An Alternative Approach to Socialist Economic Management
Guevara’s Ideas on Building Socialism
6 The Guevarist Legacy
An Eclectic Marxism
Guevara’s Marxist Humanism
Marxism as a Moral Outlook
The Question of “Voluntarism”
Guevara’s Continuing Relevance
“Be like Che”
Notes
Timeline
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Bibliography
Works by Ernesto Che Guevara
Other Works Cited
About the Author
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my editors at Rowman & Littlefield International—Anna Reeve, Dhara Snowden, Rebecca Anastasi and Elaine McGarraugh—for their patience, encouragement, and guidance. I would also like to thank Saint Louis University–Madrid Campus for providing the financial support for my research in Cuba.
Timeline
June 14, 1928
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is born in Rosario, Argentina. He is the first of the five children of Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna.
May 1930
Guevara endures his first asthma attack. He will continue to suffer from asthma for the rest of his life.
1947–1953
Guevara studies medicine at the University of Buenos Aires.
January 1950
Using a motorized bicycle, Guevara journeys to various provinces in northern Argentina.
December 1951–August 1952
Accompanied by his friend Alberto Granado, Guevara travels throughout Latin America, including visits to Chile, Peru, and Colombia.
June 1953
Guevara receives his medical degree.
July 1953
Guevara begins a second trip to Latin American countries with his friend Carlos (Calica) Ferrer. The trip includes visits to Bolivia, Ecuador, and Guatemala.
December 1953
Guevara arrives in Guatemala, where he meets exiled Cuban revolutionaries.
June 1954
Guatemala’s democratically elected government, headed by president Jacobo Arbenz, is overthrown by reactionary forces supported by the United States. Guevara joins the resistance fighting against the coup d’état.
August 1954
Guevara takes refuge in the Argentine embassy in Guatemala City.
September 1954
Guevara arrives in Mexico City.
July 1955
Guevara meets Fidel Castro in Mexico City and joins Castro’s group of expeditionaries.
August 1955
Guevara marries Hilda Gadea, an exiled Peruvian economist and political activist.
February 1956
Guevara’s first child, Hildita, is born.
June 1956
Guevara is arrested by Mexican police, along with more than two dozen of the future expeditionaries, including Fidel Castro. Guevara spends several weeks in jail.
November 25, 1956
Guevara is one of the eighty-two revolutionaries aboard the Granma yacht as it leaves Tuxpan, Mexico, for Cuba.
December 2, 1956
Castro’s revolutionaries land in southeastern Cuba.
July 1957
Guevara is put in charge of the Rebel Army’s Fourth Column and promoted to comandante (“major,” but also “commander”), the Rebel Army’s highest rank.
August–December 1958
Guevara leads the invasion of the province of Las Villas and the conquest of central Cuba.
December 28, 1958
Guevara commands the Rebel Army’s forces in the decisive Battle of Santa Clara, part of the Rebels’ final offensive.
January 1, 1959
Guevara achieves victory in the Battle of Santa Clara. Dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Cuba.
January 3, 1959
Guevara assumes control of Havana’s La Cabaña military fortress.
February 9, 1959
The Council of Ministers grants Guevara Cuban citizenship.
May 1959
Guevara divorces Hilda Gadea.
June 2, 1959
Guevara marries Aleida March, whom he had met in 1958 and who had been one of his collaborators during the revolutionary war. Guevara goes on to have four children with March—Aleida, Camilo, Celia, and Ernesto.
June–September 1959
Guevara visits the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe and signs trade and cultural agreements on behalf of Cuba.
October 7, 1959
Guevara is chosen to head the Department of Industrialization at the National Institute for Agrarian Reform.
November 26, 1959
The Council of Ministers appoints Guevara president of the National Bank of Cuba.
March 4, 1960
A French ship carrying Belgian arms explodes in Havana Harbor. Apparently caused by sabotage, the explosion kills around one hundred people.
March 5, 1960
At a memorial service for the victims of the explosion the previous day, photographer Alberto Korda takes the picture that will become the single most famous photo—and image—of Guevara.
Spring 19601
Guevara publishes Guerrilla Warfare (La guerra de guerrillas).
October–December 1960
Guevara travels to various socialist countries: Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and the German Democratic Republic.
February 23, 1961
The Ministry of Industries is created, and Guevara is appointed minister.
April 16, 1961
Fidel Castro publicly declares that the Cuban Revolution is a socialist revolution.
