40 years after directing the hunt, execution and burial of Ernesto Che Guevara Lynch in Bolivia, CIA operative Gustavo Villoldo is hoping to make a killing once again when a lock of Che’s hair, his fingerprints and photos of his corpse are put on auction in Texas on 25 October this year. Villoldo is a Cuban exile who became a CIA agent after his participation in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. Che was injured and captured on 8 October 1967, when the group of guerrilla fighters he was preparing was encircled by the CIA-trained Bolivian army. He was executed on 9 October on the order of another Cuban exile, Felix Rogriguez. Having cut the lock of hair from Che’s corpse, Villoldo buried him alongside three Bolivian revolutionaries in an unmarked grave.
This auction, in US President Bush’s home state, is the most recent and crude attempt by the rich and powerful to commodify the memory of Che. His image has been violated and exploited by big business to sell watches, vodka, underwear, pop albums – the list is endless. Most of these have involved the famous headshot of Che, taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda at a funeral for Cuban civilians killed by CIA-sponsored terrorists. It is perhaps the most reproduced image in the world. And yet, despite its commercial mass production, the rich and powerful have never succeeded in depoliticising or co-opting the symbol of Che. From the mountains of Colombia to the Palestinian refugee camps, from the factories of the Philippines to anti-capitalist demonstrations in the cities of Europe and the US, Che’s image adorns the banners of those who oppose imperialism and millions who struggle for social, economic and racial justice.
Twenty years ago, Cuban president Fidel Castro predicted that ‘Che is a figure with enormous prestige. Che is a figure whose influence will grow.’ This has proved to be true, not just in Cuba where school children daily pledge to be like Che, but also throughout Latin America. On May Day in 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said: ‘Che was more than just a martyr, more than just a heroic guerrilla fighter, he was also a Minister in the Cuban government and developed many ideas on how to build the new socialist society…we must study and learn from his thoughts.’ In December 2005, newly elected President of Bolivia Evo Morales also paid tribute to Che’s legacy.
Whilst CIA terrorist Villoldo seeks to profit from his role in Che’s execution, in Bolivia the anniversary of his death will be commemorated by a new generation of revolutionaries from throughout Latin America. Most importantly, this event will reinforce a process already underway, a re-evaluation and return to Che’s ideas of building socialism. This is the most fitting tribute for an Argentinian revolutionary who became an anti-imperialist after travelling through Latin America, embraced communism in Guatemala, helped make the Revolution in Cuba, fought alongside African guerrillas in the Congo and died with Bolivians, Peruvians and Cubans in Bolivia.
Che was central in driving through structural changes which transformed Cuba from semi-colonial underdevelopment to independence and integration into the socialist bloc within two years. He was a key protagonist in the military and political consolidation of the Cuban Revolution, which was a necessary pre-condition for economic transformation. From January 1959 to January 1961 he was involved in purging the old army, formulating the Agrarian Reform Law, forging unity among internal revolutionary forces and leading the first overseas trade mission of the revolutionary government. He worked as head of the National Bank, where he secretly prepared to change the banknotes to prevent the financing of the counter-revolution and control inflation, and as head of the Department of Industrialisation during the nationalisations.
In February 1961, Che became Minister of Industries. The first half of the 1960s was a tumultuous period: nationalisations, the shift in trade relations, the introduction of state planning, the exodus of managers and professionals, the imposition of the US trade blockade, invasion and the threat of nuclear conflagration. Despite this, under Guevara’s directorship, Cuban industry stabilised, diversified and grew – testimony to his capacity for economic analysis, structural reorganisation and the mobilisation of resources.
Before Che left Cuba in 1965, the Ministry of Industries became a giant institution. In four years as Minister he: promoted education and training and devised a new national salary scale; established accounting, investment and supervision systems; set up a system of resource sharing and temporary demotion for directors; founded nine research and development institutes to apply science and technology to production; formulated policies to raise consciousness and commitment to the Revolution, whilst institutionalising psychology as an economic management tool. Among the research and development institutes which Che set up and directed were those for ‘green medicine’, nickel production, oil exploration, sugar by-products and the chemical industry, all of which continue as strong components of the Cuban economy today. In addition Che introduced computerised accounts to Cuba, promoted workers’ inventions and innovations, drove the mechanisation of agriculture, introduced the psychology of social work and created an apparatus for workers’ management of industry. Many of these projects have evolved into major areas of economic activity and social organisation in Cuba today.
