https://www.mitchelcohen.com/remembering-che-guevara-june-14-1928-october-9-1967/
REMEMBERING CHE GUEVARA (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967)
Guided by Great Feelings of Love:
The Revolutionary Legacy of Che Guevara
by
Mitchel Cohen
Che was captured, tortured and murdered in Bolivia under the
direction of the CIA on October 9, 1967. Fifty-two years have passed.
Still Che is remembered, not as some ancient and hazy patriarch, but
vividly, as one who exemplified the spirit of liberation … and the ideals
of our own youth. He inspired so many ordinary people to commit
themselves to their vision of a different world and called on us to
persevere, even in the face of bureaucratic intransigence and the
enormous power of U.S. imperialism, against all odds.
Che Guevara did not concern himself with “elections” as a means for
transforming capitalist or authoritarian states, unlike many in the U.S.
and European “Left” today. But he was extremely concerned about finances,
and how to fund the revolution.
There is a piece in the documentary film, “Ernesto Che Guevara: The
Bolivian Diary,” which is eerie in that it shows Che as part of a Cuban
delegation in Moscow begging for funds for Cuba. In the film, the
34-year old Che Guevara is barely able to bite his tongue and check his
scathing sarcasm for the Russian bureaucrats, in order to gain funding
from them.
I.F. Stone revealed that in 1961, at a conference in Punte del Este,
Uruguay, Che Guevara born in Argentina and a student of medicine there
huddled in discussion with some new leftists from New York. A couple
of Argentine Communist Party apparatchiks passed. Che couldn’t help
shouting out: “Hey, why are you here, to start the
counter-revolution?”
Like many in the emerging new left around the world, Che had first-hand
experience with party apparatchiks and their attempts to impose their
bureaucracy on indigenous revolutionary movements. He hated the Cuban
revolution’s uneasy reliance on the Soviet Union. As the only one among
the victorious guerrilla leadership in the Cuban revolution who had
actually studied the works of Karl Marx prior to the Revolution’s victory
in 1959, Che inspired New Left activists to take a critical stance
towards the “socialism” of the Soviet Union and the local parties that
blindly followed the Soviet line.
Indeed, contrary to the conceptions of many in the U.S. today, the
revolution in Cuba was made independent of, and at times in opposition
to, the Cuban Communist Party. It was not until several years after the
revolution succeeded in taking state power that an uneasy working
relationship was established leading to a merger of the revolutionary
forces and the Party a merger that provided no end of problems for Che,
and for the Cuban revolution itself.
We can learn something for our situation in the US today particularly
with regard to the role of non-governmental and not-for-profit
organizations within progressive circles by examining Che’s strategies
in Latin America. Fundamental to Che’s understanding was that “Yankee
imperialism is like an octopus; its tentacles reach across the globe. We
must cut them off: create two, three, many Vietnams.”
Cuba took that strophe to heart, and for a while gave material
assistance (at Che’s insistence) to anti-imperialist struggles throughout
the world. However, in doing so Cuba became increasingly dependent upon
the Soviet Union (in some ways similar to radical organizations’
increasing dependence on Foundation grants and other hoop-providing
jumpsters). In its desperation for currency to buy needed items, the
government after strenuous debate decided to forego diversification
of Cuba’s agriculture in order to expand its main export cash-crop,
sugar, which it exchanged for Soviet oil, using some and reselling the
rest on the world market. Despite Che’s (and others) warnings, Cuba
gradually lost the capability to feed its own people a problem that
reached devastating proportions with the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991.
One crisis after another had beset the Soviet Union and other avowedly
socialist countries when they pursued industrial models of development
and tried to pay for them by producing for and competing in the world
market. Che argued that Cuba should reject cost/benefit analysis based on
exchange values as the measure for what gets produced. But he also was in
charge of Cuba’s economy, and the real immediate needs of the Cuban
people were driving Cuba away from growing food primarily for local
consumption and towards producing cash crops, hemming in the radical
vision of Cuba’s leaders who wanted their revolution to set a different
example of socialism for the Cuban people … and for the world.
A truly new society, Che believed, must aspire to and implement
immediately, in the here and now, what its people dream for the future.
And to get there, REAL communist revolutions must reject an “efficiency”
that maximizes profits (but not “efficiency” by some other measure) and
instead nurture communalistic attempts to create a more humane
society.
