The Political Theory of Che Guevara

by Renzo Tramer Llorente

  16. Germán Sánchez is surely correct in claiming that this “aspect of Che’s ethicoeconomic thought . . . has been especially mutilated, distorted, criticized, and treated superficially” (Che sin enigmas [Mexico City: Ocean Sur, 2007], 114–15).

  17. As Guevara, following convention, uses hombre (man) in all of the relevant passages as a term for “human being,” use of nonsexist terminology in no way changes the meaning of his ideas (and some of the translations that I shall be using actually do employ inclusive terminology in translating this word into English).

  18. N. Bychkova, R. Lavrov, and V. Lubisheva, eds., Communist Morality (Moscow: Progress Publishers, n.d.). This anthology contains selections from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Khrushchev, and others. One of the figures referring to the new man most insistently and explicitly is Mikhail Kalinin (see 118, 121–25, and 128–29).

  19. See, for example, Randall, Che, 36; Delia Luisa López, in Martha Pérez-Rolo et al., “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba: Una mirada en los 90,” Temas 11 (1997): 108; and Roberto Fernández Retamar’s “Leer al Che,” found in his Cuba defendida (Buenos Aires: Nuestra América Editorial, 2004), 153. Guevara himself was of the same opinion, according to Orlando Borrego. After reviewing the seven-volume edition of his works (articles, speeches, interviews, etc.) published in 1966, Guevara remarked that “Socialism and Man in Cuba” struck him as his most finished piece (Orlando Borrego, Che: El camino del fuego, 2nd ed. [Havana: Imagen Contemporánea, 2011], 378).

  20. From Cathy Ceibe’s interview with Fernando Martínez Heredia, “Para el Che, la ética y la política eran inseparables,” found in Martínez Heredia, A viva voz, 294; and see his interview with Néstor Kohan, “Cuba y el pensamiento crítico,” found in A viva voz, 23. See also Martínez Heredia, Las ideas, 214.

  21. See, for example, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, “El socialismo y el Che,” in Filosofía, praxis y socialismo (Buenos Aires: Tesis 11 Grupo Editor, 1998), 116; Ludovico Silva, “El hombre del siglo XXI: La memoria futura del Che Guevara,” in En busca del socialismo perdido: Las bases de la Perestroika y la Glasnost (Caracas: Editorial Pomaire Venezuela, S.A., 1991), 93; and Fernando Martínez Heredia’s “Prólogo: Los apuntes filosóficos del Che,” the preface to Guevara, Apuntes filosóficos,14.

  22. McLellan, Marxism, 435.

  23. For the one other occasion on which Guevara uses this expression a few times, see “Selección de Actas de reuniones efectuadas en el Ministerio de Industrias: 2 de octubre de 1964,” found in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 346 and 347. Considering how seldom Guevara actually uses this term, or expression, it is rather misleading to say that “he wrote a lot about what he called the ‘New Man’” (Hilda Barrio and Gareth Jenkins, The Che Handbook [London: MQ Publications, Ltd., 2003], 252).

  24. For some examples of Guevara’s acceptance of this usage, see, for example, “Volunteer Labor,” found in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 307; “Delegados en el Congreso Obrero,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:514; and “Resumen Plenaria de Industrias en Stgo. de Cuba,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:279. I discuss some aspects of Guevara’s conception of socialism and communism in chapter 4.

  25. See, for example, Maurice Halperin, The Taming of Fidel Castro (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1981), 265; Kelly Ainsworth, “Ernesto (Che) Guevara de la Serna,” in Biographical Dictionary of Marxism, ed. Robert A. Gorman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), 125; and Gerassi’s introduction to Guevara, Venceremos!, 42, 45, 46, and 49. By contrast, Löwy (Marxism, 18) and Donald C. Hodges (The Bureaucratization of Socialism [Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1981], 165) correctly point out that what Guevara has in mind is a “communist human being.”

  26. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 217.

  27. Ibid., 221.

  28. Anderson provides this abbreviated title in English; the full Spanish title that he gives is “Socialismo y El Hombre Nuevo en Cuba”—“Socialism and the new man in Cuba” (Revolutionary, 636). For Anderson’s assumption that Guevara’s goal is a “new socialist man,” see ibid., 502, 597, and 604.

  29. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 218.

  30. “A modo de Prólogo: Algunas reflexiones sobre la transición socialista,” in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 18.

  31. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” found in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 223; see also 227.

  32. “En el programa de TV ‘Información Pública,’” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:36.

  33. “At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 341.

  34. Carta a León Felipe, 21 de agosto de 1964, in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 1:452.

  35. Andrew Levine argues that “transforming human nature is the central political task for socialist societies in the transition to communism” (End, 6). Guevara would agree.

