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30th Anniversary of Che Guevara's Death

September 1997

Thirty years after his brutal death at the hands of the Bolivian, CIA backed, armedforces, Che Guevara's face remains one of the most recognised in the world. Posters of himadorn student's rooms, T-Shirts carry his likeness - he remains an icon not only in LatinAmerica but throughout the West, especially amongst the youth. The Bolivian hatchetmenwere so afraid of him that, after he had been shot, they cut off his hands so that theycould prove that he was really dead and buried him in an unmarked grave under a motorway.They feared that even in death Che could be a focal point for revolution. To mark the lifeand death of Che, we print below a major extract of an article by Miguel Campos fromSpain.

This October marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Ernesto Che Guevara. The mediawill try to present Che as an interesting historical figure, with little political meaningfor present day society. For youth and the labour movement this anniversary should be anopportunity to find out more and debate the ideas of this revolutionary - both good andbad - and try to draw out the lessons for the struggle to transform society today. Thisarticle is a contribution to this.

Che was born in 1928 in the Argentinean city of Rosario. His father was a builder andarchitect and his mother owned some land. Several trips around Latin America together withhis work as a doctor put him in close proximity with the enormous injustices which thiscontinent still faces. Just one example: in the 19 countries of Latin America, 1.74% ofthe land owners own 64.9% of the land while 72.6% own just 3.74%. Like many other studentsin the 50s and 60s, Che was haunted by the misery of the masses, radicalised by theappalling backwardness and dependence on imperialism of their countries and - influencedby the rise in labour movement and peasant struggles - tried to find a revolutionary wayto resolve this situation.

The communist parties in Latin America, basing themselves on the links with the RussianRevolution and the heroism of their members in factories and in the countryside, hadmanaged to win a certain influence (especially in the labour movement) and had become apoint of reference for revolutionary struggle. But the strategy forced upon them by Moscowled the leaders of these parties to support and even participate in bourgeois governmentsand movements in a number of countries. It is not generally known and it might now seemamazing that the Stalinist leadership of the Cuban CP participated in the bourgeoisgovernment of Batista (the dictator latter overthrown by Castro and Che) in 1942 and lateron when Castro and Che launched their guerrilla movement they were attacked by theCommunist Party who made all kind of accusations. Raúl Castro was expelled from the Partyfor opposing this policy of class collaboration.

As a result, despite the honesty and militancy of the communist rank and file, the CPswere weakened. Many revolutionary opportunities were lost and in some cases the very same"progressive" bourgeois governments supported by the CPs returned the favour byoutlawing them along with vicious repression against their members.

Shortcuts

The lack of a genuine Marxist policy forced the most radical layers of the workers,peasants and youth in Latin America to look for a shortcut to revolution through the ideaof guerrilla warfare in the countryside. Che was to play a key role in the development ofthe guerrillist strategy.

Given the vacuum that there was, because of the mistakes of the leaders of the workingclass parties and unions, the Latin American revolutionaries, in an instinctive way, triedto look for a way forward. Many resorted to the tactic of direct armed clashes against thestate by a vanguard of revolutionaries, hoping thereby to stimulate the peasantry and tospread the guerrilla "foco" until it reached the level of an insurrection ableto take power.

In Cuba during 1958, the Batista dictatorship - backed by the USA - was in completedisarray. Support for the guerrillas was growing rapidly, and the government had problemseven amongst soldiers and army officers, many of whom were deserting or joining theguerrillas. The situation finally forced Batista to leave the country in. Faced with thepossibility of another coup by the top army generals and with the weakness of theguerrilla army in taking power on its own, Castro was forced to issue a call for a generalstrike. The Havana working class brought the city to a halt for a week. This was the keyfactor in overthrowing the regime. Castro declared a new government and the victory of the25 month armed struggle on January 2nd 1959.

Heroic

The guerrilla army, after a heroic struggle against Batista had won enormous authorityand support. Its first move was to form a coalition government of all democratic partiesin order to carry through the democratisation of the regime. In reality, the ideas of the26 of July Movement (the name adopted by the guerrillas), founded, amongst others by FidelCastro and Che Guevara were not a socialist programme. In fact, the stated aims of theMovement were to overthrow the dictator and reinstate the Cuban 1942 Constitution. Thismeant a bourgeois democracy with democratic reforms and broad social improvements. Fidel,once in power, tried to reassure the association of bank owners, asking for theircollaboration in order to modernise the economy and promising them that he had "nointention of nationalising any industry". His revolutionary ideas changed and becamemore radical under the pressure of events. In carrying through his democraticrevolutionary programme he had to face up to the reality of sabotage by the bourgeois andUS imperialism and was forced to deepen the revolution, nationalising the commandingheights of the economy.