- “How can one apply the term ‘mutual benefit’ to the selling at
world-market prices of raw materials costing limitless sweat and
suffering in the underdeveloped countries and the buying of machinery
produced in today’s big, automated factories?… The socialist countries
have the moral duty of liquidating their tacit complicity with the
exploiting countries of the West [in trading products].”(1)
Che considered himself a Marxist, but he ridiculed mercilessly the
officials of Marxdom and bureaucrats of every stripe, breaking with the
numbing mechanistic economics that Marxism had become. With the success
of the Cuban revolution, the new left inspired by Che placed “Revolution”
back onto the historical agenda.
Che’s critique of the so-called “Communism” practiced by the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe came with a reassertion, not negation, of what
“real socialism” could be. Given the realities of the situation in Cuba
with the hostile United States government and giant industrial economy
just 90 miles to the north, Che proposed utilizing a state-planned
economy (“the budgetary finance system” he called it) as a weapon in the
battle to break the chains of neocolonialism. Che viewed neocolonialism
as “the most redoubtable form of imperialism most redoubtable because
of the disguises and deceits that it involves, and the long experience
that the imperialist powers have in this type of confrontation.” In a
world with two competing superpowers, Che’s support for pricing terms
that favored the poor were made possible by the state monopoly of
foreign trade in Cuba as well as in the Eastern European/Soviet bloc.
Trade from the so-called socialist bloc assisted the Cuban revolution in
resisting the U.S.-imposed blockade and provided funding to meet Cuba’s
fundamental social needs.(2)
Che’s internationalism and identification with the poor and downtrodden
everywhere, his refusal to recognize the sanctity of national boundaries
in the fight against U.S. imperialism, inspired new radical movements
throughout the world. Che called upon radicals to begin the process of
transforming ourselves into new, socialist human beings BEFORE the
revolution, if we were to have any hope of actually achieving one worth
living in. His call to begin living meaningfully NOW reverberated through
an entire generation, reaching as much towards Sartre’s existentialism as
the latter stretched towards Marx. Through action, through wringing the
immediacy of revolution from the neck of every oppression, of every
moment, and by putting one’s ideals immediately into practice, Che
hammered the leading philosophical currents of the day into a tidal wave
of revolt.
For Che, Marx’s maxim: “From each according to their ability to each
according to their needs,” was not simply a long-range slogan but an
urgent practical necessity to be implemented at once, occasionally
rubbing the wrong way against the slower, long-range plans of Fidel
Castro and other Cuban government officials. On the other hand, the
harrowing constraints of trying to develop a small country (or even a
radio station, food coop, daycare or alternative education center) along
socialist lines in Cuba’s case in the context of continued attacks by
U.S. imperialism (including a blockade, an invasion, a threatened nuclear
war, and ongoing economic and ideological harassment) militated against
achieving Che’s vision and boxed-in the revolutionary society into
choosing from equally unpalatable alternatives.(3)
It was amid such contradictory pressures that Che tried to set a
different standard for Cuba, and for humanity in general. As Minister of
Finance, he managed to distribute the millions of dollars obtained from
the USSR to artists and to desperately poor farmers – after all, these
were the people who had shed their blood to liberate Cuba. In the U.S.
they would have been considered, shall we say, “poor risks.”
The Russian bureaucrats, like any capitalist banker, were furious with
Che’s “take what you need, don’t worry about paying it back” attitude.
(They also bristled at the freedom of Cuba’s artists, who, following
Che’s example, spared no metaphor in critiquing the USSR almost as much
as they did the U.S.) They leaned on Fidel to control Che and to regulate
the “proper” dispersal of funds, just as twenty years later they leaned
with Brezhnev on Poland to pay back its inflated debt to the western
banks, causing cutbacks and hardship and leading to the working class
anti-Soviet response: the formation of Solidarnösc. Indeed, the Soviet
Union at that time was the second-best friend Chase Manhattan had! And it
paid the ultimate price.
U.S. Involvement in the Cuban Revolution
In 1959, the guerrillas, headed by Fidel Castro, swept into Havana
having defeated the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Although
the U.S. government armed and funded Batista, the CIA had its agents in
Fidel’s guerrilla army as well.
