Che Guevara: pin-up or killing machine?
Posted on Monday 22 December, 2008
Filed Under International
INSIDE every geeky bespectacled leftie bloke who ever stood outside a factory at 6 am on a rainy Friday morning, signally failing to sell Trot papers to the early shift, there is a little bit of Che Guevara trying to get out.
Secretly, we’d all like to make love to numerous beautiful women before launching a string of brave but ultimately futile insurrections in randomly-selected third world countries, even if it does mean dying young. The prospect sure as hell beats sitting through yet another interminable district aggregate, and hey, the posters and T-shirts alone would guarantee immortality of a kind.
Testimony to the man’s enduring appeal is the release early next month of two Steven Soderbergh biopics, imaginatively titled Che: Part 1 and Che: Part 2. The first installment was reviewed in The Sun last Saturday, and I for one was glad to see Britain’s best-selling tabloid openly express its solidarity with the Cuban Trotskyists imprisoned by the Castro regime in the 1960s. Better late then never.
Sun film critic Grant Rollings emphasises that Guevara is personally responsible for ordering a large number of executions – somewhere between 180 and ‘thousands’ – and history indeed attests that this is the case. In some instances, he pulled the trigger himself.
What did come as news to me were a number of quotations Rollings attributes to CG, which include the following blood-thirsty sentences:
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
If that is not alarming enough, Guevara is said to have been disappointed that Khruschchev wussed out on the Cuban missile crisis:
If the nuclear missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the heart of the US, including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.
This, from a man who is also supposed to have said: ‘If you tremble indignation at every injustice, then you a comrade of mine.’ Now, I reckon I have got a fair – but obviously not comprehensive – grasp of the literature on recent Cuban history, and I have not previously come across these claims.
Does anybody know whether they are genuine, or simply the product of the imagination of some bourgeois exile scumbag in Miami? Is there any context to take into account? To prove your point, either cite a credible source, or else satisfactorily demonstrate that they are falsifications. I genuinely have an open mind here.
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61 Responses to “Che Guevara: pin-up or killing machine?”
The Cuban missile crisis one is correct (at least roughly, it might not be word perfect) – he said it in an interview with the UK’s Morning Star (or was it Daily Worker then?) – but yes, he claimed they would have fired them if they’d been allowed to keep them (hopefully bluster but you never know with him)
Dunno about the other one – but it might be right – he was a guerilla fighter and up for shooting people after all.
I’ve no idea on whether the above ‘quotes’ from Guevara are genuine or not but if they are, what’s the problem?
If correct, I’d imagine context is everything – you don’t have time for a full judicial process whilst making a revolution or in the immediate days after and when someone is caught bang to rights e.g. on the phone to the other side giving away your military deployments; then what’s the issue?
Even for those caught ‘cold’ e.g, I read he was involved in executing, for example, key officials of the former regime; you don’t need the detail of who the deputy head of the police in Havana killed, you just know you need to dispose of that person straightaway.
I can’t see Guevara supporting the madness of thinking a first attack on NYC etc could bring socialism; apart from the inhumanity, those surviving would certainly reduce Cuba to cinders.
But yes, nuclear weapons are there to be used (or at least have the other side convinced you will) and if Cuba was invaded they certainly should have considered using them although also be wary of the possible outcome given above. Nukes are just the same as having (10,000?) extra soldiers.
Capitalism causes million of victims each year. I forget the figure of kids dying each year through entirely preventable diarrhoeal diseases but think it is the millions, so yes, the victory of socialism is worth the lives of millions of (American, Cuban, British, anywhere) atomic victims.
The only flaws in Guevara are that the Cuban Communist Party won’t bring about socialism, not least through using the similar repressive measures against Trots such as the Posadists although I don’t know that he had any killed. Socialsm in Cuba would be a very good idea.
And as I said recently, why the prissiness from Dave about Guevara for his killing when he nominated (in a good choice) Robespierre?
Punchie
Who’s being prissy? I merely asked for confirmation about the authenticity of the quotes.
But both seem to me fairly dumb things to say, even if CG believed they were correct political points, if only on ‘how not to make friends and influence people’ grounds.
The threat to nuke NYC – apart from being morally wrong, of course – was a total propaganda gift to the US, and would have undermined all efforts by US leftists to build for solidarity/non-intervention in Cuba.
Surely even you agree he should have kept his trap shut, if only on tactical grounds?
“I can’t see Guevara supporting the madness of thinking a first attack on NYC etc could bring socialism; apart from the inhumanity, those surviving would certainly reduce Cuba to cinders’
Punchie worrying about inhumanity ! You going soft in your old age? That’s wussy reformist talk !
The origin for the nuclear war quote appears to be that unimpeachable source, “Time” magazine. [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,940139,00.html] And the quote given there situates the threat within the context of a US invasion of Cuba, and does not include any lurid formulations about millions of victims. Since Cuba in any case had no control over the firing of the missiles, it would seem highly unlikely that Guevara would have said anything of the sort.
