Was che guevara a stalinist?

[ashtonh]

I have had people tell me he was a stalinist. I am just wondering whether this is true because he is one of those I heard was a Trotskyist comrade. :confused:

[Sinister Intents]

I'm no Che expert, but I'm pretty sure he was a Marxist-Leninist and I think he created the idea of Focoism. I don't think Che was a Trotskyist at all, I know he liked Stalin. Other people more educated on this subject will help you out better.

Here look at this thread: http://www.revleft.com/vb/e-c-guevara-t50205/index.html

[Dialectical Wizard]

Yeah, Che was a Stalinist sadly enough but I still admire his courage and his commitment to the cause. What you have to remember is when you see Che symbols it’s not about him as a person but what he represents as a symbol ; rebellion, courage, anti capitalist ideology etc.

[Remus Bleys]

Does Che as a trotskyist come from trotskyist sects that uphold the " Cuban Revolution" as being potentially socialist or does it come from anti revisionist Marxist-Leninists who reject the view of cuba being socialist?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Does Che as a trotskyist come from trotskyist sects that uphold the " Cuban Revolution" as being potentially socialist or does it come from anti revisionist Marxist-Leninists who reject the view of cuba being socialist?
In Bolivia before he died, Che was given some books by Trotsky from the French intellectual Regis Debray. Debray as well as Armando Hart claimed that Che was becoming more sympathetic to trotskyism in his later days. But that means little, really. For the vast majority of his life and his writings Che was a Marxist-Leninist, probably with some influences of Maoism as well.

[DoCt SPARTAN]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/che-guevara-stalin-t181590/index.html

I think Che liked Stalin and maybe He influenced his aspects of communism, But i would not call him a Stalinist, by his actual ideology. But there are some weird quotes he said about Stalin

“In the so called mistakes of Stalin lies the difference between a revolutionary attitude and a revisionist attitude. You have to look at Stalin in the historical context in which he moves, you don’t have to look at him as some kind of brute, but in that particular historical context . . . I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a series of things that are very good.”
– Ernesto Che Guevara

I dont know a lot about this quote, or even how real it is.

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/che-guevara-stalin-t181590/index.html

I think Che liked Stalin and maybe He influenced his aspects of communism, But i would not call him a Stalinist, by his actual ideology. But there are some weird quotes he said about Stalin

“In the so called mistakes of Stalin lies the difference between a revolutionary attitude and a revisionist attitude. You have to look at Stalin in the historical context in which he moves, you don’t have to look at him as some kind of brute, but in that particular historical context . . . I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a series of things that are very good.”
– Ernesto Che Guevara

I dont know a lot about this quote, or even how real it is.

Who cares if Che admired Stalin, I really don't think it matters. But that "daddy Stalin" quote disturbs the fuck out of me, and I have always wondered if he actually said that. I feel like it's probably some kind of mistranslation, but I hope someone who knows where the quote came from can tell us more about it.

[Skyhilist]

Che appreciated a lot of people who he personally viewed as revolutionary - although I don't agree with his admiration of Stalin, he was actually pretty non-dogmatic/non-doctrinaire.

[RedWorker]

That quote looks fabricated, I didn't find any reliable source for anything which was even similar.

Che Guevara wasn't a Stalinist because he didn't support nor implement Stalinist policies. I wonder, was Che even aware of Stalin's crimes, or did he think all of that was just "American propaganda"?

[Tim Cornelis]

Che Guevara wasn't a Stalinist because he didn't support nor implement Stalinist policies.

On the contrary, Che Guevara was a Stalinist because he supported and implemented Stalinist policies: state control over the economy, central planning, yadayada.


Guevara also was one of the key figures pushing for the Stalinisation of the Cuban economy from 1959 onwards. He advocated the collectivisation of agriculture and the nationalisation of industry, in his capacity as head of the industrial development in the agrarian reform institute (INRA) and as governor of the National Bank.
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/3076


I wonder, was Che even aware of Stalin's crimes, or did he think all of that was just "American propaganda"?


Guevara became a Stalinist at a time when thousands were becoming disillusioned with official “Communism”. He rejected Khrushchev’s speech in 1956 denouncing the crimes of Stalin as “imperialist propaganda” and defended the Russian invasion of Hungary that crushed the workers’ uprising there in the same year (Castañeda p.86).
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/3076

[RedWorker]

On the contrary, Che Guevara was a Stalinist because he supported and implemented Stalinist policies: state control over the economy, central planning, yadayada.

That's not exclusive of Stalinism at all, though. It's true Cuba is state capitalist, but that doesn't make it Stalinist. That's a label which would apply more to a state such as North Korea.

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

That's not exclusive of Stalinism at all, though. It's true Cuba is state capitalist, but that doesn't make it Stalinist. That's a label which would apply more to a state such as North Korea.