One lieutenant in the guerrilla army, Frank Fiorini, was actually one of
several operatives for the Central Intelligence Agency there. Fiorini
surfaced a few years later as a planner of the Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba, two years after that as one of three “hobos” arrested in Dallas a
few moments after President Kennedy was assassinated and immediately
released (one of the other “hobos” appears to have been none other than
CIA-operative E. Howard Hunt), and again as one of the culprits involved
with the dozens of CIA assassination attempts on the life of Fidel
Castro.
Fiorini became quite famous again in 1973 as one of the burglars at the
Democratic Party Headquarters at a hotel known as the Watergate, under
the name Frank Sturgis. Indeed, it was precisely when the Watergate
hearings had just begun to raise serious questions about the Bay of Pigs
and U.S. covert operations in Cuba that, suddenly, the existence of
secret White House tapes was “unexpectedly” revealed. From that moment
on, all we heard was “What did Nixon know and when did he know it?”, and
the potentially explosive investigation which had been on the verge of
revealing the secret history of illegal CIA interventions in Cuba, the
murder of John F. Kennedy and attempted assassinations of Fidel and war
against Cuba were effectively sidetracked.(4)
And yet it was under the constant threat of warfare by the U.S. overt
as well as the ongoing covert operations that the Cuban revolution
(which was not yet avowedly “Communist”), especially under the
instigation of Che, took some of its boldest steps in introducing
“socialism of a new type.”
Che opposed the strategy of luring capitalist investment, which some in
the government believed would enable Cuba to gain much needed currency
and compete in the world market – a policy that would later become a
factor in the downfall of the “Communist” states as they sacrificed
visionary socialist features to ensure investment. As head of the Cuban
national bank, Che made Cuba’s new banknotes famous by signing them
simply “Che.” The first question Che asked of his colleagues when he took
over running the bank was “Where has Cuba deposited its gold reserves and
dollars?” When he was told, “In Fort Knox,” he immediately began
converting Cuba’s gold reserves into non-U.S. currencies which were
exported to Canadian and Swiss banks.(5)
Che was a practitioner of sound accounting principles and a version of
“efficiency” based on two things: weakening the hold of U.S. imperialism
on Cuba’s economy, in this instance by removing the revolution’s gold
from the clutches of the United States government (which could all too
easily invent an excuse to confiscate it, as it later did with other
Cuban holdings. Che was prescient in understanding that this would
happen); and, of equal importance, finding ways to foster and fund the
creation of a new socialist human being without relying upon capitalist
mechanisms, which he observed were undermining the best of efforts in
socialist countries throughout the world. Che best put forth his outlook,
which came to be that of the new left internationally as well, in a
speech, “On Revolutionary Medicine”:
- “Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent,
all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in
which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into
close contact with poverty, hunger, and disease; with the inability to
treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefication provoked
by continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept
the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the
downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize that
there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming a
famous scientist or making a significant contribution to medical
science: I wanted to help those people.
- “How does one actually carry out a work of social welfare? How does
one unite individual endeavor with the needs of society?
- “For this task of organization, as for all revolutionary tasks,
fundamentally it is the individual who is needed. The revolution does
not, as some claim, standardize the collective will and the collective
initiative. On the contrary, it liberates one’s individual talent. What
the revolution does is orient that talent. And our task now is to orient
the creative abilities of all medical professionals toward the tasks of
social medicine.
- “The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than
all the property of the richest man on earth. … Far more important than a
good remuneration is the pride of serving one’s neighbor. Much more
definitive and much more lasting than all the gold that one can
accumulate is the gratitude of a people.
- “We must begin to erase our old concepts. We should not go to the
people and say, `Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our
presence, to teach you our science, to show you your errors, your lack of
culture, your ignorance of elementary things.’ We should go instead with
an inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn at that great source of
wisdom that is the people.
- “Later we will realize many times how mistaken we were in concepts
that were so familiar they became part of us and were an automatic part
of our thinking. Often we need to change our concepts, not only the
general concepts, the social or philosophical ones, but also sometimes
our medical concepts.
- “We shall see that diseases need not always be treated as they are in
big-city hospitals. We shall see that the doctor has to be a farmer also
and plant new foods and sow, by example, the desire to consume new foods,
to diversify the nutritional structure which is so limited, so poor.