Twenty years ago, Cuban President Fidel Castro said: ‘what I ask, modestly, in this 20th anniversary [of Che’s death], is that the economic ideas of Che be known; be known here, be known in Latin America, be known in the world: in the developed capitalist world, in the Third World and in the socialist world.’
On the 40th anniversary of Che’s death, we reprint an edited version of an article by David Yaffe summarising Che’s economic ideas first published in FRFI 139.
Economics & Socialism
Che’s writings on the economics and politics of the transition to socialism showed that he had a deep understanding of Marx’s Capital and, in particular, the most difficult chapters on value, money and capital. Moreover, his published works show that he was familiar with Marx’s philosophical and political writings – for example, The German Ideology and The Critique of the Gotha Programme as well as Lenin’s writings on the transition to socialism, the new economic policy, the role of the party and so on. He was also knowledgeable about the debates on the transition to socialism in the former socialist countries, as well as having practical experience of the problems confronting Cuba in its efforts to consolidate socialist development in an economy blockaded by the strongest imperialist power some 90 miles from its shores. In addition, Che was both President of the National Bank and Minister for Industry in Cuba when the socialist revolution was being consolidated. Such a record speaks for itself.
Che was a remarkable revolutionary – he was prepared to put his hand to anything if the revolution needed it. Fidel reports that when he was appointed president of the National Bank, people would say that we had asked for an economist and Che had volunteered. When asked if he was an economist, Che replied ‘Oh, I thought you said a communist’.
Plan and market
Che was a communist who rejected the current fashion of ‘market socialism’ – that planning has been proved a failure and socialist countries have to use the market. He argued quite differently. Capitalism could only be defeated by a non-market rationality. Che wrote that ‘the law of value and the plan are two terms linked by a contradiction and its resolution’. (‘Socialist Planning’ p563)1
The law of value governs the development of the economy and the social relationships under commodity production and has its fullest expression under capitalism with its anarchic ‘free’ market, with the unfettered exploitation of the working class, plunder of oppressed nations through free trade and export of capital. The building of socialism through the planned economy will gradually destroy the space for its operation and with it the market which gives it expression. As Che put it:
‘We can therefore state that centralised planning is the way of life in a socialist society. It is what defines it and is the point at which man’s consciousness succeeds in finally synthesising and directing the economy towards its goal, which is the complete liberation of the human being within the framework of communist society’. (‘Socialist Planning’ pp563-4)
Socialist revolutions have occurred in the less developed countries and not, as Marxists had expected, in the most advanced capitalist countries. Some question whether it is possible to build socialism in countries colonised by imperialism and without any development of their basic industries. Che was very clear on this issue and followed Lenin:
‘Within the great framework of the worldwide capitalist system, struggling against socialism, one of its weak links can be broken. In this particular case we mean Cuba. Taking advantage of unusual historical circumstances and following the skilful leadership of their vanguard, the revolutionary forces take over at a particular moment. Then, assuming the necessary objective conditions already exist for the socialisation of labour, they skip stages, declare the socialist nature of the revolution, and begin to build socialism.’ (‘Socialist Planning’ p557)
The relative backwardness of these countries had created even greater difficulties for overcoming the impact of the law of value and the market. Cuba could combat this to some degree with the economic assistance of the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991, and through more equal and just economic and trade relations with the socialist bloc. Che, however, realised that the law of value would exert its influence particularly through the international capitalist market dominated by the main imperialist powers with their much superior productivity of labour – but also in the relationship between the state sector and consumers. But he did not see this as something to be welcomed in the interests of some technical efficiency but something that had to be combated by the systematic development of the plan – of the conscious power of a centralised and planned economy. To give greater freedom to the law of value and the market was to facilitate the development of capitalist tendencies within the socialist countries.
That is why Che argued for a different system of managing the state sector of the economy to that which applied in most of the European socialist countries and most Cuban enterprises except those dependent on Che’s Ministry of Industry – the budgetary system of financing as against the self-financing enterprise system. There are a number of differences in the two systems but fundamentally in the first the funds for the industry and the ‘profits or losses’ made went into the same overall state fund, while in the latter each enterprise had its own fund and they competed with each other. Both systems complied with an overall plan but one more directly than the other. Money plays a different role in each system. In the budgetary system it operates as ‘arithmetical money’, a measure of value, as a price reflection of the operation of the enterprise. It is analysed by the central bodies to exercise control over its operation, in a similar way to that of multinational companies and their subsidiaries. In the self-financing enterprise system, money acts, in addition, as a means of payment – it functions as an indirect instrument of control. Its relations with the banks are similar to those of a private producer in contact with capitalist banks to which they must exhaustively explain their plans and prove their solvency. When Che looked at the latter system in Yugoslavia he said it seemed dangerous ‘because competition between enterprises dedicated to producing the same article may introduce factors that distort what the socialist spirit should presumably be’. (Tablada p111)2 A different concept of competition in relation to the social interest is indicated here, potentially, that is, in terms of who benefits?
