WeeklyWorker

30.10.1997

Revolutionary internationalist

As Cuba celebrates the life of Che Guevara, Derek Hunter draws up a communist balance sheet

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born on June 14 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, into a wealthy middle class family. He studied medicine at Buenos Aires university, qualifying as a doctor in 1953. After his studies, he travelled extensively in southern and central America. Being appalled by the social conditions, Guevara’s revolutionary views began to develop. In common with many other Latin American leftists he gravitated to Guatemala, where a confrontation was brewing between the left reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz and the US.

In 1952, Arbenz had enacted a radical land reform. The property of the US United Fruit Company and the land holdings of the local oligarchy had been nationalised. Guevara became immersed in political activity in Guatemala. According to a recently published biography, Guevara was highly critical of Arbenz for the latter’s failure to organise and arm a people’s militia to defend the country against the US threat. He also attacked the communist parties of the region for their rejection of armed struggle and for “moving away from the working masses” by engaging in tactical alliances in order to win positions in bourgeois parliaments and governments (JL Anderson Che Guevara, a revolutionary life London 1997, p132). 

In June 1954, a CIA-organised invasion of mercenaries took place from Honduras. Guevara participated in the resistance, which was soon overcome by the invaders and their internal collaborators. Guevara took refuge in the Argentine embassy and then, in August 1954, he escaped to Mexico.

There he made contact with the group of Cuban exiles led by Fidel Castro, the July 26 Movement, named after the date in 1953 of their failed attack on the Moncada barracks in Cuba. Without hesitation, Guevara enlisted in the guerrilla expedition Castro was planning to overthrow the Cuban dictator, Batista. The Cubans gave him the nickname ‘Che’, a familiar form of address in Argentina. In November 1956, Che was the only non-Cuban of 82 guerrillas who embarked for Cuba in the yacht, ‘Granma’. As they landed on December 2, they were spotted and attacked by Batista’s air force. Just 20 men survived, regrouping in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

Che started the campaign as the doctor, soon becoming a platoon commander and, in July 1957, being promoted to commandante, a rank equivalent to major, (J Gerassi [ed] Venceremos London 1981, p13). Witnesses testify to a revolutionary of great bravery, and with a determination to lead from the front. Despite his physical frailty - he was a severe sufferer from asthma and other allergic conditions - Che often undertook the most dangerous military operations himself and he was wounded several times. He was also adamant in refusing to accept privileges, and he insisted on sharing duties with his troops. At the same time, he did not shy from enforcing harsh discipline. Anderson reveals a diary entry by Che, describing his personal execution of a traitor in the early days of the campaign, (ibid p237).

From the end of 1954 in letters to his family Guevara had been describing himself as a communist and a Marxist. Anderson maintains that there were considerable political conflicts between Che and much of the leadership of Castro’s July 26 Movement. In a letter written in 1957, Che stated: “I belong to those who believe that the solution to the world’s problems lies behind the so-called iron curtain. I see this movement as one of the many inspired by the bourgeoisie’s desire to free themselves from the economic chains of imperialism”, (JL Anderson op cit p757). At the same time, Castro was writing articles defending free enterprise, arguing against nationalisation, and for a junta of middle class professionals to lead a new Cuba. Che told a journalist, in mid-1958, that Fidel was a “revolutionary nationalist”, whereas he was a “Marxist” (ibid p309).

In mid-1958, Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos each led a column westwards from the mountains to the centre of the island. At this time there were still fewer than 600 guerrillas in the rebel army. They faced a military force of 35,000 men, equipped with modern US weaponry. In the ensuing six months they successfully extended the guerrilla operations to much of Cuba. In December 1958, Che commanded in the decisive battle of Santa Clara and on January 1 1959 the guerrillas walked into Havana.             

Following the victory Che held several posts in the revolutionary government: leader of a number of foreign delegations; supreme prosecutor in trials of war criminals of the Batista regime; head of the industrial department of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform; president of the National Bank; and finally, minister of industry. During April 1961, Che resumed his military role in the counterattack against the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Then, in April 1965, Guevara resigned all his Cuban positions and renounced his Cuban citizenship, in order to participate in revolutionary struggles abroad.  Gerassi ventures that Che “is the only example in the history of social revolutions of a man having reached the top, and then voluntarily starting from the bottom again”.

Che and thirteen Cubans, arrived in Congo in late April 1965, to work with the Congolese Liberation army. Anderson describes how Che found the CLA to be “ill-disciplined, ill-motivated, poorly managed and badly trained”. He was contemptuous of the army’s commanders, including Laurent Kabila. By October, Che had given up hope of reforming the army and proposed setting up a new one, commanded by himself. This was blocked however and, soon after, a government offensive began. Following a coup in mid-October, a deal was brokered by the Organisation of African States between the new government and the rebels. This involved the withdrawal of foreign troops. The Kremlin appealed to Che and the Cubans to end their intervention. Che stalled, but on October 24, his main camp was overrun. Several of the Cubans were killed before their evacuation from Congo a month later.

Che’s next campaign, in Bolivia, commenced in November 1966. The intervention was opposed by the Bolivian Communist Party leadership of Mario Monje, who had unsuccessfully appealed to the Kremlin to prevent the Cubans going in. Although Monje subsequently agreed to provide logistical support from the towns, this was not delivered.

A better response was forthcoming from the Bolivian miners. Shortly after the guerrilla struggle began, workers from three principal mining centres held a special assembly at which they agreed to provide “moral, material and physical support”. They sent men and materials, and 25,000 miners donated a day’s wages. The miners’ resolution provoked a swift reaction from the military dictatorship. Ten days after the miners’ assembly, on the occasion of a fiesta, the army attacked, killing at least 90 people, including women and children.