A good question would be, what is your definition of "Stalinist"?

[Sinister Intents]

That's not exclusive of Stalinism at all, though. It's true Cuba is state capitalist, but that doesn't make it Stalinist. That's a label which would apply more to a state such as North Korea.

BolSickle? Again? Or no?
North Korea doesn't count as Stalinist at all with their Juche shit in my opinion, and they're definitely state capitalist as well.

[RedWorker]

Calling Che a Stalinist is akin to saying he supported totalitarianism, gulags or cults of personality. There's better terms to talk about economic policy rather than calling something "Stalinist" or not. This thread is more about whether Che personally liked Stalin or not than anything else, which really isn't relevant for calling someone a "Stalinist". And yes, North Korea is state capitalist.

[Sinister Intents]

Calling Che a Stalinist is akin to saying he supported totalitarianism, gulags or cults of personality. If describing economic policy, that term should not be used for obvious reasons. This thread is more about whether Che liked Stalin or not. And yes, North Korea is state capitalist.

I'm pretty sure some Marxist-Leninists call themselves Stalinists. Being a Stalinist doesn't automatically make one a supporter of totalitarianism, which is a term coined by Benito Mussolini, and has become a word that get thrown around a lot today. Che was most definitely a Stalinist.

[Tim Cornelis]

Calling Che a Stalinist is akin to saying he supported totalitarianism, gulags or cults of personality. There's better terms to talk about economic policy rather than calling something "Stalinist" or not. This thread is more about whether Che personally liked Stalin or not than anything else, which really isn't relevant for calling someone a "Stalinist". And yes, North Korea is state capitalist.


That's not exclusive of Stalinism at all, though. It's true Cuba is state capitalist, but that doesn't make it Stalinist. That's a label which would apply more to a state such as North Korea.

Then your definition of Stalinism is different from mine, and how it's commonly used in revolutionary leftist circles. Your idea of Stalinism is more a style of governance (associated with Ceausescu and the Kim Dynasty and, of course, Stalin) as opposed to the political ideology of Marxism-Leninism (advocating state property and central planning). Usually Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism are regarded as synonymous, and Stalinism used by Marxists who deny continuity between Marxism and/or Leninism and 'Marxism-Leninism'.

Che was a Marxist-Leninist and thus a Stalinist.

[PhoenixAsh]

Calling Che a Stalinist is akin to saying he supported totalitarianism, gulags or cults of personality. There's better terms to talk about economic policy rather than calling something "Stalinist" or not. This thread is more about whether Che personally liked Stalin or not than anything else, which really isn't relevant for calling someone a "Stalinist". And yes, North Korea is state capitalist.

Che was definitely an authoritarian.

Incidentally he also expressed some latent sympathies for Peron's third position and had some dealings with Peronists. Used more than a few in his Guerilla groups.

[DDR]

Who cares if Che admired Stalin, I really don't think it matters. But that "daddy Stalin" quote disturbs the fuck out of me, and I have always wondered if he actually said that. I feel like it's probably some kind of mistranslation, but I hope someone who knows where the quote came from can tell us more about it.

Stalin in South America, sometimes is know as Padrecito de los Pueblos, daddy of the peoples, just like yankees call him uncle joe.

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

Stalin in South America, sometimes is know as Padrecito de los Pueblos, daddy of the peoples, just like yankees call him uncle joe.

Oh wow, thank you. I actually had no idea and had been wondering why he said that. Ok, that makes sense in that context. Still a bit creepy to me, but that's coming from me, who thinks about everything in the context of the English language, so who am I to judge really.

[Geiseric]

Che rejected socialism in one country, so I wouldn't label him as an actual Stalinist. Especially since he's not from 1930s Russia. He was against chauvinism, in so far as he fought along side revolutionaries of nearly every background. He was wrong about foco theory imo, but it doesn't really matter what I think at this point because he's watered down by anybody with their own interest. I wouldn't consider the black Panthers Maoist either because they didn't believe in the bloc of four classes.

[Sentinel]

It depends on what one means with 'stalinist'. As others have said it is a term used by other revolutionary leftists usually in the negative sense of people who define themselves as 'marxist-leninists'. Many of these actually reject Stalin, but still uphold a bureaucratic model of organisation for the post-revolutionary state. I would largely count Che amongst those, but it's a bit more complicated, and he increasingly deviated from this kind of ideology during his 'career'.

After Che had became increasingly vocal with advocating world revolution the bureaucracy in Moscow started 'slandering' him as both a trotskyist - for his desire to actively spread the revolution, rejecting the marxist-leninist (stalinist) doctrine of peaceful coexistence, and a maoist - for his guerilla war fetishism. I wouldn't say he was either though.