Capitalist mechanisms versus communist consciousness
The social relations of capitalist production, the production for private profit, the exploitation of man by man, produce a definite individualistic consciousness – a motivation based on competition as opposed to co-operation; individual interest and greed at the expense of others. A system based on the collective organisation of social production has to produce people with a quite different consciousness – a consciousness adequate to the new mode of production. However it does not come ready made and has to be created as part of the process of building socialism. Just as capitalist production through the market reproduces capitalist social relations and consciousness, so socialist economic production has to produce and develop socialist social relations and consciousness. However while under capitalism such relations and consciousness are the spontaneous, anarchic product of the market, adequate forms of social consciousness have to be worked for and developed under socialism. Socialism has to produce a different type of human being to capitalism.
Summarising Che’s position, Tablada says: ‘The point therefore is to discover and sweep away the structures that generate selfishness and personal ambition, replacing them with new social institutions and mechanisms capable of moulding future generations in a different way.’ (p86)
Typical was Che’s position on the question of material and moral incentives. While not denying the objective need for material incentives as a factor in achieving improvements in productivity and production, he was unwilling to use them as a fundamental driving force.
‘Material incentives are something left over from the past. They are something we must accept but whose hold on the minds of the people we must gradually break as the revolutionary process goes forward…We must establish the conditions under which this type of motivation that is operative today will increasingly lose its importance and be replaced by non-material incentives such as the sense of duty and the new revolutionary way of thinking.’ (‘On Party Militancy’ pp343-4)
As opposed to competition generated by the law of value, Che put forward the concept of emulation, fraternal competition based on socialist comradeship as a weapon to increase production. ‘Emulation had to fulfil the great task of mobilising the masses.’ It is ‘competition directed toward the most noble of aims, which is to improve the functioning of each work centre, each enterprise, each unit, and place it in the front ranks of building socialism.’ Emulation would have its own incentives, ‘moral incentives, such as those that individually or collectively recognise workers in a workplace as the best amongst the best.’ It was an incentive mechanism that linked the production of goods with the creation of communist consciousness. (Quotes from Tablada pp200-1)
In this context, Che stressed the importance of voluntary work and the use of mini-brigades in helping to resolve, in a collective way, crucial problems facing the economy – a method of work, however, that went into decline after his death, becoming almost a formality as Cuban economic development became increasingly reliant on precisely those capitalist economic mechanisms that Che had warned against. Material incentives began to be abused, higher wages were paid which bore no relation to what was being produced, contradictions arose between certain economic enterprises and society overall – a trend was developing which would undermine the spirit and consciousness of the working class. The Cuban Communist Party recognised these problems and a rectification programme was begun in 1986 to correct these developments. The working class, the trade unions and other mass organisations were actively drawn into the decision-making processes. Inevitably, it led to a revival of Che’s ideas…
These developments, however, came to an abrupt end with the Special Period following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the intensification of the US economic blockade.
Today, after years of surviving the Special Period without abandoning its socialist principles, Cuba has been forced to put more reliance on capitalist methods and capitalist market mechanisms. The introduction of the private farmers’ markets, the free circulation of the dollar, the greater weight of foreign capital in the Cuban economy, and the wider use of material incentives, all necessary for the recovery of the Cuban economy, however, make the contribution of Che Guevara ever more relevant to the future of Cuban socialist development.
Not only was Che inspired by Marxism but he developed it and turned it into an ever more vital tool for building socialism today – a remarkable intellectual and practical achievement for a person who died aged 39, sacrificing his life to build a society fit for the vast majority of humanity.
1 All references to Che Guevara’s writings are taken from Venceremos! The Speeches and writings of Che Guevara. Edited by John Gerassi, Panther, 1972.
2 See Che Guevara Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism, Carlos Tablada, Pathfinder, 1989, pp109-119. For Che’s article ‘On the Budgetary System of Financing’ see Venceremos pp409-p441.