I remember repeating the first quote, but when I actually went looking for the source I could only find it in screechy op-eds (which commonly cited other screechy op-eds, or, at the very least, a screechy think-tank).
Ben
The prissiness is clear e.g. “include the following blood-thirsty sentences”. If he did say such you are clearly criticising the “killing machine” whilst hypocritically have previously endorsed a figure that is not within living memory, Robespierre, but who also correctly appreciated the need for a ‘Terror’.
The trouble with those who describe themselves as from the “reality based wing of the far left”, or the like, is that they may be able to accept how violence was necessary in a distant past but will attack those who are the continuation of such figures and who say that the same necessities remain.
There is a lot more to communist politics than this and it would be wrong to overempathise the role of violence but the truth should be told and those argue that peaceful change or even peaceful revolution should is possible be exposed for being the fools or hypocrites that they are.
@ Che Brennan
Thanks for the link. Rather different in context, and no argument that millions of deaths would be justified to advance socialism.
What’s the problem ?, asks Southpaw Punch. For him, revolutions are obviously a time for shooting first and asking questions afterwards.
Shoot the mad dogs!, as a certain Andrei Vyshinsky once said. Southpaw agrees – he and Vyshinsky would just disagree on the definition of a counter-revolutionary.
Southpaw agrees with Che’s alleged statement that the rule of law is “an archaic bourgeois detail”. He thus clearly separates himself from the mainstream marxist position, whih is to build on the gains of bourgeois revolutions, not throw them away and return to the worst features of absolutism.
And those wgo live by the sword do indeed often die by the sword. Robespierre is an obvious exanple.
As for the Che quotes – well, the same ones crop up in a recent article on the “Butterflies and Wheels” blog, which helpfully provides footnotes.
It turns out that they are all from secondary sources, mostly written by a certain Humberto Fontova.
Who ? Well, his Wikipedia entry describes him as a Cuban-American who is “a conservative political spokesman on issues with relation to Cuba”. He left Cuba at the age of 7, when his father was jailed under the Castro government. He appears to have made a career out of anti-Cuban propaganda, including such works as “Fidel: Hollywood’s Favourite Tyrant”. He describes people on the left as “moonbats”.
He writes for such blogs as “Human Events.com”, which describes itself as “Headquarters of the Conservative Underground”. This blog carried an article by Fontova denouncing Barack Obama because the offices of a couple of his supporters “were found prominently decorated with Che Guevara images, against the backdrop of Cuban flags”.
So the immediate source for the horrific Guevara quotes is indeed a right wing Cuban lobbyist in Florida. But does that mean that the quotes are phoney?
I certainly wouldn’t use them without confirmation from a primary source. So I guess somebody fluent in Spanish has to track the quotes down, and see if they are the result of anything more than the putrid imagination of Humberto Fontova.
SPP,
as a British version of Che, would you say that a Terror is intrinsic to a revolution, or just a nice thing to have?
I’m asking because I wouldn’t like to misinterpret any of your above comments, which seem to suggest that a Terror is a good thing to have? is that what you really think?
please, do clear up this political point
I am not familiar with the quote about New York but Guevara was rightly unapologetic about the executions of the counter revolutionaries.
On my site there is a link to a film made by Errol Flynn just after the revolution. It shows an execution and Flynn, a noted revolutionary moralist, says “to save many thousands of lives a few hundred killers had to die”. The contrast between Latin America’s history of death squads and state conducted mass murder and Cuba’s experience seems to back Flynn’s point of view.
Robespierre and the Terror served the bourgeois interest.
When we think about this conjuring up of the dead of world history, a salient difference reveals itself. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time – that of unchaining and establishing modern bourgeois society – in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases. The first one destroyed the feudal foundation and cut off the feudal heads that had grown on it. The other created inside France the only conditions under which free competition could be developed, parceled-out land properly used, and the unfettered productive power of the nation employed; and beyond the French borders it swept away feudal institutions everywhere, to provide, as far as necessary, bourgeois society in France with an appropriate up-to-date environment on the European continent. Once the new social formation was established, the antediluvian colossi disappeared and with them also the resurrected Romanism – the Brutuses, the Gracchi, the publicolas, the tribunes, the senators, and Caesar himself. Bourgeois society in its sober reality bred its own true interpreters and spokesmen in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants, and Guizots; its real military leaders sat behind the office desk and the hog-headed Louis XVIII was its political chief. Entirely absorbed in the production of wealth and in peaceful competitive struggle, it no longer remembered that the ghosts of the Roman period had watched over its cradle.
But unheroic though bourgeois society is, it nevertheless needed heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war, and national wars to bring it into being.
– 18th Brumaire Marx
Marx points out the fact that capitalist society itself came into existence through terror and war. The Capitalist myth denies this and treats these preparatory acts as something alien to it.
As somebody who’s completely opposed to the death penalty I wouldn’t have supported the execution of even Batista’s worst torturers and hitmen but I nor would I have shed any tears for them when they were lined up against the wall either.