Rather, he started out more or less as a marxist-leninist but became increasingly disillusioned with the bureaucratic system, especially after visiting the USSR where he was denied aid to rapidly industrialise Cuba and make it self-sufficient, and less dependant of it's sugar export.

He also criticised the privileges of the USSR communist party elite heavily. Who knows what he would have developed to had he not met his end in Bolivia. His strategies for a large scale guerilla war largely failed, but he was and is an important symbol of struggle for his uncompromising and self-sacrificing nature.

[blake 3:17]

An interesting example may be found in his conduct in regard to the Cuban Trotskyists, whose analyses he did not agree with at all (he criticized them harshly on more than one occasion). In 1961, in a discussion with the North American left-wing intellectual Maurice Zeitlin, Guevara denounced the destruction by the Cuban police of the printing plates for Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution as “an error” that “should not have been done.”

A few years later, shortly before leaving Cuba in 1965, he managed to free the Cuban Trotskyist leader Roberto Acosta Hechevarria from prison, taking leave of him with a fraternal greeting: “Acosta, you can’t kill ideas with blows.” [10]

The clearest example is his reply, in a 1964 report to his comrades in the Ministry of Industry, to the charge of “Trotskyism” leveled against him by some Soviets:

“In this regard, I think that either we have the capacity to destroy contrary opinions with arguments or we should let them be expressed….It is not possible to destroy opinions by force, because that blocks any free development of intelligence. There is much that is worthwhile in Trotsky’s thinking, although it seems to me that his fundamental conceptions were wrong and his later action mistaken.” [11]

It is no accident, therefore, that Guevara’s most explicit defense of freedom of expression and most direct criticism of Stalinist authoritarianism was manifested in the field of art. In his famous essay “Socialism and Man in Cuba” (1965), he denounced Soviet-style “socialist realism” as the imposition of a single form of art: “the kind of ‘art’ functionaries understand.” With this method, he emphasized, “True artistic inquiry ends” and “a straitjacket” is put “on the artistic expression of the man who is being born….” [12]

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1712

[erupt]

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1712

That was very, very interesting. Thanks for the link.

I still don't get why Guevara is not a little more prominent in Marxist theory, as far as people attributing to it recently, especially.

[mindsword]

i thought Che and the Cuban CP was Marxist-Leninist.

I got that from Wikipedia. Im pretty sure.

I think most latin american communists are marx-leninists.

And why is there still no "Marxism-Guevaraism"?

[blake 3:17]

That was very, very interesting. Thanks for the link.

I still don't get why Guevara is not a little more prominent in Marxist theory, as far as people attributing to it recently, especially.

It's unfortunate.

Michael Lowy is very good on him. His Marxism of Che Guevara written in the late 60s/early 70s is great and a new version came out a few years back co-authored with Olivier Besancenot.

I liked the Jorge Castaneda and Paco Ignacio Taibo biographies of Che.

[Comrade Jacob]

Yes, Che was a "Stalinist" (Marxist-Leninist).

[erupt]

I liked the Jorge Castaneda and Paco Ignacio Taibo biographies of Che.

I've read Jon Lee Anderson's biography, as well as a shorter one that's part of a series that I found in a used-bookstore called Critical Lives: Che Guevara.

Anderson's biography wasn't a bad read, in my opinion.

[adipocre]

I am sure he was a Marxist.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[0zgurluk]

Che appreciated a lot of people who he personally viewed as revolutionary - although I don't agree with his admiration of Stalin, he was actually pretty non-dogmatic/non-doctrinaire.

[erupt]

Che appreciated a lot of people who he personally viewed as revolutionary - although I don't agree with his admiration of Stalin, he was actually pretty non-dogmatic/non-doctrinaire.

My sentiments exactly; also, from what I understand, according to the ultimate realpolitik Castro, Che criticized Stalin very much, but only in private if I'm not mistaken.

[Leo]

It depends on what one means with 'stalinist'. As others have said it is a term used by other revolutionary leftists usually in the negative sense of people who define themselves as 'marxist-leninists'. Many of these actually reject Stalin, but still uphold a bureaucratic model of organisation for the post-revolutionary state. I would largely count Che amongst those, but it's a bit more complicated, and he increasingly deviated from this kind of ideology during his 'career'.

After Che had became increasingly vocal with advocating world revolution the bureaucracy in Moscow started 'slandering' him as both a trotskyist - for his desire to actively spread the revolution, rejecting the marxist-leninist (stalinist) doctrine of peaceful coexistence, and a maoist - for his guerilla war fetishism. I wouldn't say he was either though.

Rather, he started out more or less as a marxist-leninist but became increasingly disillusioned with the bureaucratic system, especially after visiting the USSR where he was denied aid to rapidly industrialise Cuba and make it self-sufficient, and less dependant of it's sugar export.

