The Political Theory of Che Guevara

by Llorente, Renzo Tramer

  86. “On Production Costs and the Budgetary System,” found in Bertram Silverman, ed., Man and Socialism in Cuba: The Great Debate (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 121.

  87. Karl Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft of 1857–1858), in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1987), 29:91.

  88. I discuss this topic in the next chapter.

  89. “On Socialist Competition and Sugar Production,” in Guevara, Venceremos!, 337.

  90. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, 499; see also 500.

  91. Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1990), 26:381; Anti-Dühring, 87.

  92. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique, 263–64.

  93. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 88.

  94. See, for example, “Reunión bimestral, septiembre 12 de 1964,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:521.

  95. Ernest Mandel, “El debate económico en Cuba durante el periodo 1963–1964,” in El Gran Debate, ed. David Deutschmann and Javier Salado (Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2006), 315.

  96. Georg Lukács, Record of a Life, ed. István Eörsi, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Verso Editions, 1983), 172. For one passage in which Guevara also stresses that socialism is a merely “transitory state,” see “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 337.

  97. Ibid., 342.

  98. See, for example, “On the Budgetary Finance System,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 195; and see also “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 122. I return to this question in chapter 6.

  99. Guevara is, in any case, hardly alone among Marxists in attaching great importance to moral transformation. As the young Lukács wrote, “the transition from the old society to the new implies, not merely an economic and institutional, but also and at the same time a moral transformation” (from “The Moral Mission of the Communist Party,” found in Georg Lukács, Tactics and Ethics, 1919–1929, trans. Michael McColgan [London and New York: Verso, 2014], 66; emphasis in the original).

  100. Quoted in Andrew Sinclair, ed., Viva Che! The Strange Death and Life of Che Guevara (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2006), 118.

  101. Leopoldo Zea’s “El Che y el hombre nuevo,” found in Almeida et al., Che siempre, 153.

  102. For example, Manuel Galich’s “Che: Encarnación del hombre nuevo,” in ibid., 177; Marta Harnecker’s “Marta, viento cálido,” an interview by Iosu Perales, found in Iosu Perales, ed., Querido Che (Madrid: Editorial Revolución, S.A.L., 1987), 73; Borrego, Camino, 225; Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, “Sobre el hombre nuevo,” in Letra con filo (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1983), 2:566; and Hilda Gadea’s “A Ernesto Che Guevara,” found in Almeida et al., Che siempre, 173.

  103. Francisco Fernández Buey, “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, ayer y hoy,” introduction to Escritos revolucionarios, by Ernesto Che Guevara, ed. Francisco Fernández Buey (Madrid: Libros de la Catarata, 1999), 17.

  104. Ernesto Che Guevara, “La conferencia de prensa del nueve de agosto en el Playa Hotel,” in Para dar vuelta el mate: 1961, Ernesto Che Guevara en Uruguay, ed. Asdrúbal Pereira Cabrera (Havana: Editora Política, 2012), 1:350. Orlando Borrego confirms that until the end of 1962, Guevara’s workday normally lasted until 2 or 3 in the morning, and some of his colleagues remained at work until Guevara left. In early 1963, mindful of the toll that this routine was taking on him and his colleagues, Guevara proposed that they work no later than 1 a.m. (Orlando Borrego, Che: Recuerdos en ráfaga [Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2004], 17). As Fidel Castro rightly said of Guevara at the massive tribute to Guevara in Havana shortly after his assassination, “for him there were no days of rest, for him there were no hours of rest!” (Castro, “In Tribute,” 23).

  105. For some examples of this commitment, see Helen Yaffe, Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 71.

  106. “Entrega de premios a ganadores en la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:80.

  107. “At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 342.

  108. Fidel Castro, “Las ideas del Che son de una vigencia absolua y total,” in El pensamiento económico de Ernesto Che Guevara, by Carlos Tablada (Panama City: Ruth Casa Editorial, 2005), 85.

  109. Guevara, Bolivian Diary, 208.

  Chapter 2

  The present chapter incorporates a small amount of material from my essay “‘Socialism and Man in Cuba’ Revisited,” International Critical Thought 5, no. 3 (2015).

  1. Found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 220 and 221.

  2. Cited in Ralph Miliband, Socialism for a Sceptical Age (London and New York: Verso, 1995), 135.

  3. In this connection, see Melvin L. Kohn and Carmi Schooler, Work and Personality: An Inquiry Into the Impact of Social Stratification (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1983). In light of his comprehensive review of the social-science literature on work, Robert E. Lane concludes that “working activities are the best agents of well-being . . . and the best sources of cognitive development, a sense of personal control, and self-esteem available in economic life, better than a higher standard of living, and, I believe, better than what is offered by leisure” (Robert E. Lane, The Market Experience [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 335).