@ Paul Fauvet
No I don’t believe that revolutions are a “time for shooting first and asking questions afterwards.” The thinking occurs now, in the non revolutionary period and, on the fly, as you take control and deal with real threats.
The actions of Vyshinsky, the Stalinist counter-revolutionary, were not taken in any of these circumstances; they were the actions of an established dictatorship that wanted to finally eliminate its Left opposition; something that may also have occurred in Mozambique when someone with your name went there to help the Stalinist aligned FRELIMO regime build ‘socialism’ there. Perhaps you could enlighten us.
@Fellow Traveller
Absolutely, Robespierre and the Terror did serve the bourgeois interest; the revolutionary bourgeoisie that is, those that had replaced the ‘ancien regime’. And?
@Modernity
Who knows the future but unless a revolution is overwhelming, the last in a series etc then a ‘Terror’ may well be necessary.
@Joe
Would you not fire your gun if someone was going to shoot you? Would you not pick up a gun if someone was approaching you and was going to shoot you? Or if you thought there was a fair chance that someone will be going to get a gun in the near future to shoot you?
What is the last but ‘capital punishment’ and the correct and necessary action to protect a revolution from those that would destroy it and slaughter all the revolutionaries in that process?
People like Southpaw Punch can write so blithely about terror, violence and death because they’ve never actually seen any.
Since I’ve lived in southern Africa for the past three decades I have seen close up what bullets and bombs can do to human flesh. Admittedly these were counter-revolutionary bullets fired by the apartheid regime and its surrogates, but I suspect that revolutionary bullets have much the same effect. And I would not wish to visit the results on anybody else.
Of course, SPP takes refuge in some gibbering nonsense about Stalinism. Since I was a member of the Eurocommunist wing of the CPGB, I think it makes little sense to apply the label “Stalinist” to me, though I realise that the cruder members of the British ultra-left have always found it hard to understand ideological diffeences within the communist movement.
Neither were Samora Machel and most of the other Frelimo leaders of the 1970s and 80s “Stalinist” in any meaningful sense. And there wasn’t a “left opposition” in Mozambique to decapitate. I suggest SPP tries to analyse African revolutions in their own terms instead of importing labels from Europe.
Frelimo did execute some people – but they were right-wingers some of whom (e.g. Lazaro Nkavandame) had collaborated with the Portuguese, or (e.g. Uria Simango) were suspected of complicity in the murder of Frelimo’s first president, Eduardo Mondlane. These are precisely the sort of executions that SPP has already told us he favours.
I don’t – I consider those executions, after suammary trials the transcripts of which have never been made public, to be one of the worst blots on Frelimo’s record. Even under the one party state of the time, they were a violation of the constitution, and they broke promises Machel had given to Julius Nyerere that Simango and the others would be kept alive.
I don’t know whether the quotes attributed to Che are true or not.
What I do know is that Joe Strummer once said “I ain’t no Che Guevara” and let’s not forget that it’s six years now since Joe died.
Somewhere in the bombed out remnants of Trash City our compadre is raising a spliff and a glass of red and urging us all to “walk the talk”.
“One day truth and justice will reign.”
Joe Strummer – 1952 – 2002
I’ll never forget going to Cuba and listening to the locals talk lovingly about Che and his buddies for hours on end. They idolise him in the truest sense.
It’s very hard to unpick the propoganda from the reality in the history of Cuba, seeing as no-one had or has an interest in being objective about it. Like you Dave, I’m keeping an open mind.
I was relatively successful at selling papers outside factories in Leeds.
Che Guevara probably did things during the revolution and afterwards that most of us would not have agreed with. However he had to safeguard the revolution and this was a bloody affair. The alternative future for gangster ridden Cuba was Haiti were hundreds still die as a direct result of US imperialism.
Those who have used these quotes out of their historical context are wanting a Haiti future for Cuba.
We as socialists want something a lot better.
I don’t knowabout che, but I do know that the ‘imprisoned cuban trotskyists’ as supporters of Posadas were critical of the decision to withdraw the soviet missiles and indeed that the inevitable nuclear war would be a global class war which despite the millions of casualties would result in a victory for the working class.
not the nicest of people.
and thats leaving out the UFOs altogether
While executions are justifiable as part of a revolution, they are not something to be welcomed. The Bolsheviks debated long and hard before introducing Red Terror, which was an emergency measure. They did not support the general application of the death penalty, or the abolition of trials.
And rightly so, execution is a dirty business and not something that we should ever take lightly.
Paul Fauvet -
The way you make your point that “people like Southpaw Punch can write so blithely about terror, violence and death because they’ve never actually seen any” is really quite revealing – especially when you follow it up by declaring your own first-hand experiences. You sound like my Tory-loving uncle who told me in the 1990s: “but you’ve never LIVED under a Labour government”. To argue from experience is to completely misunderstand the position of “people like” Southpaw Punch. Maybe that’s because the cruder “mainstream Marxist” critics of the ultra-left have always found it hard to get to grips with the sort of philosophical work which informs most of the European post-Marxist tradition.
