http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/97-10cari/Che:_Lessons_of_the_Struggle
Che: Lessons of the Struggle
id OAA23937; Sat, 4 Oct 1997 14:58:25 -0400
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
source: In Defense of Marxism, September 1997
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~socappeal/che.html
First published in its full version in Spanish by El Militante
(http://www.arrakis.es/~elmilit )
30th anniversary of Che Guevara's death
CHE: LESSONS OF THE STRUGGLE
Thirty years after his brutal death at the hands of the Bolivian, CIA
backed, armed forces, Che Guevara's face remains one of the most
recognised in the world. Posters of him adorn student's rooms, T-Shirts
carry his likeness - he remains an icon not only in Latin America but
throughout the West, especially amongst the youth. The Bolivian hatchetmen
were so afraid of him that, after he had been shot, they cut off his hands
so that they could 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 life and death of Che, we
print below a major extract of an article by Miguel Campos from Spain.
This October marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Ernesto Che
Guevara. The media will try to present Che as an interesting historical
figure, with little political meaning for present day society. For youth
and the labour movement this anniversary should be an opportunity to find
out more and debate the ideas of this revolutionary - both good and bad -
and try to draw out the lessons for the struggle to transform society
today. This article is a contribution to this.
Che was born in 1928 in the Argentinean city of Rosario. His father was a
builder and architect and his mother owned some land. Several trips around
Latin America together with his work as a doctor put him in close
proximity with the enormous injustices which this continent still faces.
Just one example: in the 19 countries of Latin America, 1.74% of the land
owners own 64.9% of the land while 72.6% own just 3.74%. Like many other
students in the 50s and 60s, Che was haunted by the misery of the masses,
radicalised by the appalling backwardness and dependence on imperialism of
their countries and - influenced by the rise in labour movement and
peasant struggles - tried to find a revolutionary way to resolve this
situation.
The communist parties in Latin America, basing themselves on the links
with the Russian Revolution and the heroism of their members in factories
and in the countryside, had managed to win a certain influence (especially
in the labour movement) and had become a point of reference for
revolutionary struggle. But the strategy forced upon them by Moscow led
the leaders of these parties to support and even participate in bourgeois
governments and movements in a number of countries. It is not generally
known and it might now seem amazing that the Stalinist leadership of the
Cuban CP participated in the bourgeois government of Batista (the dictator
latter overthrown by Castro and Che) in 1942 and later on when Castro and
Che launched their guerrilla movement they were attacked by the Communist
Party who made all kind of accusations. Razl Castro was expelled from the
Party for opposing this policy of class collaboration.
As a result, despite the honesty and militancy of the communist rank and
file, the CPs were weakened. Many revolutionary opportunities were lost
and in some cases the very same "progressive" bourgeois governments
supported by the CPs returned the favour by outlawing 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 idea of guerrilla warfare in the countryside. Che
was to play a key role in the development of the guerrillist strategy.
Given the vacuum that there was, because of the mistakes of the leaders of
the working class parties and unions, the Latin American revolutionaries,
in an instinctive way, tried to look for a way forward. Many resorted to
the tactic of direct armed clashes against the state by a vanguard of
revolutionaries, hoping thereby to stimulate the peasantry and to spread
the guerrilla "foco" until it reached the level of an insurrection able to
take power.
In Cuba during 1958, the Batista dictatorship - backed by the USA - was in
complete disarray. Support for the guerrillas was growing rapidly, and the
government had problems even amongst soldiers and army officers, many of
whom were deserting or joining the guerrillas. The situation finally
forced Batista to leave the country in. Faced with the possibility of
another coup by the top army generals and with the weakness of the
guerrilla army in taking power on its own, Castro was forced to issue a
call for a general strike. The Havana working class brought the city to a
halt for a week. This was the key factor in overthrowing the regime.
Castro declared a new government and the victory of the 25 month armed
struggle on January 2nd 1959.