  4. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 2:212.

  5. One reason that work is so important to Marxism is that it is centrally connected with equality, community, and self-realization, which are, as G. A. Cohen has pointed out, the “values . . . integral to the Marxist belief structure” (G. A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality [New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], 5).

  6. For a classic statement of this view, see Marx and Engels, German Ideology, 31–32; see also Engels, Anti-Dühring, 277–78.

  7. Karl Marx, “On the Hague Congress,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1988), 23:255.

  8. “A New Culture of Work,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 150; see also “Memoria Anual 1963: Conclusiones,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:714.

  9. Karl Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft of 1857–1858), in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1986), 28:530. Guevara describes the way in which work is generally perceived under capitalism as “a sad duty” (“To Be a Young Communist,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 164).

  10. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in ibid., 220; see also “To Be a Young Communist,” found in ibid., 163; “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 128; and “Speech to Medical Students and Health Workers,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 118. For brief statements of Marx’s view, see, for example, Outlines, 28:530; and “Draft of an Article on Friedrich List’s Book Das Nationale System der Politischen Oekonomie,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 4:278.

  11. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 221–22; see also 220; “The Working Class and the Industrialization of Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 238; and “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 469: “what enslaves man is not work but rather his failure to possess the means of production.”

  12. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 219. Guevara was, incidentally, also mindful of the alienation caused by lack of work, a major problem at the beginning of the Cuban
Revolution, given the high levels of unemployment in Cuba prior to 1959. In this connection, see, for example, “Encuentro Nacional Azucarero,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:108; and “Inauguración 2da. etapa fábrica de alambre de púas,” found in ibid., 5:173.

  13. As Rosa Luxemburg succinctly puts it, “If we establish in this way a nation of workers, where everybody works for everyone, for the public good and benefit, then work itself must be organized quite differently” (“The Socialization of Society,” found in Luxemburg, The Luxemburg Reader, 347). For one of Guevara’s explicit references to a new organization of work, see “XI Congreso Nacional Obrero,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:535.

  14. “Reunión bimestral, marzo 10 de 1962,” found in ibid., 6:211; “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 220; see also “Discurso en la inauguración de la planta beneficiadora de caolín, Isla de Pinos,” found in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, 8:84.

  15. See, for example, “Fragmento de la entrevista concedida al periódico El-Taliah (La Vanguardia) de El Cairo, abril de 1965,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 424; and “Reunión bimestral, julio 14 de 1962,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:276. For Marxist statements on the obligation to work, see, for example, Marx and Engels, Manifesto, 505; Frederick Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1990), 27:201; Vladimir I. Lenin, “How to Organise Competition,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 26:414; and Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961), 135.

  16. “Sobre las normas de trabajo y la escala salarial,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:597.

  17. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 210; see also 209 and 197.

  18. “A los obreros premiados por haberse destacado en la producción,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:336.

  19. “XI Congreso Nacional Obrero,” found in ibid., 3:528–29.

  20. “A New Culture of Work,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 146 and 150; “Entrega de premios a obreros más destacados julio,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:262; “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 308. (the relevant Spanish word is translated here as “necessity”).

  21. “En la Universidad de Montevideo,” found in ibid., 3:336.

  22. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 211; see also “The Cadre: Backbone of the Revolution,” found in ibid., 157, where Guevara refers to a stage in which “the advance of socialist consciousness begins making work and total devotion to the cause of the people into a necessity.”

  23. “XI Congreso Nacional Obrero,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:535; “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 469.

  24. “A los funcionarios y empleados del Ministerio de Industrias,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:480.

  25. “To Be a Young Communist,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 161; see also “Inauguración 2da. etapa fábrica de alambre de púas,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:155.

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

  27. “On the Budgetary Finance System,” in ibid., 199 (emphasis in the original); see also “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” found in Apuntes críticos, 170. For discussion of the production norms and, above all, salary scale, see Yaffe, Economics, 95ff.

  28. Vladimir I. Lenin, “A Great Beginning: Heroism of the Workers in the Rear; ‘Communist Subbotniks,’” in Collected Works, vol. 29 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965). Guevara’s Apuntes filosóficos, 236, makes it clear that he was familiar with Lenin’s text, but Guevara appears to have first read the essay long after he had himself begun advocating and practicing voluntary labor.