April 17, 1961
The Bay of Pigs Invasion commences, as 1,500 mercenaries attack Cuba with US backing. Guevara is put in charge of the military in the province of Pinar del Río, in western Cuba.
April 19, 1961
The mercenaries are defeated.
August 1961
Guevara leads the Cuban delegation to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Economic and Social Council conference held in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
August–September 1962
Guevara visits the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.
October 22–28, 1962
The “Cuban Missile Crisis”: In response to Cuba’s acquisition of Soviet nuclear missiles, US president Kennedy orders a naval blockade of Cuba. In preparation for a possible US invasion, Guevara once again assumes military command of the Pinar del Río province. The crisis ends when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agrees to the withdrawal of the missiles and the United States promises not to invade Cuba.
July 1963
Guevara visits Algeria.
1963–1964
Guevara contributes several articles to an important theoretical discussion on the political economy of socialism, a discussion that would later be dubbed “the Great Debate.”
March 1964
Guevara heads the Cuban delegation to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva.
Spring 19642
Guevara publishes Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria).
November 1964
Guevara visits the Soviet Union.
December 11, 1964
Guevara addresses the United Nations General Assembly.
December 1964
Guevara leaves New York for Africa. His nearly three-month trip will include stops in Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, and Mali.
February 24, 1965
Guevara delivers a speech at the Second Economic Seminar of the Organization of Afro-Asian Solidarity.
March 1965
Guevara’s essay “Socialism and Man in Cuba” (“El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba”) is published.
March 15, 1965
Guevara returns to Cuba.
April 1, 1965
Guevara leaves Cuba for the Congo.
April 24, 1965
Guevara arrives in the Congo, where he joins rebels fighting against the government.
October 3, 1965
Fidel Castro reads Guevara’s “farewell” letter, written by Guevara six months earlier, in the course of introducing the members of the Central Committee of the newly founded Cuban Communist Party.
November 21, 1965
Guevara abandons the Congo.
November 1965–February 19663
Guevara lives, in secret, at the Cuban embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. During this period he prepares an account of his experience in the Congo, which would be published more than three decades later as Congo Diary: Episodes of the Revolutionary War in the Congo (Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria: Congo).
March–July 1966
Guevara lives, in secret, in Prague, where he continues to work on the notes that would eventully be published as Apuntes críticos a la economía política (Critical Notes on Political Economy).
July 1966
Guevara secretly returns to Cuba and goes to Pinar del Río, the location in which the volunteers who will be fighting with him in Bolivia are to undergo training.
October 23, 1966
A disguised Guevara leaves Cuba for Bolivia.
November 3, 1965
Guevara arrives in Bolivia.
March 1967
Guevara’s National Liberation Army of Bolivia (Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia) has its first engagement with the Bolivian Army.
April 1967
Guevara’s essay “Mensaje a los pueblos del mundo,” generally known in English as “Message to the Tricontinental,” is published.
October 8, 1967
During a battle at Quebrada del Yuro, a wounded Guevara is captured by the Bolivian Army.
October 9, 1967
The Bolivian Army executes Guevara in the smal
l village of La Higuera.
October 18, 1967
Fidel Castro delivers a tribute to Guevara at a mass memorial meeting held in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución (Revolution Square).
June 1997
A mass grave containing Guevara’s remains is discovered in Vallegrande, Bolivia.
July 1997
Guevara’s remains are repatriated to Cuba.
Introduction
Half a century after his death, Ernesto Che Guevara1 (1928–1967) remains a compelling and controversial figure, as is evident in both the steady stream of books and articles devoted to the revolutionary’s life and legacy and the perennial popularity of T-shirts, posters, decals, and so on bearing his image. The enduring interest in Guevara is not hard to understand. After all, people tend to associate Guevara, not without good reason, with a decade that was, at least on a cultural level, one of the most memorable periods of the twentieth century—namely, the 1960s. Indeed, if, as Ambrosio Fornet has suggested, the 1960s effectively “began” with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 19592 and, as Rafael Hernández has suggested, 1968 effectively “began” with Guevara’s execution in October 1967,3 then it turns out that Guevara was one of the central figures in the event that ushered in that decade as well as the central figure in the event that ushered in that decade’s most momentous year. It is therefore probably fair to say that Guevara was “the supreme expression of the sixties,” the image of that decade par excellence.4
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