Che Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba”

Born in 1928 in Argentina to parents of mixed Spanish and Irish heritage, Ernesto “Che”
Guevera had widely varied intellectual interests and a strong education. After entering medical
school in Buenos Aires in 1948, he became increasingly interested in the plight of the less
fortunate in the area and across Latin America more generally. Famously, in 1951 he embarked
on a nine-month journey across the continent, travels published posthumously as The Motorcycle
Diaries. He was shocked by the extent of capitalist exploitation enabled by government
corruption and environmental degradation across the entire region.

In late 1953 and into 1954, Guevara witnessed the conflict in Guatemala, where the United Fruit
Company influenced government officials and dominated local labor markets. The
democratically elected Guatemalan government led by Jacob Arbenz attempted to reform and
resist corporate domination, earning support from communist states such as Czechoslovakia.
Threatened by the potential rise of a communist state to the south, the United States government
dispatched the CIA in an operation known as PBSuccess to depose Arbenz. Guevara attempted
to join resistance groups in an effort to defend the Arbenz government but was frustrated by the
lack of commitment to violent revolution, influencing his future views.

Exiled to Mexico City, Guevara met Fidel and Raul Castro in 1955, joining their revolutionary
movement to overthrow the Bautista regime in Cuba. Rapidly rising to second-in-command of
the resistance forces, Guevera gained a reputation as a brilliant communicator with often
illiterate peasants while also developing advanced theories for guerrilla warfare. He joined with
Castro in the successful overthrow of the Bautista government in 1961, briefly serving as a
minister in the initial Castro-led regime.

This source demonstrates Guevara’s efforts to understand this revolutionary struggle, including
the relationship between leader and population and the all-important transition to stable
government following the end of active combat.
 ERNESTO “CHE” GUEVARA – SOCIALISM AND MAN IN CUBA 1

Comrade:

… A common argument from the mouths of capitalist spokesmen, in the ideological struggle
against socialism, is that socialism, or the period of building socialism into which we have
entered, is characterized by the abolition of the individual for the sake of the state. I will not try
to refute this argument solely on theoretical grounds, but rather to establish the facts as they exist
in Cuba and then add comments of a general nature.

[…]

In the history of the Cuban revolution there now appeared a character, well-defined in its
features, who would systematically reappear: the mass. This multifaceted being is not, as is
claimed, the sum of elements of the same type (reduced, moreover, to that same type by the
reigning system), which acts like a flock of sheep. It is true that it follows its leaders, basically
Fidel Castro, without hesitation. But the degree to which he won this trust results precisely from
having interpreted the people's desires and aspirations in their full meaning, and from the sincere
struggle to fulfill the promises he made….

Viewed superficially, it might appear that those who speak of the subordination of the individual
to the state are right. The mass carries out with matchless enthusiasm and discipline the tasks set
by the government, whether in the field of the economy, culture, defense, sports, etc. The
initiative generally comes from Fidel or from the revolutionary high command and is explained
to the people, who make it their own. In some cases the party and government take a local
experience and generalize it, following the same procedure.

Nevertheless, the state sometimes makes mistakes. When one of these mistakes occurs, one notes
a decline in collective enthusiasm due to the effect of a quantitative decrease in each of the
elements that make up the mass. Work is paralyzed until it is reduced to insignificant amounts. It
is time to make a correction.... A more structured connection with the mass is needed, and we
must improve it in the course of the next years. But as far as initiatives originating in the upper
strata of the government are concerned, we are currently utilizing the almost intuitive method of
sounding out general reactions to the great problems we confront.

In this Fidel is a master. His own special way of fusing himself with the people can be
appreciated only by seeing him in action. At the great public mass meetings one can observe
something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations interact, producing new
sounds. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate together in a dialogue of growing intensity until they
reach the climax in an abrupt conclusion crowned by our cry of struggle and victory. The
difficult thing to understand for someone not living through the experience of the revolution is
this close dialectical unity between the individual and the mass in which both are interrelated
and, at the same time, in which the mass, as an aggregate of individuals, interacts with its
leaders.

1
Source: “From Algiers, for Marcha. The Cuban Revolution Today,” Marcha (12 March 1965). Reproduced at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm (accessed 17 June 2021).
[…]

I would now like to try to define the individual, the actor in this strange and moving drama of the
building of socialism, in his dual existence as a unique being and as a member of society. I think
the place to start is to recognize his quality of incompleteness, of being an unfinished product.
The vestiges of the past are brought into the present in the individual consciousness, and a
continual labor is necessary to eradicate them. The process is two-sided. On the one side, society
acts through direct and indirect education; on the other, the individual submits himself to a
conscious process of self-education.

[…]

As I have already said, in moments of great peril it is easy to muster a powerful response to
moral incentives. Retaining their effect, however, requires the development of a consciousness in
which there is a new scale of values. Society as a whole must be converted into a gigantic school.
[…]

In our case direct education acquires a much greater importance. The explanation is convincing
because it is true; no subterfuge is needed. It is carried on by the state's educational apparatus as
a function of general, technical, and ideological education through such agencies as the Ministry
of Education and the party's informational apparatus. Education takes hold among the masses
and the foreseen new attitude tends to become a habit. The masses continue to make it their own
and to influence those who have not yet educated themselves….