Perhaps it’s this lack of philosophical resources which is the reason why you completely avoid addressing Southpawpunch’s point about hypocrisy. Let me quote: “The trouble with those who describe themselves as from the ‘reality based wing of the far left’, or the like, is that they may be able to accept how violence was necessary in a distant past but will attack those who are the continuation of such figures and who say that the same necessities remain.” Paul Fauvet, perhaps you would make more sense if you addressed this specific point (or, otherwise, own up to the fact that you don’t have an answer).
In fact, I personally wrestle with this question whenever I see the daily reality of the Congo. As someone whose experience of political violence is limited to being aggressively shoved aside by a few Labour thugs at an election count, I ask myself if I am kidding myself when I say that we need, as Slavoj Zizek says, a “new politics of terror”. But there are always three things which I bear in mind:
1. As a member of the Yippies once said in relation to their defeat at the hands of the US state in the late-60s, they simply weren’t prepared for the sheer level of violence that the state would throw at them. So, in other words, what you refer to as the “mainstream Marxist” position of building on bourgeois revolutions is doomed to take place within a playground perimeter pre-determined by the state’s decision on how much violence it will use in the face of political dissent. It seems, then, that the reintroduction of political violence (even if we have to expand our notion of violence to include actions such as that of the Raytheon 9) is essential to any leftist resistance.
2. It’s by no means obvious that, even if we did decide to abandon the use of political violence for reasons of ethics or simple self-preservation, we should pursue other, more peaceful, avenues. I rather suspect that it would better, then, to simply give up and let the current political system decay to such a point that it no longer had the confidence of the masses. But the problem with this strategy in bourgeois democracies is that such withdrawal from politics remains stuck at the level of a private pathology rather than a political strategy. This means that we really ARE forced into that playground perimeter I just mentioned.
3. The third point is to do with fantasy. I’m afraid that what Southpawpunch refers to as “the reality-based far left” simply does not understand the relationship between fantasy and reality. The way out of fantasy is not to be guided by some other person who claims to be more grounded in reality (however that would be decided). The way to dispell a fantasy is to be brave enough to live it. It’s true – there are many proto-leftists out there with their Che posters and T-shirst; but the appropriate response is to view this collective fantasy of the return of political violence as the material basis from which we can work. In other words, whether you think the ‘Che fantasy’ is illegitimate and immature or if you think it could be actualised, there is still only one way to deal with it: force these kids to live up to what they openly fantasise about and see what happens.
I was one of several hundred marchers injured by the German police at Rostock at last year’s G8, so I have a little experience of state forces getting nasty and using their repressive capacity. This, and a couple of arrests I have had for taking part in protests, are very reality-based indeed – they actually happened to me.
Even in bourgeois democracies, if you as a protester cross a certain not very generously drawn line, you will experience this repression, and perhaps even the phenomenon of state terrorism. This has to be mentioned in any discussion of revolutionary terror.
As has been noted above, Dave Osler is apparently less uncomfortable with the Terror of Robespierre than of Guevara because the 18th century is a lot more distant than the 20th.
@Fauvet
Actually, as it happens, I have seen terror, (political) violence and (political) death up close, not for long and not in a full revolution, but that’s neither here nor there; views are valid (or not) whether you have direct experience or not e.g. whether you live in Switzerland or Soweto.
My points about Stalinism are pertinent as you compare my views, completely irrationally, to an extreme Stalinist (Vyshinsky) and blithely ignore the distinction between the violence of the oppressors e.g. Vyshinsky and those fighting against such e.g. Frelimo before the revolution.
From what Fauvet says about those that Frelimo executed, it sounds like they acted correctly. He mentions that Simango (Frelimo’s once vice-president) collaborated. How many others did not, or stopped doing such, when they realised Frelimo would come to power and they would pay for their crimes with a bullet.
I’m also glad they weren’t diverted by wet Eurocommunist concerns or maybe SA backed RENAMO would have overthrown them in the Civil War. If I was part of a CP, or a member of the ‘communist movement’, I’d kind of want to generally (although mistakenly) be seen as part of the “ultraleft” rather than have even former LP characters, like the former chair of the Finance Ctte of Leeds City Council, Garth Frankland, (correctly) lapping me from the left – “However he (Guevara) had to safeguard the revolution and this was a bloody affair.”
And incidentally post revolutionary Mozambique sounds exactly like a Stalinist aligned state – one party state, state anthem ‘Viva Viva Frelimo’, government nationalisation of privately owned industries and widescale support from the USSR etc.
@Roots Rock Rebel
Please let us forget that fraud Joe Strummer, the Volvo driving, Cotswalds living millionaire. It’s toe-curling to see Lefts embarrass themselves so and in a ‘white dub reggae style’ to boot (although not quite as ludicrous as those white blokes who used to wear dreads?) A chancer dies, the legend grows (like Guevara too?)
I generally agree with Bill’s points above – and all of the sentiment – but the point is also somewhat lost if he is suggesting they were somewhat reluctant or unsure about terror.