The campaign suffered a series of setbacks. The guerrillas’ presence was several times betrayed to the Bolivian army by unsympathetic peasants, and the rebels were fighting for survival throughout 1967. Finally, on October 8, with only 17 guerrillas left, an ambush took place near the village of La Higuera. Most of the guerrilla column were killed. Che was wounded and captured, and was murdered by his captors the following day.

Che’s involvement in the guerrilla strategy had started with a victory and ended with two fiascos.

In 1960 Guevara wrote a work entitled Guerrilla warfare, which is a manual on the subject. In the introduction, he suggested that the Cuban revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America:

“1. popular forces can win a war against the army;

“2. it is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolutions exist; the insurrection can create them;

“3. in underdeveloped America, the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting”.

He went on, however, to explain that there is a necessary minimum of objective and subjective conditions without which guerrilla warfare is not practicable: “Where a government has come to power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or otherwise, and maintains an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted ... People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate” (C Guevara Guerrilla warfare London 1969, p13). He went on to assert: “Guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people ... Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms ... The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition” (ibid p15). He explains that, because the area of action for the guerrilla is the countryside, and because in these places the struggle for reforms is aimed primarily at changing the social form of land ownership, the guerrilla fighter is above all an agrarian revolutionary. He cites China:

“The China of Mao begins as an outbreak of worker groups in the south, which is defeated and almost annihilated. It succeeds in establishing itself and begins its advance only when, after the long march from Yenan, it takes up its base in rural territories and makes agrarian reform its fundamental goal” (ibid p17).

In an epilogue to Guerrilla warfare, Che presents an ‘Analysis of the Cuban situation, its present and its future’. He starts: “A year has now passed since the flight of the dictator ... This national revolution, fundamentally agrarian, having the enthusiastic support of workers, of people from the middle class, and today even of owners of industry, has acquired a continental and worldwide importance.” Che makes comparison with what he calls the “three other great agrarian reforms in America - Mexico, Guatemala and Bolivia”, and he identifies that the most important distinction is the decision to carry the Cuban reforms all the way, without concessions or exceptions of any kind: “This total agrarian reform respects no rights that are not rights of the people. The force of law falls equally on the United Fruit Company, as on the big Cuban landowners.” He goes on to describe the levying on the mining companies of a 25% tax on the amount of product exported. Such measures are causing the great monopolies to cast worried looks on Cuba, he says. But of far greater significance in forming the views of the monopolists about Cuba, he suggests, is the example Cuba sets to the rest of the Latin American peoples, and indeed to the “inferior peoples of the world”. “This Cuban example is bad ... and monopoly cannot sleep quietly while this bad example remains at its feet ... It must be destroyed.”

Che moves on to analyse the possible actions that might be taken against Cuba by US interests.  Many of his speculations proved to be well founded. He lists: denial of credit; liquidation of the Cuban sugar quota in the United States; denial of raw materials, such as cotton and petroleum; assassination attempts on leaders of the revolution; pressure on arms suppliers, which would force Cuba to buy in so-called communist countries and help the US to brand it a communist agent; isolation - the US might attack first those countries that support Cuba, such as Venezuela; and finally, military intervention.

He develops his most likely scenario for military intervention - an attack by exiles and mercenaries, possibly with Dominican backing. Che saw two fundamental factors weighing against the chances of enemy victory in such an intervention. Firstly, international solidarity - hundreds of millions of people would protest against such imperialist aggression. Secondly, the ability of the Cuban people to apply the guerrilla concept to the fight for national defence, should the enemy first destroy its army organisation in frontal combat.

Che believed that it was not possible to make peace with imperialism. He rejected the Kremlin’s strategy of ‘peaceful coexistence’ and, as Anderson notes, “became extremely critical of the western communist parties for adopting a peaceful parliamentary strategy for power”, which would deliver the working class bound hand and foot over to the ruling class (JL Anderson op cit p545).

Che was committed to a generalised programme of anti-imperialist wars aimed at US-backed states. In 1962 and 1963 he stepped up his efforts to organise guerrilla forces for wars in Argentina, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Peru. This alarmed the Kremlin, which wanted to avoid another run-in with the US after the 1962 missile crisis. Che inevitably began to diverge from the Cuban leadership, which found itself compelled to support the Soviet Union’s foreign policy. As Anderson puts it:

“Fidel’s goal was to consolidate Cuba’s economic well-being and his own political survival, and for that he was willing to compromise. Che’s mission was to spread the socialist revolution” (ibid p587).

In July 1964, Castro offered to end aid for Latin American revolutionary movements if hostilities against Cuba ceased. Contemporaneously, Che made a public speech in Santa Clara arguing that it was the common duty of all Cubans to fight imperialism “whenever it appears and with all the weapons at our disposal”, (ibid p603). In economic policy too, he differed from much of the Cuban leadership, in his opposition to material incentives to workers in production. Che favoured the development of the collective consciousness of the workers, the creation of the “communist man”. It was, most probably, these major differences, and his isolation within the leadership, that led to his decision to leave Cuba for direct involvement in foreign guerrilla wars.

What is the communist balance sheet on Che?

On the negative side:

Che’s life is an inspiration for all genuine communists and revolutionaries. His ideas and works ought to be studied as part of the history of the anti-imperialist struggle of the 20th century. Nevertheless they are of limited value in guiding us in our tasks as communists today.