Heroic
The guerrilla army, after a heroic struggle against Batista had won
enormous authority and support. Its first move was to form a coalition
government of all democratic parties in order to carry through the
democratisation of the regime. In reality, the ideas of the 26 of July
Movement (the name adopted by the guerrillas), founded, amongst others by
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were not a socialist programme. In fact, the
stated aims of the Movement were to overthrow the dictator and reinstate
the Cuban 1942 Constitution. This meant a bourgeois democracy with
democratic reforms and broad social improvements. Fidel, once in power,
tried to reassure the association of bank owners, asking for their
collaboration in order to modernise the economy and promising them that he
had "no intention of nationalising any industry". His revolutionary ideas
changed and became more radical under the pressure of events. In carrying
through his democratic revolutionary programme he had to face up to the
reality of sabotage by the bourgeois and US imperialism and was forced to
deepen the revolution, nationalising the commanding heights of the
economy.
Once in power, Fidel and Che realised that the dependent and backward
framework of Cuban capitalism was utterly insufficient to allow even the
mildest of reforms. The working masses were demanding democratic rights,
higher wages and conditions, higher living standards, etc. The peasants
started to occupy the land. US imperialism and the national bourgeois knew
that the slightest taste of democracy, in a context of a revolutionary
awakening of the masses, is not compatible with maintaining capitalist
exploitation and their profits and organised a boycott of the
revolutionary government.
The resulting regime of nationalised and planned economy was an enormous
step forward for the Cuban people. Industry grew by 50% between 1959 and
1965. Illiteracy, hunger and hundreds of diseases which had previously
devastated the masses were eradicated. This advances gives an idea of the
greatness of the revolutionary conquests and explain the survival 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 the international arena. Any revolutionary worthy of the name must, as
a duty, defend the conquests of the Cuban revolution against imperialism
(both the blockade by US imperialism and the attempt of European
imperialism and pro-capitalist layers within Cuba to restore capitalism
gradually). At the same time we must understand that only the spreading of
the revolution to other countries, especially the advanced capitalist
countries, can guarantee the consolidation and final victory of the
revolution.
In fact, during the first years of the revolution there were constant
tensions between a section of the Cuban leaders (mainly Che) and the
Russian bureaucracy, who saw with fear the possible extension of the Cuban
revolution to Latin America (something which would serve 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 the degenerate bureaucracy in Moscow). The tension mounted and grew
bigger: on the speed of nationalisations, on the lack of support of the
Russian bureaucracy to the economies of underdeveloped countries
(denounced by Che in the Second Afro Asian Economic Seminar in 1965), but,
above all, on the policy by Moscow of putting a brake on the spreading of
the revolution to the whole of Latin America and countries in Asia and
Africa (examples of this are the Second Havana Declaration by Che, the
Cuban support to the guerrillas of Douglas Bravo in Venezuela who were
opposed to the official line of the pro-Moscow Venezuelan CP, etc.).
In 1964, in an interview with his friend, the journalist Eduardo Galeano,
Che stated that "the role of the Communist parties is to be the vanguard
of the revolution, but unfortunately, as it happens, in most of Latin
America they are at the rearguard of it" (Entrevistas y artmculos,
Eduardo Galeano). But he did not draw all the necessary conclusions from
this.
Che, instinctively, draws the conclusion that revolution must be spread
but he is not prepared to accept that, if this is not done (and the
Russian bureaucracy kept on putting obstacles 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 in appreciating the
political situation in Brazil, but it will never distort the path of the
revolution."
The result, once again, will be a heroic and revolutionary answer, but one
which falls into the idealistic mistake of substituting the role of the
working class for the actions of him and his followers.
Che left Cuba and tried to organise revolt first in the Congo and then
Bolivia in order to repeat the method of the guerrilla "foco". But the
victory of guerrilla warfare in Cuba and later Vietnam was the result of a
combination of uniquely favourable conditions which are not normally
present.
Observers
One of the consequences of the guerrilla struggle, as a fundamental method
of taking power, is that the working class is relegated to the role of a
mere observer. The result is a war against the bourgeois state which
bleeds dry the ranks of the revolutionaries and sows demoralisation
amongst the masses, especially amongst the workers, as they do not find
revolutionary leadership.
In Bolivia the attempt of Che to spread the revolution came up against the
opposition of the USSR and the Stalinist leaders of the Bolivian CP.