“Immediately after the Bolshevik coup, capital punishment for desertion at the front, reintroduced by Kerensky, was abolished at the suggestion of Kamenev. Lenin was not at the meeting which adopted this measure. When he learned of the decree, he was beside himself with anger.
“Nonsense,” he said. “How can one make revolution with-out executions?” Kamenev tried to argue that the new law was applicable only to army deserters.
“That is a mistake,” Lenin protested. “an unpardonable weakness and pacifist illusion,” and recommended that the order be rescinded immediately. Convinced that this move would
make an unfavourable impression, he accepted a compromise; to disregard the new law and shoot deserters.
“In one of our appeals,” Trotsky writes, “it was stated that anyone who gave aid and comfort to the enemy would be killed on the spot. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries protested against this threat.
“‘On the Contrary,”Lenin exclaimed, ‘this is just where the true revolutionary pathos comes in. Do you really think that we shall be victorious without using the most cruel terror?’
“That was the period,” says Trotsky, “when Lenin at every opportunity kept hammering into our heads that terror was unavoidable.
([1] Adoratsky, Vospominaniya o Lenine (Reminiscences about Lenin). Moscow, 1939,PP. 66-67.) (Although I’d be wary about anything written about Lenin in Stalin’s USSR.)
I agree with Rostock Rebel and a fair part of Toodle Noodle’s comments and those that I don’t, I find interesting.
I missed Dave’s response above “The threat to nuke NYC – apart from being morally wrong, of course – was a total propaganda gift to the US, and would have undermined all efforts by US leftists to build for solidarity/non-intervention in Cuba.
Surely even you agree he should have kept his trap shut, if only on tactical grounds?”
No and no. Should for example, the IRA before partition desisted from killing British soldiers or black and tans as this doubtless did ‘undermined (many) efforts by UK leftists to build for solidarity/non-intervention in Ireland. Why didn’t the Cubans just give up and hand back all the expropriated US property. That’d got them a good press in the US.
He would also have been right to say ‘we will nuke New York’ (if he did, and as was stated above the Soviets would have controlled them, but anyway) as nukes are no good if you just wheel them out for parades; you have to deploy them.
You’re right to be weary! Uritsky, the leader of the Petrograd Cheka, and a left Bolshevik was the main opponent of the summary execution and indeed capital punishment in general.
It was his assassination in 1918, on the same day as the nearly successful attempt on Lenin’s life, that lead to Red Terror. But even then there were limits on terror, as Simon Pirani (unwittingly) reveals in his book, the Cheka’s actions were accountable to the mass working class organisations at least up to 1922.
Lenin did believe terror was unavoidable and it was. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to avoid it.
As I’ve no doubt everyone reading here does recall, in reference to Lenin’s advocacy of severe military discipline, during WWI the bourgeois armies routinely performed executions of soldiers who refused to obey orders, who displayed cowardice in the face of the enemy, who deserted and who aided the enemy.
One can question from a left perspective whether one should continue the terrorist practices of the bourgeois state however. Lenin seemed to view human beings in a rather negative manner and believed that they need to be scared into doing the right thing rather than inspired by the heroic example of others. People remember Guevara today, not for the summary executions he ordered or performed, but for his courage and devotion to helping his fellow man, whatever cost to himself (and it cost him his life).
Punchie, slight difference between killing Black and Tans in an open war situation and nuking NYC. Or not? You are a twat sometimes…\
PS: Stroppy says she would drop the ‘sometimes’ from the sentence above, ‘lickspittle CIA whore/LRC member/reformist wuss’ that she is.
Hang on, Dave. I’m not sure anybody has advocated some kind of strategic(?) attack on the US by a nuclear armed Cuba. (in particular Che Guevara.)
Isn’t SPP’s view that if Cuba were nuclear armed and under threat (eg from the US) then it should play that card – ie, “we have the weapons too”?
That was and is the ugliness of the cold war.
Why shouldn’t a nuclear armed (as if!) Cuba do that?
Why are you concerned about the possibility that Che was not a saint?
@Dave
I wouldn’t bother replying to your response save wish to point out that I would not, and have never, referred to anyone as a ‘whore’ or any such sexist formulation (or use the vaguely mad formula of accussing everyone of being a CIA agent as Stalinists, in particular, do or did).
But then if person after person was pointing out my hypocricy that I might also get a bit disorientated in my comments as well.
And whilst I’m here I would point out that you are trying to make a quantative difference a qualitative one. Being violent against a group of people – being it nuking them all or roughing a few up slightly – will usually result in it being harder to build solidarity amongst their fellow nationals – but sometimes violent acts are nonetheless necessary.
I am so vewy feeeeeerth.
I am having a death thquad/gigadeath wank fantathy wight now.
Oooh tho feeeerth. Ooh.