  36. For example, Hodges claims that “the essence of the new man is voluntary labor” (Bureaucratization, 165), while Pericás argues that the three practices that I mention are the basic aspects of the “idea” of the new man, at least in practical terms (Che,168).

  37. For a philosophical defense of radical egalitarianism, see Kai Nielsen, Equality and Liberty (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985). For an analysis of the principle of equal consideration of interests, see Stanley I. Benn, “Egalitarianism and the Equal Consideration of Interests,” in Equality (Nomos IX), ed. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), 61–78.

  38. For some examples, see the chapter titled “La equidad” in Mayra Mendoza Gil, ed., Para vivir como tú vives: Anecdotario del Che (Havana: Editora Política, 2006).

  39. See, for example, “In Cuba Imperialism Was Caught Sleeping, but Now It Is Awake,” found in Ernesto Che Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, Mary-Alice Waters, ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 2000), 66; see also “Conferencia Televisada,” found in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:45.

  40. “En la primera reunión nacional de producción,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:394–95.

  41. “Graduación del curso de administradores,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3: 556.

  42. “Inauguración fábrica de bujías,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:155.

  43. “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 128. For other expressions of this idea, see, for example, “On the Budgetary Finance System,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 209 and 210; and see “Graduación en la escuela de administradores ‘Patricio Lumumba,’” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:321.

  44. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 225.

  45. My understanding of Guevara’s reasoning in this connection is indebted to Peter Singer, How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1993), ch. 11.

  46. The original statement appears in José Martí, “Discurso en el Liceo Cubano, Tampa (Con todos y para el bien de todos),” in Obras Completas, 2nd ed. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975), 4:270; I cite the translation provided in Löwy, Marxism, 24. For some of the passages in which Guevara cites Martí’s dictum, see “A Party of the Working Class,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 177; “Honoring José Martí,” in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 211; “Technology and Society,” in ibid., 303; and “Con el periodista uruguayo Carlos Granda,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:272.

  47. “Asamblea de trabajadores portuarios,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:17; “The Working Class and the Industrialization of Cuba,” in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 242. The quoted passage comes from the latter text, which is a speech that Guevara delivered before the Cuban Revolution was overtly socialist.


  48. For some relevant texts, see “Volunteer Labor,” in Guevara, Che: Selected Works, 307; “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 128; “Reunión bimestral, febrero 22 de 1964,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:454; and “The Cadre: Backbone of the Revolution,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 157.

  49. The term in Spanish, conciencia, can mean either “consciousness” or “conscience.” Guevara’s usage of conciencia almost invariably corresponds to “consciousness.”

  50. See, for example, “Entrega de premios,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 5:67; “On Creating a New Attitude,” in Guevara, Venceremos!, 475 (mistranslated as “conscience”); “Clausura del Consejo de la CTC,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:137; and “Clausura de la Asamblea de Producción de la Gran Habana,” in ibid., 3:456.

  51. See, for example, “En relación con la II zafra del pueblo,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:62; and “Clausura de la Asamblea de Producción de la Gran Habana,” in ibid., 3:461.

  52. Orlando Borrego, preface to El Che en la Revolución cubana, vol. 1. Guevara’s countless references to “consciousness” are, incidentally, reminiscent of Lenin’s discussion of consciousness in Vladimir I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement, in Collected Works, vol. 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1961), above all chapter 2.

  53. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 217.

  54. See, for example, “Asamblea de trabajadores portuarios,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:17, 19; and “Reunión bimestral, marzo 10 de 1962,” in ibid., 6:183.

  55. “Memoria Anual 1961–1962,” in ibid., 6:689.

  56. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 219.

  57. “Entrevista concedida a Jean Daniel en Argelia,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:469–70.

  58. See, for example, Carta a Robert Starkie, 12 de junio de 1961, in ibid., 1:408; “Inauguración fábrica de bujías,” in ibid., 5:154; “Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution,” Guevara, in Che Guevara Reader, 304; “On the Alliance for Progress,” in Guevara, Venceremos!, 268; and “El papel de los estudiantes de tecnología y el desarrollo industrial del país,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:191.

  59. Augusto Salazar Bondy, “La quiebra del capitalismo,” in Entre escila y caribdis (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1973), 155.

  60. For two brief commentaries that lend support to this interpretation, see Juan Valdés Paz’s “Notas para un epílogo,” the epilogue in Manuel Monereo, Con su propia cabeza: El socialismo en la obra y la vida del Che (Barcelona: El ViejoTopo, 2001), 124–25; and Delia Luisa López García, “Che Guevara: Una aproximación a su ideario,” in Che: el hombre del siglo XXI (Havana: University of Havana and Editorial Félix Varela, 2001), 123.

  61. See, for example, Frederick Engels, “Principles of Communism,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 6:342.

  62. See, for example, Karx Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1979), 11:104, 106; “Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality: A Contribution to German Cultural History; Contra Karl Heinzen,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 6:319; and A Contribution to the Critique, 29:261 and 263.

