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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