Line them up. watch them twembling. What’th my name? Whoth your daddy? got me tho hard.
shoot them. Dwop the bomb. Watch the people thcweaming. wadiation thickneth. Dirty Genothide oooh. Gets me tho.. uhh . Now they fear me. oooh. My cock twembles when the bodieth are bulldothed into the math gwaveth. Whatth my name bitcheth! I am thouthpawpunch. I am tho powerful. I am macho. Yeah ooooh.
tho feeerth.
Concerning Che’s relationship with the Cuban Trotskyists and other revolutionary dissidents, here’s something I wrote on the subject a while back on UKLN (slightly ammended):
Che initially supported the repression of the Cuban Trotskyists but as he grew disillusioned with the USSR he changed his position. Not only did he help secure the release of Armando Machado but also came to advocate complete freedom for all revolutionary currents in Cuba.
After returning to Cuba from Moscow, where he had been denounced as a Trotskyist, Che told a meeting of students “Opinion which must be destroyed with batons is opinion which brings us an advantage. It is not possible to destroy opinions with batons and it is precisely this that is the root of intelligence…it is clear that you can get a series of things from Trotsky’s thought”. He also denounced the Cuban police’s smashing of the printing plates of the Old Man’s
“The Permanent Revolution” as the work of “a third rate bureaucrat.”
When Che found out that Roberto Acosta was arrested in early 1965 for having a mimeographed The Revolution Betrayed printed in his house he arranged a meeting with him where he expressed his solidarity. He noted “Acosta, you can’t kill ideas
with blows”.
Assuring Acosta that he would be freed shortly. Guevara apparently closed the meeting with an embrace and the words: “See you in the next trenches”.
The fact that he devoted his political life to the spread of socialism (however futile his efforts) not state power suggests he was not a typical Stalinist bureaucrat but more of a revolutionary idealist. I’d be happy to wear a t shirt if it were not so cliched (I’m eying up a really cool looking Angela Davis* one from the philosophy football website at the moment. Gonna pick myself up one in January).
* Allegedly she dissed some czech dissidents at one point which is enough for some “leftists” to dismiss everything she ever did or stood for. Well fuck them.
I don’t know if the quotes are correct, but certainly it is a fact that Castro berated Khruschev for not launching a nuclear war.
Sounds like a text book definition of ultra left to me, which is why SPP loves it so much.
I wonder how he has the time to post here because no doubt he must spend all his time training his revolutionary cadres in urban warfare. Either that or he’s a wanker. You decide.
“but certainly it is a fact that Castro berated Khruschev for not launching a nuclear war.”
Kind of important, and in kind of need of support.
@ Joe
That’s very interesting, Joe. I’ve often looked for more detail on Che and the Trots. Do you have any sources for further info?
I’ve also always wanted to know more about Cuba. There are many former Trots e.g. the Communist League (= SWP US) and the RCG who consider it be a socialist country. When you discus it with them, they will come out with all sorts of interesting sounding claims about workers democracy there and I have never seen the detail in order to most probably rebut them. All the standard Trot books or pamphlets on Cuba deal with just the revolution and its aftermath and not the system as it is now although the SWP’s theoretical journal, International Socialism, has had some interesting articles recently that are in my pile to be read.
I also agree with your dislike of people who take a single instance (or alleged instance) of a Left saying something wrong – or just deliberately misinterpret what they say – to try and traduce a person without considering their whole.
The Davis instance is a good example of this as is a current complete misrepresentation of what Lindsey German meant when she used the term ‘white socialist’ that has lead to (currently) 332 often sad comments being made on Socialist Unity (versus e.g. 33 comments on Hicks and Amicus), and often made by trainspotters such as Madame Monomanaic Miaow – ‘can I tell you, again x200, just how rude Rees was to me once.’
Amongst the hundreds of comments there (and similar on Harry’s Place) are nasty accusations saying that this leader of the SWP is a racist. (If you made such a serious accusation against a socialist on my site, you would need to either make a proper justification – good or bad – or have your slur zapped).
In a similar way German’s (incorrect) comments about ‘shibboleths’ were frequently misused as a tired ‘get out’ to fend off any discussion about Respect.
I’m no supporter of Davis generally (a vice presidential candidate of the CPUSA) and I would have a lot to criticise in German, the SWP and (especially) Respect but this can only be honestly done by considering the whole, not just by looking for (or planting) a microscopic fleck of dirt and trying to paint the whole person with that.
@Fan 1
I think satire works best when it has some basis, albeit exaggerated, in what someone says rather than just making it up. My view on violence is very clear, and completely unrelated to your slurs, such as when I endorsed Bill J’s sentiments like “execution is a dirty business and not something that we should ever take lightly”
You should also use words that can be worked out (and what makes you think I’m posh?) Feeerth?
@Fan 2
I can’t see anywhere where I have expressed my support for the theories and practices that Castro generally followed. As I said “The only flaws in Guevara are that the Cuban Communist Party won’t bring about socialism…Socialism in Cuba would be a very good idea.”