But the process is a conscious one. The individual continually feels the impact of the new social
power and perceives that he does not entirely measure up to its standards. Under the pressure of
indirect education, he tries to adjust himself to a situation that he feels is right and that his own
lack of development had prevented him from reaching previously. He educates himself.
In this period of the building of socialism we can see the new man being born. His image is not
yet completely finished--it never will be, since the process goes forward hand in hand with the
development of new economic forms.

Aside from those whose lack of education makes them take the solitary road toward satisfying
their own personal ambitions, there are those--even within this new panorama of a unified march
forward--who have a tendency to walk separate from the masses accompanying them. What is
important, however, is that each day men are acquiring ever more consciousness of the need for
their incorporation into society and, at the same time, of their importance as the motor of that
society. They no longer travel completely alone over lost roads toward distant aspirations. They
follow their vanguard, consisting of the party, the advanced workers, the advanced men who
walk in unity with the masses and in close communion with them. The vanguards have their eyes
fixed on the future and its reward, but it is not a vision of something for the individual. The prize
is the new society in which men will have different characteristics: the society of communist
man.

[…]
This institutionalization of the revolution has not yet been achieved. We are looking for
something new that will permit a complete identification between the government and the
community in its entirety, something appropriate to the special conditions of the building of
socialism, while avoiding to the utmost a transplanting of the commonplaces of bourgeois
democracy--such as legislative chambers, for example--into the society in formation. Some
experiments aimed at the gradual institutionalization of the revolution have been made, but
without undue haste. The greatest brake has been our fear lest any appearance of formality might
separate us from the masses and from the individual, might make us lose sight of the ultimate
and most important revolutionary aspiration: to see man liberated from his alienation.

Despite the lack of institutions, which must be overcome gradually, the masses are now making
history as a conscious collection of individuals fighting for the same cause. Man under socialism,
despite his apparent standardization, is more complete. Despite the lack of a perfect mechanism
for it, his opportunities for expressing himself and making himself felt in the social organism are
infinitely greater…. Man begins to free his thinking of the annoying fact that he needs to work to
satisfy his animal needs. He starts to see himself reflected in his work and to understand his full
stature as a human being through the object created, through the work accomplished. Work no
longer entails surrendering a part of his being in the form of labor power sold, which no longer
belongs to him, but represents an emanation of himself, a contribution to the common life in
which he is reflected, the fulfillment of his social duty.

We are doing everything possible to give work this new status of social duty and to link it on the
one side with the development of technology, which will create the conditions for greater
freedom, and on the other side with voluntary work based on the Marxist appreciation that man
truly reaches his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by physical
necessity to sell himself as a commodity.

Of course, there are still coercive aspects to work, even when it is voluntary. Man has not
transformed all the coercion that surrounds him into conditioned reflexes of a social character,
and in many cases he still produces under the pressures of his environment. (Fidel calls this
moral compulsion.) He still needs to undergo a complete spiritual rebirth in his attitude toward
his own work, freed from the direct pressure of his social environment, though linked to it by his
new habits. That will be communism.

[…]

In our society the youth and the party play a big part.

The former is especially important because it is the malleable clay from which the new man can
be built without any of the old vestiges. The youth are treated in accordance with our aspirations.
Their education is every day more complete, and we are not forgetting about their integration
into work from the outset. Our scholarship students do physical work during their vacations or
along with their studying. Work is a reward in some cases, a means of education in others, but it
is never a punishment. A new generation is being born.
The party is a vanguard organization. It is made up of the best workers, who are proposed for
membership by their fellow workers. It is a minority, but it has great authority because of the
quality of its cadres. Our aspiration is for the party to become a mass party, but only when the
masses have reached the level of the vanguard, that is, when they are educated for communism.
Our work constantly aims at this education. The party is the living example. Its cadres must teach
hard work and sacrifice. By their action, they must lead the masses to the completion of the
revolutionary task, and this involves years of hard struggle against the difficulties of
construction, class enemies, the maladies of the past, imperialism.

Now, I would like to explain the role played by the individual, by man as an individual within
the masses who make history. This is our experience; it is not a prescription.

[…]

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great
feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps
it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he must combine a passionate spirit with a cold
intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must
make an ideal of this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and
indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary
men put their love into practice.

The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to say
"daddy." They have wives who must be part of the general sacrifice of their lives in order to take
the revolution to its destiny. The circle of their friends is limited strictly to the circle of comrades
in the revolution. There is no life outside of it. In these circumstances one must have a big dose
of humanity, a big dose of a sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into dogmatic extremes,
into cold scholasticism, into an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this
love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a
moving force.

The revolutionary, the ideological motor force of the revolution within his party, is consumed by
this uninterrupted activity that comes to an end only with death, unless the construction of
socialism is accomplished on a world scale. If his revolutionary zeal is blunted when the most
urgent tasks have been accomplished on a local scale and he forgets about proletarian
internationalism, the revolution he leads will cease to be a driving force and sink into a
comfortable drowsiness that imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize to gain ground.
Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. This is the way we
educate our people.

[…]

Patria o muerte!