- “If we plan to redistribute the wealth of those who have too much in
order to give it to those who have nothing; if we intend to make creative
work a daily, dynamic source of all our happiness, then we have goals
towards which to work.”(6)
The goals that Che set for himself took him first to the Congo in
support of Patrice Lumumba, soon to be murdered by mercenaries funded,
armed and instructed by the CIA. He next went to Bolivia, where he
organized a band of guerrillas to serve, he hoped, as a catalyst in
inspiring revolution. Che once again had to battle Official Marxdom. He
struggled with the head of the Bolivian Communist Party for leadership of
the guerrillas over the question: “Who should set policy for the
guerrillas, Che and the guerrillas themselves or the head of the Bolivian
Communist Party?” The guerrillas voted for Che perhaps the only
election Che was ever involved in. Not just anybody was allowed to vote,
not those who happened to live in the area, for example, but only people
who were actively engaged in the struggle. Once Che won that election
against the Communist Party attaché an election that was not only about
which individual should lead, but a plebiscite on competing revolutionary
strategies the Communist Party, which carried great weight in the
working class, abandoned the guerrilla movement.
Should we view Che’s decision today as the correct one? What if the
Bolivian CP leadership had not been so irresponsible and doctrinaire,
speaking in the same heavy-handed manner as had the Bolshevik Party
leadership in the USSR to the sailors’ uprising in Krontstadt 45 years
earlier and which fed the very nightmares the sailors had been opposing?
(Can there be a vanguard party that does not act in such a manner?) The
question still haunts: To whom is the guerrilla responsible the
guerrilla movement and its leadership or the larger radical organizations
and movement? Who sets the framework? And what happens when those levels
of responsibility clash?
Such questions are not easy to resolve, and recent history has provided
an array of vexing examples. In Vietnam, for example, contrary to Che’s
guerrilla army, the National Liberation Front’s military arm took their
policy from the party’s political bureau, not the other way around. And
in Chiapas, Mexico, the Zapatistas throughout the 1990s and early 2000s
invited “citizens of the world” to participate in decision-making over
which way forward for their movement. The Zapatistas were (and remain)
concerned with democratizing “civil society”; they explicitly rejected
attempting to wrest state power from those who now control
it.(7)
The relationship of organization to mass-movement is THE problem that has
always plagued radical movements when they get to a certain stage, and
this was the case with Che in Bolivia, as it is everywhere. To whom is
the affinity group, for example, responsible? Or, for that matter, the
artist? The radio station? The “local” or “cell”? The newspaper
editor?(8)
On the one hand, decentralization is attractive, allowing for the
greatest small-group autonomy, individual freedom and creativity (one’s
individual radio show, perhaps; one’s need for a paying job to support
the family; an artist’s need to freely express herself and propagandize
her writings, music, art). On the other hand, the larger movement must
not only be able to coordinate the activities of many local groups acting
independently but frame the actions of smaller groups who purport to be
part of the same movement within a larger collective strategy, thus in
some sense limiting or even undermining their autonomy.
In Bolivia, isolation of the guerrillas from a many-pronged social
movement led to their demise. In his last days Che was rueful and
frustrated at the lack of working class uprising in the mines, which he
had hoped to incite as there was already much unrest there, along with
Communist influence. An uprising would have enabled the guerrillas to
have had much greater impact. Eventually too late for Che and his
guerrilla army there the miners overcame the official Communist Party’s
obstructions and they went on strike a result of intense pro-guerrilla
committees that had formed among the tin miners. But the peasants did not
revolt, contrary to the guerrillas’ expectations. As a result, the
guerrillas were isolated and their ranks depleted. Che began to question
his strategy of the “foco” for Bolivia, which in Cuba had worked so
effectively. He also (and perhaps contradictorily) wished for just 100
more guerrilla troops that rather small number (he believed) would have
made the difference.
Would it? Could adding more troops compensate for the qualitative refusal
or inability of the miners and peasantry or any social force to join
the revolt and defeat the massive mobilization of pro-imperialist forces
that was underway?(9)
These are serious and complicated questions that apply to our social
movements today. Understanding let alone resolving such matters is
not helped by the demagoguery and grand-standing that plagues the left.
It COULD BE helped by a transformation in the way radical projects
(again, by “projects” I mean physical entities such as radio stations,
daycare centers, food coops, shelters, alternative educational
institutions, etc.) see themselves and their mission. That transformation
could be assisted by conscious attempts to develop a revolutionary
culture in which all participants see their project in that light, and
not simply as a “job”. The world or at least OUR world depends upon
whether we are able to resolve (or at least live with, while we build our
forces) the contradictions into which we are thrust and which we
reproduce, whether we mean to or not.