And I imagine you don’t actually mean “urban warfare” (famously promoted by the Brazilian communist Carlos Marighella, author of the ‘Mini-manual of the Urban Guerrilla’) because this was different to the rural guerrilla model of Castro (and Mao) but if anyone is interested in this subject I would (generally) agree with the orthodox Trot criticisms of both of these methods made by Joseph Hansen in his 1971 document ‘IN DEFENSE OF THE LENINIST STRATEGY OF PARTY BUILDING’ against ‘guerillaists’ such as, er, Ernest Mandel.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/hansen/1971/indef.htm
-
But it was a mistake, for me to fall in (again) into the trap of talking a lot about the necessity of violence rather than, for example, the necessity of representatives being subject to recall and on average wages or the fight against racism being a key part of communist work. Violence is but a very small part.
That is what comes from being honest. Communists are open with their views.
I am not aware of anyone here declaring themselves to be a pacifist which, if true, would mean that EVERYONE here does support some violence but only a few of us here have the ethics to not to hide their views; many others here have taken a thoroughly dishonest approach in this debate and in other similar ones.
Southpawblowhard -
Seeing as you have reduced things to the level of the playground, you should know that – as the toughest kid in school – I used to stick up for the bullied and kick the fanny pants out of the bullies… So why don’t you try that crap out on me?
Fukkur.
Returning to the original questions Dave raised – did Che ever say make those remarks about firing squads and nuclear war?
So far, the only source I can trace is the Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, author of such works as “Exposing the real Che Guevara abd the Useful Idiots who Idolise him”.
Fontova left Cuba at the age of seven. He has no access to Cuban archival sources, and inevitably the sources he uses are others in the exile community, with ideological axes to grind.
Relying on such a man for a balanced assessment of Che would be like relying on Royalist pamphleteers for a balanced assessment of Oliver Cromwell.
It is altogether possible that Che did make some crazy remarks about nuking New York, It is also possible that he came to regret them later (just a he came to change his attitude to Trotskyists, according to the comment by JoePolitix). We don’t know.
It would help, of course, if the Cuban archives were opened to historical study. A few years ago Fidel Castro did offer to allow foreign scholars to study archival material relating to the Cuban role in defending Angola. That would be a good start, but for a proper historical assessment of the Cuban revolution and its leaders much more openness is needed.
As for the firing squad enthusiast, Southpaw Punch, he claims that post-revolutionary Mozambique was Stalinist because it had a one-party state, nationalised industries, and received support from the Soviet Union.
Does SPP really imagine that Stalin invented the one-party state? In the Soviet Union, the Mensheviks were outlawed in 1921. Guess who was in power then.
Are we to assume that SPP opposes nationalisation, and believes that industry ought to remain in private hands? (As a matter of fact most of the industries run by the state after the Mozambican revolution were not nationalised at all – they were abandoned by their Portuguese owners, and the state stepped in to keep them going. But that’s not really germane to the argument here – socialists used to believe that a revolutionary government needed to seize the key levers of economic power. SPP seems to believe that this is “stalinism”.)
And yes, Mozambique received support from the USSR (and from China – Frelimo was smart enough not to get caught up in the Sino-Soviet split). So what? Is SPP saying that African governments should have rejected Soviet assistance? Would it have been better for Mozambique to join the IMF and the World Bank at independence in 1975 (rather than being forced, under pressure of a devastating war, to join those institutions ten years later?)
“I am not aware of anyone here declaring themselves to be a pacifist which, if true, would mean that EVERYONE here does support some violence but only a few of us here have the ethics to not to hide their views; many others here have taken a thoroughly dishonest approach in this debate and in other similar ones.”
It might be that some of us regard violence as something to be deployed only where there exists no realistic alternative, to no greater degree than is necessary, with clear tactical and strategic goals in mind and an understanding of how the action will advance them, and where there is a high chance of success, rather than fetishising it and calling for its unrestrained use at every opportunity and in every scenario.
For sources, for example, see Taubman’s biography of Khruschev, which on pp 572 – 573 of my (hardback) edition quotes Castro thus:
“I don’t want to say that [launch a first strike] directly, but under certain circumstances, we must not wait to experience the perfidy of the imperialists, letting them initiatie the first strike and deciding Cuba be wiped off the face of the Earth” going on to say Khuschev “should eliminate the danger [of an invasion of Cuba] for ever through an act of clear legitimate defense [sic], however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other.” (my emphasis).
When Khruschev refused to follow this advice (thankfully) Castro reportedly (see p 579) called him a “son of a bitch … bastard … asshole … no cojones … maricon”.
Paul Fauvet -
I just want to clear something up for the record; seeing as you haven’t responded to my criticisms of your reliance on arguments from experience, I assume that you have caved in on that point.
Fauvet,
Your assumptions are mistaken. I was not putting forward any view on, for example, nationalisation in my comments above (my view is to support it and expropriation, actually. I’m a Trot not a Tory). I was merely reporting these things to categorise what sort of state Mozambique was, after independence.
But it wath a mithtake, for me to fall in (again) into the trap of talking a lot about the necethity of violenthe. I jutht like to think about it. And I like to talk about it. A lot.