  29. Yaffe, Economics, 216.

  30. The closest thing to an official definition and justification of voluntary labor, the August 1964 communiqué on the subject that Guevara drafted together with three collaborators, does not state that physical labor alone counts as voluntary labor (“On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 477). Still, Guevara clearly regarded physical labor as the most valuable type of voluntary labor, as the information in the following sentence indicates. In connection with this point, see also Borrego, Camino, 115, and Ángel Arcos Bergnes, Evocando al Che (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2007), 169.

  31. Tirso W. Sáenz, El Che ministro: Testimonio de un colaborador (Havana: Ciencias Sociales, 2005), 234.

  32. Borrego, Camino, 115.

  33. “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 128. For texts in which Guevara remarks that the economic value of voluntary labor is not the important consideration, see “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 469 and 474; and “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 305.

  34. “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 480; “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:246.

  35. “Reunión bimestral, marzo 10 de 1962,” found in ibid., 6:183. For some other statements of the same idea, see, for example, “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 305; “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 469; and “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:249. Luiz Bernardo Pericás maintains that Guevara initally attached relatively little importance to the “educational” aspects of voluntary labor (as opposed to its economic benefits) but that this changed over time (Pericás, Che, 192). This interpretation is, in my view, untenable.

  36. “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 128; see also “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:249.

  37. “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 5 de 1964,” in ibid., 6:563. Elena Díaz and Delia Luisa López are two commentators who rightly point out that voluntary labor is, for Guevara, an expression of nonalienated labor (“Ernesto Che Guevara: Aspectos de su pensamiento ético,” in Pensar al Che, ed. Alfredo Prieto González [Havana: Editorial José Martí, 1989], 2:191).

  38. Marx, “Gotha,” 87.

  39. “Homenaje a macheteros del MININD,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:169; “Clausura de la Asamblea de Producción de la Gran Habana,” found in ibid., 3:449.

  40. “Durante trabajo voluntario en la textilera ‘Camilo Cienfuegos,’” in ibid., 4:260; “Our Industrial Tasks,” in Guevara, Venceremos!, 289.

  41. “Reunión bimestral, septiembre 12 de 1964,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:522; “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in ibid., 4:245.

  42. The other elements were production, training, and worker emulation (“Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in ibid., 4:235).

  43. “Plenaria Nacional Azucarera [b],” in ibid., 4:354 and 360; “Clausura del Consejo de la CTC,” in ibid., 3:127. In the same title, see also “Homenaje a trabajadores y técnicos más destacados en el año 1962,” 4:422; and “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” 4:75.

  44. “On Creating a New Attitude,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 476. (This phrase comes from a communiqué written jointly by Guevara and three of his colleagues.) See also Carta a Luis Corvea, 14 de marzo de 1964, found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 1:442; “Entrevista a la revista Econom
ía mundial y relaciones internacionales,” in ibid., 5:117; and “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 305.

  45. Arcos Bergnes, Evocando, 229–30.

  46. See, for example, Luis Báez, “No te puedes separar de Fidel,” interview by Pedro de La Hoz, in Como el primer día, ed. Pedro de La Hoz (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2008), 47; Korda [Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez], “La foto que ha recorrido el mundo,” interview by Alicia Elizundia, in Bajo la piel del Che, ed. Alicia Elizundia (Havana: Ediciones La Memoria, Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau, 2005), 139; and “Un montón de memorias,” found in Fernández Retamar, Cuba defendida, 165.

  47. “Conferencia en el salón de actos del Ministerio de Industrias,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:397.

  48. “Fragmento de la entrevista concedida al periódico El-Taliah (La Vanguardia) de El Cairo, abril de 1965,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 431; see also “On the Budgetary Finance System,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 194: “In our view, direct material incentives and consciousness are contradictory terms.” Elsewhere in the same essay, Guevara refers to “the individualistic way of thinking that direct material incentives instill in consciousness” as “acting as a brake on the development of man as a social being” (ibid., 201).

  49. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in ibid., 217; see also Ernesto Che Guevara to José Medero Mestre, February 26, 1964, in ibid., 377.

  50. “Graduación en la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:320; “Entrega de premios a ganadores de la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” found in ibid., 4:70.

  51. “On Party Militancy,” found in Guevara, Venceremos!, 343; “Con los visitantes latinoamericanos,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:482; “Reunión bimestral, octubre 12 de 1963,” found in ibid., 6:388.

  52. Ernesto Che Guevara to José Medero Mestre, February 26, 1964, in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 377.