In Bolivia in the Summer of 1967, the guerrillas were picked off one by
one. Without additional revolutionary forces Che and the others were
forced to deal with the reality that, at least in Bolivia at that moment,
their strategy for catalyzing a mass-based revolutionary uprising had
failed. Under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (a Democrat from Texas),
the U.S. government sent military “advisers” and arms to the Bolivian
junta. It became only a matter of time, a few months, before Che’s forces
were defeated, Che was captured and assassinated, and the guerrilla
struggle at least for that period was wiped out.
A true picture of Che is not that of the flamboyant posters nor the
hagiography of Hollywood, but of a man dedicated to the poor
internationally, who tried with a small band of guerrillas to spark a
revolutionary uprising of peasants and workers to create a better life
for themselves. During the latter part of his life, Che met with numerous
frustrations amidst some successes, the biggest being the victory of the
Cuban revolution itself.
In the U.S., we portray heroes as all-knowing exceptions to the impotent
(and rather dumb) masses. In so doing, we reinforce our dependence upon
the myth of the heroic individual and maintain the impotence of the
multitude. In our culture, we are taught that change takes place not
through mass-action but through single moralistic or righteous figures
(think of how Dr. King or Malcolm X is portrayed today) who are able to
make the system respond positively to the rationality, importance and
moral force of his or her arguments.
Such illusions are dangerous to any radical movement and its
participants. On the one hand, the Bolivian peasants who are still living
in the areas in which Che and his guerrilla band were operating were
clearly touched by the brush of history. In the film “Ernesto Che
Guevara: The Bolivian Diary,” the filmmakers interviewed many of them who
were still alive. They movingly recounted that one world-historic
experience of their lives: their encounter with Che. Some remembered his
kindness towards them. One peasant woman was an apolitical young teenager
in 1967 and had risked her life to bring Che food and look after him in
his last hours after he was captured. Now around 50 years old, she
remembers Che’s kindness towards her, and how this profoundly affected
her life. Although no one in the film says it in so many words, clearly
Che was something of a Christ figure to them, even to those who betrayed
him or fired on him. It’s quite a comment on our present condition that
human touches that were once quite ordinary seem, in today’s world,
exceptional.
As Che put it, in his most famous quote: “At the risk of seeming
ridiculous, let me say that a true revolutionary is guided by great
feelings of love.”
John Gerassi describes Che’s capture thusly:
- “Defeated by 1,800 CIA-trained and CIA-led Bolivian Rangers, Che was
caught wounded but alive in October, tortured then summarily shot through
the heart by a Cuban veteran of the Bay of Pigs who had become a CIA
officer. He was then displayed bare-chested (neatly patched up so as not
to show torture marks) in the hope that no more such attempts would ever
again be initiated against pro-U.S. regimes. Instead, Guevara became a
quasi-religious symbol of justice and liberation to the poor and
exploited all over the world and to many of the socially conscious new
generations, then and today. ‘Be like Che,’ Fidel boomed to Habaneros on
the day he announced his death. ‘May our children be like Che,’ he still
says today.”(10)
Che was captured, tortured and murdered in Bolivia under the
direction of the CIA on October 9, 1967. Forty-six years have passed.
Still Che is remembered, not as some ancient and hazy patriarch, but
vividly, as one who exemplified the spirit of liberation … and the ideals
of our own youth. He inspired so many ordinary people to commit
themselves to their vision of a different world and called on us to
persevere even in the face of bureaucratic intransigence and the enormous
power of US imperialism, against all odds.
Such a vision seems extraordinary today. It seems inconceivable that
there are people who would take huge risks, acting out of their love for
humanity. Yesterday’s commonplace behavior seems beyond comprehensible.
And yet, people act in such ways ALL THE TIME. We just don’t see it, or
report it. The media suppresses that information, or frames it in such a
way as to make that individual the “exception” in an era of robots. But
that humanitarian spirit persists. It’s what enabled the new Bolivian
revolution to elect Evo Morales to the Presidency, much to the chagrin of
the US government. That, too, is part of Che’s legacy.
And, hopefully, it’s what inspires us to continue “risking ridicule,”
regardless of where it comes from, to make our radical efforts
successful. For many of us, it’s not only the end result that matters,
it’s the way we live, what it means to live a meaningful life.