Once in power, Fidel and Che realised that the dependent and backward framework ofCuban capitalism was utterly insufficient to allow even the mildest of reforms. Theworking masses were demanding democratic rights, higher wages and conditions, higherliving standards, etc. The peasants started to occupy the land. US imperialism and thenational bourgeois knew that the slightest taste of democracy, in a context of arevolutionary awakening of the masses, is not compatible with maintaining capitalistexploitation and their profits and organised a boycott of the revolutionary government.

The resulting regime of nationalised and planned economy was an enormous step forwardfor the Cuban people. Industry grew by 50% between 1959 and 1965. Illiteracy, hunger andhundreds of diseases which had previously devastated the masses were eradicated. Thisadvances gives an idea of the greatness of the revolutionary conquests and explain thesurvival of the regime over several decades despite permanent harassment by imperialism.

But the fate of the Cuban revolution will be decided in the last analysis in theinternational arena. Any revolutionary worthy of the name must, as a duty, defend theconquests of the Cuban revolution against imperialism (both the blockade by US imperialismand the attempt of European imperialism and pro-capitalist layers within Cuba to restorecapitalism gradually). At the same time we must understand that only the spreading of therevolution to other countries, especially the advanced capitalist countries, can guaranteethe consolidation and final victory of the revolution.

In fact, during the first years of the revolution there were constant tensions betweena section of the Cuban leaders (mainly Che) and the Russian bureaucracy, who saw with fearthe possible extension of the Cuban revolution to Latin America (something which wouldserve as an example to workers all over the world, including the Russian working class,and could have lead to the establishment of a healthy workers state, a death threat to thedegenerate bureaucracy in Moscow). The tension mounted and grew bigger: on the speed ofnationalisations, on the lack of support of the Russian bureaucracy to the economies ofunderdeveloped countries (denounced by Che in the Second Afro Asian Economic Seminar in1965), but, above all, on the policy by Moscow of putting a brake on the spreading of therevolution to the whole of Latin America and countries in Asia and Africa (examples ofthis are the Second Havana Declaration by Che, the Cuban support to the guerrillas ofDouglas Bravo in Venezuela who were opposed to the official line of the pro-MoscowVenezuelan CP, etc.).

In 1964, in an interview with his friend, the journalist Eduardo Galeano, Che statedthat "the role of the Communist parties is to be the vanguard of the revolution, butunfortunately, as it happens, in most of Latin America they are at the rearguard ofit" (Entrevistas y artículos, Eduardo Galeano). But he did not draw all thenecessary conclusions from this.

Che, instinctively, draws the conclusion that revolution must be spread but he is notprepared to accept that, if this is not done (and the Russian bureaucracy kept on puttingobstacles in the way),then the character of the workers state would be affected:"Isolation might cause many effects. For example that we make a mistake inappreciating the political situation in Brazil, but it will never distort the path of therevolution."

The result, once again, will be a heroic and revolutionary answer, but one which fallsinto the idealistic mistake of substituting the role of the working class for the actionsof him and his followers.

Che left Cuba and tried to organise revolt first in the Congo and then Bolivia in orderto repeat the method of the guerrilla "foco". But the victory of guerrillawarfare in Cuba and later Vietnam was the result of a combination of uniquely favourableconditions which are not normally present.

Observers

One of the consequences of the guerrilla struggle, as a fundamental method of takingpower, is that the working class is relegated to the role of a mere observer. The resultis a war against the bourgeois state which bleeds dry the ranks of the revolutionaries andsows demoralisation amongst the masses, especially amongst the workers, as they do notfind revolutionary leadership.