I am not a fantathist. I would personally line up hundwedth, nay thousanth of men, women and childwen up in fwont of a ditch. I would perthonally put a bullet in the back of each of their headth. Lovingly. I would not be moved by their pleath, or their crieth or their begging for merthy. For ladieth, I am merthileth. Yeth ladieth I am a big, tough man.
I would perthonally bulldoze the pileth of thtill twitching bodieth into the twenches. Maybe one or two would thtill be moving (like in that execution thene in Schindler’th Litht) I would not even flinch fwom finishing thoth childwen off. That ith my wevolutionary couwage. You thee, unlike you weak non-manly typth I actually have the mowality to do thith. You hypocwites! You who would feel bad about math murder! You who would shwink fwom holocautht – do you not know what it ith to fight for a better world? You mutht kill kill kill.
Bang bang bang!
Dakka dakka dakka! Oh yeth!
Thankth for thtanding up for me Toodle Noodle. I am being offly offly bullied now by people who have ‘mowal objectionth’ or thome other cowardly weformitht attitude to math murder. But I don’t need your help wight now. I hear Hawold Shipman is being offly offly bullied in pwithon so you might like to go and tell him how vewy bwave you were at school and he can tell you about the old ladieth he killed.
FrFinton Stack, you wrote:
“It might be that some of us regard violence as something to be deployed only where there exists no realistic alternative, to no greater degree than is necessary, with clear tactical and strategic goals in mind and an understanding of how the action will advance them, and where there is a high chance of success, rather than fetishising it and calling for its unrestrained use at every opportunity and in every scenario.”
I don’t really disagree with your formulation – although I don’t think you have really considered the way in which most acts of political violence could be justified by adjusting the variables in your formula. But the problem arises when the people who hold such a view believe that:
1. They are the people privileged with access to reality
2. They develop a confidence in this sense of reality by characterising themselves as moderate when compared with revolutionary fantasists
In fact, if these ‘moderates’ didn’t have radicals to vent their disgust at, they would have a lot less confidence in their alleged access to reality. That’s why there is such a curious libidinal attachment to the act of bullying SPP on here (see ‘Southpawblowhard’ above).
The problem with this debate is that in my view Dave Osler is hostile to Che Guevara and is trying to frame him in negative terms, though more subtly than the “Stalinist mass murderer” froth you might get from some Bush-voting gusano in Miami, or from some British Trotskyists.
“Pin-up” implies Che had about the same political significance as Kate Moss does. “Killing machine” suggests he was The Terminator. Neither interpretation is accurate.
Che was a revolutionary idealist who both theorised and practised guerrilla warfare. He played a key role in one of the relatively few successful revolutions in history, and so had to deal with one of the problems that come with that, which is punishing the remnants of the previous regime that have not been quick enough to flee in time. The need to suppress any attempts to turn the clock back to before the revolution also entails revolutionary violence.
I have a positive view of Che, a key icon of rebellion. Attempts to attack him or his legacy spring in my view from a desire to attack the very idea of revolt.
Joe Stalin played a key role in one of the world’s successful revolutions. Not only that, he crushed the Nazis. Attempts to attack him or his legacy, or to bring up one or two examples of over exuberance in the creation of the socialist state spring in my view from a desire to attack the very idea of revolt.
Indeed. Although you mispelled the word Commandante, my dear Lavrenti.
Spots on the Sun
“Joe Stalin played a key role in one of the world’s successful revolutions. Not only that, he crushed the Nazis. Attempts to attack him or his legacy, or to bring up one or two examples of over exuberance in the creation of the socialist state spring in my view from a desire to attack the very idea of revolt.”
Except Joe Stalin does not exist as an icon of the very idea of revolt, unlike Guevara. So you missed Rostock Rebel’s point completely which was that the real target of Che’s critics is not the man himself, but those inspired by his image.
Sorry Toodle Noodle, are you going to kick my fanny pants in now?
Well, I think the fact that you’re full of crap is pretty much plain for all to see. So no further action is required on my part. I’m afraid I only descend to the schoolyard stuff when I am patently dealing with children (such as Southpawblowhard); in your own case, I just didn’t want to let the entirely fallacious little quip go by unaddressed.
I don’t know if you’re used to discussing grown-up issues. But normally one makes a statement, and then the other person exposes how stupid that statement is, and then one either offers a counter-argument or folds. I mean, am in the wrong now for simply pointing out your fallacious arguments and quips? (Or maybe you just don’t like the fact that I’ve sort of hit the nail on the head with a variety of targets on here.)
I’d only read that first line of the second comment in this thread, then bet myself a swallow of whisky who would be the writer of it.
Yes, your very own violent fantasist, predictable as ever, going Kapow as he reads his Commando comics.
Can someone send that guy a box of flies for Christmas so he can pull their wings off?
Yes, your very own violent fantasist, predictable as ever, going Kapow as he reads his Commando comics.
That allusion is a bit antiquated. Could someone suggest a suitable computer game? Is there one called “Against the Wall” where you get to murder loads of counter-revolutionaries?