– Mitchel Cohen
NOTES
1. “At the Afro-Asian Conference,” Che Guevara Speaks, Merit 1967, p.
108. But as one Marxist critic writes: “I’m sure this was a very popular
speech in certain nations. Nevertheless, the only possible way the
U.S.S.R. could have ‘abolished’ the law of value, to Guevara’s
satisfaction anyway, would be through SURRENDERING value FROM the
U.S.S.R. ‘Moral duty’? Value, for those acquainted with Marx, is created
either by nature, monopolization or by labor (MAINLY labor)-NOT morals
or what someone says it OUGHT to be. As far as the ‘limitless sweat and
suffering in the underdeveloped countries’ and the ‘big, automated
factories’ of the U.S.S.R., did Guevara forget how much limitless
sweat-nay, limitless blood-went INTO those ‘big, automated factories’
built in the 1930s, 1940s and later which supported Cuba from immediate
imperialist plunder at the hands of United Fruit, etc.? I mean, what made
him such an expert on just how many resources the Soviet Union had to
give? Or does MATERIAL assistance spontaneously arise from moralistic
platitudes and popular speeches?” (Paige Angle & Chuck Davis, letter
to author, January 2004.)
2. Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism, by Carlos
Tablada (Pathfinder), an analysis of Che’s economic thought and policies
as director of economic planning and president of the Cuban State Bank in
the early years of the Revolution.
3. In a sense, many of our organizations face similar false
“alternatives” today, based on the need to stay alive “in the meantime”
while attempting to withstand the effects of compromises one must make
in order to do so. As one correspondent, Joe Dubovy, writes: “The lesson
that Che and all revolutionaries had to teach us was that revolutionary
radio was underground, pulling up antennas and equipment as soon as the
authorities could sniff out their locations. These radio stations became
a key part of the revolution, spreading hope and supplying inspiration. …
Today’s ‘progressives’ fool themselves into believing that Wall St.,
governmentally licensed, high cost radio will save them. They are about
to learn that so-called progressive media can become merely a disgusting
safety valve. Highly centralized radio is not the answer. Decentralized
communication either carrier current AM or low power FM has not been
taken seriously. Yet, that is the only means of distributing the message
of human dignity to neighborhoods and communities… True social change
will take place only when the air waves belong to the people.”
4. See, for example, James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the
Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, which discusses Operation
Northwoods, a plan drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for launching a
secret and bloody war of terrorism against the U.S. in order to trick the
American public into supporting an invasion of Cuba. It called for
shooting innocent people on American streets; for sinking boats carrying
refugees fleeing Cuba; for launching a wave of violent terrorism in
Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere; for framing innocent people for
bombings they did not commit; and for hijacking planes. Using phony
evidence, all of it was to be blamed on Fidel Castro, providing the
excuse, as well as the public and international backing, the U.S.
government needed to launch its war against Cuba.
5. John Gerassi, “Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara,”
Introduction, Simon and Schuster, p. 14.
6. ibid. This is an edited and abbreviated extract from a 1960 speech by
Che Guevara, “On Revolutionary Medicine.” The entire speech can be found
in the Gerassi book, pp 112-119.
7. In 2005, the Zapatista leadership announced a turn towards greater
electoral focus by criticizing all parties in the electoral arena,
without directly participating in the elections themselves a stance for
which they were widely criticized by many Zapatista supporters.
8. This was a main theme in the movie “Reds”, in which the revolutionary
writer, John Reed (played by Warren Beatty), clashed repeatedly with
Party officials both in the U.S. as well as in the Soviet Union. It is
also a question that comes up at listener-sponsored radio stations like
WBAI.
9. See “Fertile Ground,” the memoir of Rodolfo Saldana (Pathfinder), a
communist miner and organizer of the pro-guerrilla circles in Bolivia,
for debate on these issues.
10. John Gerassi, ‘The True Revolutionary Is Guided by Strong Feelings of
Love,” Los Angeles Times: December 16, 2001.
A number of people sent comments to an earlier version of this article. I
did not necessarily agree with them, but they were provocative and
helpful. Thanks to Peter Anestos, Peter McLaren, Paige Angle & Chuck
Davis, Barbara Deutsch, Brian LeCloux, Fazal Rahman, Joe Dubovy, John
Gerassi. I’d also like to thank Counterpunch.org for publishing
it.
The
Fight Against
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