In Bolivia the attempt of Che to spread the revolution came up against the oppositionof the USSR and the Stalinist leaders of the Bolivian CP. Bolivia had (and still has) astrong and powerful working class which had already gone through many revolutionaryexperiences. Thus the attempt of Che to develop the guerrilla "foco" from themountains basing himself on the peasantry did not win any support in the labour movement,which remained under the influence of the Stalinist and reformist leaders without anyoneoffering the workers a revolutionary way forward. The guerrilla group, isolated, was thenbrutally smashed by the army and Che himself killed in an ambush on October 9th 1967. Hisbody was put on public display the following day in Villa Grande, Bolivia. A few yearsafter, the Bolivian working class organised an almighty insurrection in the cities,showing its revolutionary potential, but once again it lacked a revolutionary leadership,forged and rooted in the factories with a Marxist perspective.

Even in those cases in which the guerrilla army manages to take power, its separationfrom the working class, made inevitable by the military struggle in the jungle or themountains, has a pernicious effect. As the revolution is not led by the working class butcarried through by the guerrillas, the mechanisms of workers power and democracy have notbeen built during the revolutionary process by the masses themselves. The bourgeois stateis destroyed but when the guerrillas take power that state is not replaced by a democraticpower structure which would allow the participation of the masses in the process ofdecision making at all levels, but by the military structure of the guerrillas themselves.

Command

On the other hand, the very same conditions of permanent guerrilla war against thestate meant a strict top-down chain of command, needed for military struggle, thenecessary secrecy in decision taking, etc. Che himself explained how the leaders of theJuly 26th Movement had only had two meetings before taking power. Carlos Franqui, one ofthe leaders of the July 26th Movement explains in his book "Diary of the CubanRevolution": "We were studying one of Che's books, 'Foundations of Leninism' byStalin. The three of us had a very heated discussion about it. Che defended the book and Iwas attacking it. Fidel's opinion was final: 'A revolution in order not to divide itselfand be defeated needs a leader. It is better to have one bad leader than twenty goodones.'"

These characteristics can be controlled when the leadership of the movement is in thehands of the proletariat, organised as a class with mass democratic meetings in everyfactory and an elected leadership. But if this is not the case, the undemocratic nature ofa military leadership transfers itself over to the organisation of the state after theseizure of power. In contrast with the yearly conferences celebrated by the Bolshevikseven under civil war conditions (a point Lenin stressed time and again), when the Cubanguerrilla movement transformed itself into the Cuban Communist Party in 1965, in thefollowing 30 years they only held 4 conferences! Industrial directors are in charge of allaspects of the administration of factories and they are not under any control by theworkers but are appointed by the Ministry of Industry. There is no mechanism forelections, accountability or right to recall of officers at any level.

But the main factor was the isolation of the revolution. With all its progressiveaspects and despite being a step forward for the masses, the Cuban regime was notsocialism. By nationalising the economy, Che and Fidel were putting down the foundationstone of a workers state that should have led to the transition towards this goal. Butwith the delay of the revolution in Latin America and the advanced countries, the attemptto build socialism in one country lead instead to a closer relationship between the Cubangovernment and the Kremlin. In 1968 Fidel supported the sending of Russian tanks toPrague, in the 80s the repression in Poland (and more recently the smashing of theTianamen movement in China), and the USSR policy of opposing the advance of the revolutionwith the nationalisation of the economy in Chile under Allende and in Nicaragua under theSandinistas.

Marxists fight to defend Cuba, but at the same time we fight for a political revolutionwhich would allow the workers to take control of the state and struggle for a worldrevolution. This is the only way to really defend the Cuban revolution. The collapse ofStalinism in Eastern Europe and the steps towards capitalism in Russia are a warning ofthe catastrophe that would occurr for Cuban workers and youth after any attempt to restorecapitalism

Legacy

Today, thirty years after the death in struggle of Che, his revolutionary legacy ismore relevant than ever. The Latin American and world revolutions are still to be carriedthrough and the best contribution we can make to them is to learn from the example ofrevolutionary honesty, heroism and selfless sacrifice of this great revolutionary, but,even more so, from his mistakes. The Latin American labour movement is on the offensivewith impressive general strikes and movements: Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua,Colombia, Puerto Rico, etc. In Europe, in the US, in Japan, the crisis of world capitalismgrows deeper. This system cannot offer us anything but misery, exploitation andcorruption. The magnificent struggles in France, Belgium, and South Korea herald the newepoch. Today, more than ever, the road to the transformation of society is the road ofstruggle within the labour movement to oppose capitalism with a socialist programme basedon the world revolution, the only programme which can take the working class, thepeasantry and other exploited sections of society to a classless society.

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