Postscript
In Cuba, Che’s ideas about socialist construction have always been associated with the vitality of the Revolution. The article on Economics and Socialism printed here mentions how, in the mid-1980s, Fidel drew on Che’s incisive warnings that market socialism would lead to capitalist restoration. Cuba pulled back from the Soviet model with a return to Che’s concepts of the importance of consciousness in the process of socialist construction. Before this process could be consolidated, the Soviet bloc collapsed leaving the Cuban economy to plunge into crisis, with the loss of 85% of its trade. Cubans dug deep to find what they needed to survive, as individuals and as a socialist society. With the introduction of reforms to permit the market to operate in some economic sectors and improved trade relations, the economic situation gradually began to improve. This has allowed Cuba to rescind some of the concessions made to the markets – for example, the US dollar no longer circulates. Since 2005, Cuba has boasted annual growth rates of 8-12%.
Material recovery has been accompanied by political regeneration in a campaign known as the Battle of Ideas. Having survived the hardships of the Special Period, the Revolution was in a position to begin re-evaluating its achievements and errors, as Fidel said: ‘to develop a critical rather than self-indulgent vision of our undertaking and our historical objectives.’ This again involved a return to Che’s emphasis on socialist consciousness and education, voluntary labour, the exploitation of indigenous resources, diversification of agriculture, centralisation of budgets and finances and investment in science and technology for industrial and medical production. The Battle of Ideas reflects the essence of Che’s concept that education and culture are key tools to create commitment to political ideas, but that these remain abstract if the standard of living doesn’t alleviate daily concerns for survival. For this it is necessary to raise Cuba’s productive capacity. As Che said, the two pillars on which to construct socialist society are productivity and consciousness.
The success has been tangible. The concepts underlying the Battle of Ideas are now being emulated elsewhere in Latin America. The Bolivarian Revolution led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began at the same time as the Battle of Ideas and it is likewise a project of national regeneration based on popular mobilisation. The material and political relationships between Cuba and Venezuela, formalised in the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America, a treaty signed in December 2004, have become a mechanism for ideological exchange. ‘New’ forms of political and economic organisation are emerging under the banner of the Bolivarian Revolution; some are essential components of a socialist society – nationalisation, welfare provision, social production and workers’ management. Others draw on Guevara’s model: consolidated enterprises, participatory budgets, the co-option of capitalist techniques and technicians for social production and emphasising consciousness while limiting the reproduction of capitalist productive relations.
Sections within the Bolivarian Revolution aim to bolster the domestic capitalist class. Chavez, who leads the pro-socialist tendency, adopts Che’s ideas on socialist transition to counter that current. The Cuban left also bases itself on Guevara in opposing those who advocate economic and political liberalisation. Armed with Che’s Marxist analysis, Cuba continues to contribute to humanity’s historical and cumulative knowledge of how to build a better society, a socialist society which puts consciousness and culture at its centre. The ability to implement those ideas will be decisive in the success of the project to build socialism for the 21st century.
Helen Yaffe
Speaking tour Spring 2008
Cuba: socialism into the 21st century
Cuba offers the example of an alternative to the destruction and barbarity that characterise capitalism. In Cuba, socialism is being built, developed and lived out day by day, despite the illegal US blockade against the island. Cuba shows that another world is possible, founded on the interests of the many, not the few.
Cuba’s example of socialism and internationalism gives inspiration to those fighting imperialism all over the world, in particular in Latin America, where in Venezuela and Bolivia the working class are united with Cuba raising the banner of the Bolivarian Alternative to the hegemony of the United States and its allies.
From February to March 2008, you will be able to hear the Cuban message for yourself as Rock around the Blockade will be hosting a speaking tour by a number of leading Cuban communists representing three generations of the Revolution: Orlando Borrego, Che’s close comrade at the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, who will be speaking in Britain for the first time; Rogelio Polanco, editor of the Cuban daily newspaper Juventud Rebelde, and a comrade from the youth movement, representing a new generation of revolutionary leaders. The speaking tour represents an exciting opportunity for debate, discussion, information and inspiration all over Britain – don’t miss it.
For more information about how you can get involved in building for the speaking tour and hosting a meeting in your college, workplace or community centre, fill in the form below – and see page 14 for details of forthcoming events in solidarity with Cuba.
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FRFI 199 October / November 2007
