Che Guevara’s anticommunism?

[Boris Krinkle]

Like most leftists, my ideology was marked with an early admiration for Che Guevara, I saw him as what all Leninists should aspire to be.
That said, my views changed upon researching Che more, and I am sorry to say today I would regard him as an anticommunist.
To be an anticommunist, one has to support the enemies of communism, oppose those who advocate communism, and take active measures in the defeat of the communist movement. I don’t think I can explain it any more simply than that.
“Trotsky, along with Khrushchev, belongs to the category of the great revisionists.”-Che Guevara, 12/4/65, letter to Armando Hart)
“I have sworn before of our old, much lamented comrade Stalin that I will not rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.”-Che Guevara (a letter to his aunt, ‘53)
The above two quotes should be sufficient evidence that Che supported the enemies of communism (Stalin-who Lenin himself warned against taking power), and opposition to advocates of communism (labeling Trotsky a “revisionist”). Since these quotes are taken from near the beginning of his involvement as a revolutionary and near the time of his death, it is unlikely he had a deathbed conversion to Leninism.
As anyone who does a modicum of research knows, Fidel Castro had “counterrevolutionaries” executed. This included supporters of the Batista regime, actual reactionaries that would have been dangerous to a genuine socialist revolution, and Trotskyists. Che followed Castro’s orders in carrying out these executions of people calling for genuine socialism, this makes Che no better than the Soviets who ordered Tanks into Hungary or Czechoslovakia, or the Chinese who ordered Tanks into Tiananmen to crush leftists. That is sufficient evidence that he took active measures to defeat the communist movement.
A Leninist supporting Che is like a Leninist supporting Stalin or Pol Pot-it distances us from the working classes we seek to emancipate and dilutes our revolutionary theory to Stalinist thuggery.

[Kléber]

Che didn't take part in the repression of Trotskyists, actually he personally defended them and got them out of jail. The Revolutionary Workers' Party was banned in 1965, after he departed Cuba. When Che left he told the Trotskyist leader Roberto Acosta to keep struggling for what he believed in, that "you can't kill ideas with blows" and "See you in the next trenches." http://marx.org/history/etol/document/fi/cuba/tennent/PhD/chap7.html

[CHE with an AK]

With only 3 posts - I'm not sure if you are trolling - but if genuine - it is silly, slanderous, misinformed, and revisionist threads like this that make me lose hope for the future of a revolutionary left.




Che Guevara, I saw him as what all Leninists should aspire to be.
Che was a Marxist, not a Leninist. Although he admired Lenin and studied his works, he eventually came to the conclusion that Lenin's one big mistake was the 1921 "state-capitalist" New Economic Policy (NEP) which preserved the law of value.




I am sorry to say today I would regard him (Che) as an anticommunist.
Probably one of the dumbest comments ever on revleft. Nice work.

Now it is true that Che didn't care for many of the Latin American communist parties who he felt were timid, incrementalist, and not committed to arm struggle against imperialism. But these parties hardly represent the philosophical idea of "communism" itself.





“Trotsky, along with Khrushchev, belongs to the category of the great revisionists.”-Che Guevara, 12/4/65, letter to Armando Hart)
1. In 1967 when Che was captured in Bolivia he had Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed" in his bag.

2. Ironically Che was constantly being accused of being a "Trotskyite" by the USSR after he began to be disillusioned with them around 1963-64. He refused such labels however - and was accused of being everything from a Maoist, Leninist, Stalinist etc. He knew however that he was just a Marxist.





“I have sworn before of our old, much lamented comrade Stalin that I will not rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.”-Che Guevara (a letter to his aunt, ‘53)
This is why context is important when merely looking at a quote. This was written in 1953 (long before Che was "Che") and in response to traveling through the vast Latin American latifundias of the United Fruit Company and seeing swollen belly children everywhere.

Moreover, in the letter Guevara speaks of traversing through the "dominions" of the United Fruit Company, which convinced him "how terrible" the "Capitalist octopuses" were. And as biographer Jon Lee Anderson notes, his letter carried the "head hunting tone" that he adopted in order to frighten his more Conservative relatives. Thus, his comment has an element of provocative "tongue-in-cheek" to it as well. Anyone who has read Che's diaries knows that he likes to be sardonic, sarcastic, irreverent etc - thus it is not enough to just read one sentence out of context.





The above two quotes should be sufficient evidence that Che supported the enemies of communism
This sort of flimsy and absurd "Faux News" logic is a capitalist ruler's best friend.





As anyone who does a modicum of research knows, Fidel Castro had “counterrevolutionaries” executed.


"I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed 'an innocent'. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder. I should add that my research spanned five years, and included anti-Castro Cubans among the Cuban-American exile community in Miami and elsewhere."
— Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, PBS forum


http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/november97/che1.html

[Le Libérer]

Troll thread. Closed. Boris, hows the American Party of Labor these days? I'm one click away from banning you, btw.