  63. See, for example, Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 6:162, 174, 202; see also Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1996), 35:14.

  64. “Debourgeoisification” as used here should not be equated with “proletarianization” (whether understood as the loss of middle-class social status or the conscious adoption of a progressive working-class political outlook), if only because “proletarianization” as conventionally understood occurs within the context of a capitalist economy.

  65. “Entrega de premios a ganadores en la emulación de Círculo de Estudios,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:73–74.

  66. “A New Culture of Work,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 146. “What we are dealing with here is a communist society . . . just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges” (Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works [New York: International Publishers, 1989], 24:85, emphasis in the original). “We can only build communism out of the material created by capitalism . . . and which—as far as concerns the human material in the apparatus—is therefore inevitably imbued with the bourgeois mentality. That is what makes the building of communist society difficult” (Vladimir I. Lenin, “A Little Picture in Illustration of Big Problems,” in Collected Works [Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965], 28:388; see also his “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, in Collected Works [Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966], 31:50).

  67. “Reunión bimestral, diciembre 21 de 1963,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 6:423; see also “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 216.

  68. For Guevara’s commitment to a classless society, see, for example, “Graduación del curso de administradores,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 3:553. See also “A los obreros más destacados durante el año 1962,” in ibid., 4:336.

  69. “In Cuba Imperialism Was Caught Sleeping, but Now It Is Awake,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, 65.

  70. “Youth Must March in the Vanguard,” in ibid., 122.

  71. “Discusión colectiva; decisión y responsabilidades únicas,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 1:108; see also “Entrega de premios de la emulación socialista,” in ibid., 5:240; and “On Economic Planning in Cuba,” in Guevara, Venceremos!, 220.

  72. One of the few commentators to appreciate this is Ludovico Silva. See “El hombre,” 101.

  73. Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, 17. I have modified the translation, replacing “receipt” with “recipe.” This is the English word used in other translations of this passage, and the nineteenth-century meaning of “Rezepte,” the German term used by Marx.

  74. “Tasks of Communist Education,” in Leon Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life and Other Writings on Culture and Science (New York: Monad Press, 1973), 107.

  75. For an influential statement of a Marxist view on this topic, and one first presented around the time that Guevara was developing his ideas, see Isaac Deutscher, “On Socialist Man,” in Marxism in Our Time, ed. Tamara Deutscher (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1971).

  76. Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, trans. Rose Strunsky (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 256.

  77. “To Be a Young Communist,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 167.

  78. Borrego, Camino, 114.

  79. “A New Culture of Work,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 146; “En el seminario sobre planificación en Argelia,” in Guevara, El Che en la Revolución cubana, 4:464; Guevara, “Conferencia ofrecida,” 155.

  80. Farber, Politics, xix, 76, and 18. As we shall see, many of Farber’s claims regarding Guevara’s thought prove wholly untenable. I briefly discuss some of the basic flaws in Farber’s account of Guevara’s thought in my review of his The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice (International Journal of Cuban Studies 9, no. 1 [2017]: 155–57).

  81. This seems to be, for example, what Kenneth Minogue holds in his early commentary on Guevara. Minogue states, correctly, that the new human being will possess “a highly developed social consciousness” but then adds, “This means, presumably, that the category of the private will disapp
ear from his thinking” (“Che Guevara,” in The New Left: Six Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Cranston [London, Sydney, and Toronto: The Bodley Head, Ltd., 1970], 32). See also Eugenio del Río, “Influencia de Che Guevara en la Europa occidental de los años setenta,” in Disentir, resistir: Entre dos épocas (Madrid: Talasa Ediciones, S.L., 2001), 27.

  82. “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 212; 220.

  83. “Only within the community has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; hence personal freedom becomes possible only within the community”; and “the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections” (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 78 and 51). Jon Elster provides a useful statement of the more general point: “Marx conceived communism as a synthesis of capitalist and pre-capitalist societies, reconciling the individualism of the former and the communitarian character of the latter” (Making Sense of Marx ([Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 523).

  84. Robert M. Bernardo, cited in Miguel Martinez-Saenz, “Che Guevara’s New Man: Embodying a Communitarian Attitude,” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 6 (2004): 24.

  85. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Holy Family; or Critique of Critical Criticism, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 4:130–31; see also Karl Marx, “Critical Marginal Notes on the Article ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform, by a Prussian,’” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3:198. For an additional passage in which Guevara claims that personal interest should be a reflection of social interest, see “X preguntas sobre las enseñanzas de un libro famoso,” in Guevara, Apuntes críticos, 173. Löwy correctly notes (Marxism, 19) that the new human being will transcend many of the tensions, or antagonisms (e.g., between particular interests and general interests, or the individual and the community), that we associate with capitalist society.