Che Guevara – the intervening years.
Che Guevara. Is there any other revolutionary held in higher esteem across the international freedom struggle? Having found immortality in martyrdom, the Argentine’s contribution to Cuba, and indeed International Socialism, cannot be questioned.
Che’s contribution began, as he boarded a shaky boat bound for Cuba, with 82 other armed revolutionaries. Of those aboard, only 12 made it ashore to join their comrades. Among them were Che, and brothers Fidel & Raul Castro. This first notable act was followed by their journey into the Sierra Maestra, which would become a growing Rebel base of operations.
That part of Che’s story is told often, as is the victory of the Rebels in Santa Clara and, consequently, Havana. Much is said about these parts of his life, and indeed his death, with that oft’ repeated quote attributed to Ernesto moments before his demise, “shoot”, he said, “you are only going to kill a man”.
Those last few words, if indeed they do belong to him, probably had more meaning than he realised at the time, with everything he had achieved in life, and indeed death, and he being reduced to just ‘a man’. The lesson for all of us, as individuals immersed in the broader collective, that we could achieve so much more.
As rebel convoys marched on Havana in early January of 1959, it would be a full eight and a half years later that Che was to die beneath a Bolivian sky, many thousands of miles from Cuba.
Less is said of those intervening years, where Che’s contribution to the struggle had taken on a different form. The fatigues might have remained, but gone were the guerrilla bands and the immediate risk to life. The jungle was replaced with an office, his rifle a pen, and the endless green of his previous environment was now piles of white and yellowed paper – the machine of the revolution would need to be safeguarded by other means – and he was at the helm.
It was not until 1961 that Fidel declared the revolution a socialist one. A full two years since the rebels had seized the state apparatus, and attempts to form a regime with the liberal economists floundered against the rocks of agrarian reform.
Arguably, US Imperialists had strengthened Cuba’s revolutionary character inadvertently, and hastened the pace of Socialism. Nationalisation became an increasingly relevant part of the Cuban economy, as failing businesses and economic sectors were acquired by the revolution, thereby ensuring the economy moved forward, albeit jerkingly so, and that jobs were supported and wages ensured. The commitment to the Cuban people at this point cannot be overestimated.
Eventually, all sectors of the economy would be consolidated into what was then called ‘consolidados’, under the remit of a minister and various administrators, each consolidado would be organised more effectively and no longer in pursuit of profit. It was Che who pioneered this.
How he came to be the head of the Department of Industrialisation (INRA – Minister of Industries) and later, the National Bank of Cuba, is an often scrutinised and humoured point. Legend has it that, as the Council of Ministers met for a frantic late night meeting, amidst the backdrop of spiralling relations with the United States, Fidel asked for “a good economist” to take over the National Bank of Cuba. Che, weary-eyed and over-worked, raised his hand, whereupon he was met by surprise, most notably from Fidel, who said, “I didn’t know you were a good economist?” Che, now more alert, retorted, “Oh! I thought you asked for a good Communist.”
He got the job.
Che, now affirmed in his roles, immediately set about taking control of the countries financial resources. He prevented the continued flight of capital from the Cuban state with various technical maneuvers, including changing all Cuban banknotes with a military precision, having had them pre-printed in secret. Consequently, anyone with significant Cuban cash reserves that the Rebels did not know about, was rendered unable to financially subvert the state – all eyes were on the Florida coastline.
The creation of a foreign trade agency in conjunction with a Cuban exodus from International financial institutions dominated by the United States, occurred alongside the complete withdrawal of Cuban gold reserves from the US. These acts and others, parallel to the creation of a new bureaucracy and administrative process, allowed the state the complete control of Cuban industries and Banking, and consequently, the Cuban economy.
Central to the success of economic output was an accounting system that would effectively manage the checks and balances of the economy, ensuring good supply and demand. Che envisioned the use of computers and pioneered their introduction into the economic management of the state. Taking classes in mathematics and other subjects, Che was effectively learning as he went along, emphasis on ‘effectively’ as he became a master of the Cuban economy, spearheading industrialisation and the transformation of the banking system.
With greater networking, advice and support from other socialist states, specifically the USSR, Che, with a handful of others, conducted a grand tour of the economic & accounting systems employed by friendly states across the globe.
This was the time of ‘The Great Debate’ – discussions around the impact of material incentives and moral ones. Che was a strong advocate of the latter, and he increasingly developed this view as he grasped with the use of material incentives in the Soviet states. He challenged how the Soviets had understood Marxism, and labelled their position as ‘dogmatic’, opting instead to set up an alternative economic management system in Cuba than that advocated by the USSR.
Moral incentives would be front and centre, and through this, they would develop ‘the new man’. Che understood that to effect real revolutionary change, not just in the economy, but in the minds of the Cuban people, material incentives would need to be almost eradicated in place of moral ones.
Such was the debate within Cuba at the time, that various Cuban industries continued to employ Soviet models at the behest of Che’s best intentions, as he sought to domestically consolidate the revolution. It was a conversation conducted in private and public, being carried regularly in Cuban magazines throughout the early to mid Sixties.
Che felt so strongly about the debate around material incentives within a socialist economic framework, that he offered a further critique of the political economy of the Soviets in 1966, concluding that without a dramatic change in policy, capitalism would return to the Soviet Union.
Material incentives were not, and still have not, been eradicated within Cuba, but economists of the time often indicate that Che was right in his suppositions. They may not agree on all the points that he made, but they do affirm that Che had a better understanding and foresight than most others at the time.
As an internationalist, he understood the need to build national freedom struggles within the confines of a single state, and that such nations could, and should, act as a springboard toward other struggles. Indeed, this was the basis upon which he embarked upon the Cuban revolution, having developed a mutual understanding with Fidel that they would not stop at Cuba. Che’s eyes were not just on Latin America, but the globe.
One day, with Che’s notable absence, Comrade Fidel alighted a podium in Havana. To the assembled masses, he held aloft a letter. The pen that had written it was Che’s, “… I say farewell to you”, said Che, “to the comrades, to your people, who now are mine.”
Che had prepared the Cuban economy for the road ahead, ensuring not to abandon it until such times as it’s survival could be guaranteed in his absence. “I formally resign my positions in the leadership of the party,” he continued, “my post as minister, my rank of commander, and my Cuban citizenship.”
Onward he marched to find a new people, embarking upon a new journey – on a continuation of the path that he had set out upon on that fateful day, when he boarded that rickety boat to Cuba. He did not know it then, but this journey was to be his last.
Che’s death, and his contribution to the international freedom struggle is often minimised to a caricature, emblazoned across the shirts and bedroom walls of humanity’s global youth. Such a caricature often prevents any analysis that moves beyond Che’s very obvious militarism. The man wore rebel fatigues to the UN after all.
But Che was more than that. He was the embodiment of the real revolutionary, confronting tasks head on, viewing each part of the struggle as a means to an end. All indications were that militarism and the use of violence, to Che at least, was just another task to be learned and perfected on the road to socialism; as was the grand task of economic reform and management, and the development of ‘the new man’.
Che understood that the real work began after, not just in the conversion to Communism, but in the transition of the human soul.
An Argentine; Cuban; Doctor; Economic Theorist; Marxist; Rebel Commander; Father; just ‘a man’. Che was fully aware of his contribution to humanity; an awareness he approached, not with ego or arrogance, but with an appreciation of the path he had taken in life and, consequently, death.
As Fidel stood upon the podium, and approached the fifth paragraph of that fateful letter, Che’s words, through him, echoed out to the Cuban people, “I have lived magnificent days”.
END