Bolivia had (and still has) a strong and powerful working class which had
already gone through many revolutionary experiences. Thus the attempt of
Che to develop the guerrilla "foco" from the mountains 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 anyone offering the workers a revolutionary way forward. The
guerrilla group, isolated, was then brutally smashed by the army and Che
himself killed in an ambush on October 9th 1967. His body was put on
public display the following day in Villa Grande, Bolivia. A few years
after, 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
separation from the working class, made inevitable by the military
struggle in the jungle or the mountains, has a pernicious effect. As the
revolution is not led by the working class but carried through by the
guerrillas, the mechanisms of workers power and democracy have not been
built during the revolutionary process by the masses themselves. The
bourgeois state is destroyed but when the guerrillas take power that state
is not replaced by a democratic power structure which would allow the
participation of the masses in the process of decision 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 the state meant a strict top-down chain of command, needed for
military struggle, the necessary secrecy in decision taking, etc. Che
himself explained how the leaders of the July 26th Movement had only had
two meetings before taking power. Carlos Franqui, one of the leaders of
the July 26th Movement explains in his book "Diary of the Cuban
Revolution": "We were studying one of Che's books, 'Foundations of
Leninism' by Stalin. The three of us had a very heated discussion about
it. Che defended the book and I was attacking it. Fidel's opinion was
final: 'A revolution in order not to divide itself and be defeated needs a
leader. It is better to have one bad leader than twenty good ones.'"
These characteristics can be controlled when the leadership of the
movement is in the hands of the proletariat, organised as a class with
mass democratic meetings in every factory and an elected leadership. But
if this is not the case, the undemocratic nature of a military leadership
transfers itself over to the organisation of the state after the seizure
of power. In contrast with the yearly conferences celebrated by the
Bolsheviks even under civil war conditions (a point Lenin stressed time
and again), when the Cuban guerrilla movement transformed itself into the
Cuban Communist Party in 1965, in the following 30 years they only held 4
conferences! Industrial directors are in charge of all aspects of the
administration of factories and they are not under any control by the
workers but are appointed by the Ministry of Industry. There is no
mechanism for elections, accountability or right to recall of officers at
any level.
But the main factor was the isolation of the revolution. With all its
progressive aspects and despite being a step forward for the masses, the
Cuban regime was not socialism. By nationalising the economy, Che and
Fidel were putting down the foundation stone of a workers state that
should have led to the transition towards this goal. But with the delay of
the revolution in Latin America and the advanced countries, the attempt to
build socialism in one country lead instead to a closer relationship
between the Cuban government and the Kremlin. In 1968 Fidel supported the
sending of Russian tanks to Prague, in the 80s the repression in Poland
(and more recently the smashing of the Tianamen movement in China), and
the USSR policy of opposing the advance of the revolution with the
nationalisation of the economy in Chile under Allende and in Nicaragua
under the Sandinistas.
Marxists fight to defend Cuba, but at the same time we fight for a
political revolution which would allow the workers to take control of the
state and struggle for a world revolution. This is the only way to really
defend the Cuban revolution. The collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe
and the steps towards capitalism in Russia are a warning of the
catastrophe that would occurr for Cuban workers and youth after any
attempt to restore capitalism
Legacy
Today, thirty years after the death in struggle of Che, his revolutionary
legacy is more relevant than ever. The Latin American and world
revolutions are still to be carried through and the best contribution we
can make to them is to learn from the example of revolutionary honesty,
heroism and selfless sacrifice of this great revolutionary, but, even more
so, from his mistakes. The Latin American labour movement is on the
offensive with impressive general strikes and movements: Argentina,
Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Puerto Rico, etc. In Europe, in the
US, in Japan, the crisis of world capitalism grows deeper. This system
cannot offer us anything but misery, exploitation and corruption. The
magnificent struggles in France, Belgium, and South Korea herald the new
epoch. Today, more than ever, the road to the transformation of society is
the road of struggle within the labour movement to oppose capitalism with
a socialist programme based on the world revolution, the only programme
which can take the working class, the peasantry and other exploited
sections of society to a classless society.
*
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