He also criticised the privileges of the USSR communist party elite heavily. Who knows what he would have developed to had he not met his end in Bolivia. His strategies for a large scale guerilla war largely failed, but he was and is an important symbol of struggle for his uncompromising and self-sacrificing nature. That's a very diplomatic interpretation.

Nevertheless, Che Guevara was a Stalinist, a politician and essentially a bourgeois statesman. He was involved in the reconstruction of the Cuban state by G2, a precursor of the DGI, Cuba's current intelligence agency. He was a part of show tribunals and the supression mechanisms of the new junta. He was a public apologist of the suppression of radicals, such as the Trotskyists, as well as the Cuban anarchists. He organized the shifting of Cuban trade from the US to the Soviet deal - he may not have gotten the deal he wanted, but being known as the famous Stalinist figure of the Cuban government, he was the one who did it.

And he was a loyal Stalinist, which was a part of his dislike of the new Soviet regime. In 1960, he insisted on visiting and leaving a flower at Stalin's tomb even after being warned not to do it by the Cuban Ambassador to the USSR. In 1965, he said "Trotsky, along with Khrushchev, belongs to the category of the great revisionists". He held the rather insane position to favor starting a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.

It's true that Che Guevara wasn't a Maoist, however he was a hell of a lot closer to Maoism than he was to Trotskyism. He was in general a part of the "anti-revisionist" camp and many in that camp who were symphatetic to Mao but who weren't really Maoists in fact became Hoxhaists. It is difficult to picture his political trajectoy going anywhere remotely critical of Stalinism.

In effect, he was and still remains, a teen idol. In the end, even the Soviet block which he spurned itself managed to accept his legacy as a socialist teen idol and tried to present him as such. I've seen people from as different ideological backgrounds as Kemalism, social-democracy, social liberalism, Greens, left-Democrats, all. Qualitatively, he was little different from the likes of Michael Jackson or Brad Pitt: a good-looking face on the posters. Certainly his books have no more depth than anything those people would write had they been intellectual idols.

Rather than Che Guevara moving an inch towards Trotskyism, Trotskyism moved towards Che Guevara. For most Trotskyists the question was, well, there we have a few hundred improsoned Trotskyists on one side and on the other an idol everyone everyone we want to recruit adores. For a great majority, supporting the man on the posters was the obvious choice. Some, eventually, stopped being Trotskyists altogether and started organizing around Guevara's face (it is interestingly odd that there are organizations out there who use Guevara's face as an informal or in some case indeed formal flag).

And why not? It's certainly an image capitalism sells more than it has ever sold any other past symbol of communism even the memory of which still can bring back the memories of the real revolution, the one where it was actually the workers, not a group of armed and trained soldiers, who took power. More sales mean more brand recognition.

[Ismail]

As far as Che's politics went, he did indeed sympathize with the Chinese and Albanian line against Soviet revisionism. A big reason for this was because both countries took Cuba's side over the Soviet revisionists in regards to control over and the fate of the missiles in Cuba. The Soviet revisionists' actions, as Castro later privately told (http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110955) Mikoyan, were deeply unpopular among the Cuban people.

As Hoxha wrote in his political journal at the time:

TUESDAY OCTOBER 23, 1962
In connection with Kennedy's war-mongering speech on the question of Cuba, the Soviet government, wanting to appear unalarmed before world opinion, made a wishy-washy, non-committal pacifist statement after some delay. The statement does not say that the Soviet Union will defend Cuba, nor does it reply to the direct attacks and threats which Kennedy made. The Khrushchevites are showing themselves to be what they are, cowards, compromisers and traitors who leave their friends in the lurch, individuals devoid of principles and morals, therefore, they are unmasking themselves in the eyes of world opinion. They will come to terms with Kennedy, will make concessions to him, but if they leave heroic Cuba in the lurch. this will be a great crime and mean total exposure for them.

SATURDAY OCTOBER 27, 1962
It turned out as we thought. Khrushchev capitulated to Kennedy and left Cuba in the lurch, Messages were exchanged. Kennedy issued an ultimatum to Khrushchev that he must stop the construction of missile launching pads, dismantle those he has established and remove the missiles from Cuba. The traitor Khrushchev accepted Kennedy's conditions in a servile tone and with fear in his belly. The terrible thing is that with his stand the traitor has utterly discredited the Soviet Union. This is a new great betrayal which has been committed against the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism, socialism, mankind and peace. This stand whets the imperialists' appetite.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8, 1962
The news agencies report that the Soviet missiles are being shipped away from Cuba, and that American warships are going to verify their removal on the high seas. Shame on Khrushchev and his henchmen who have stooped so low as to humiliate the Soviet Union such a degree! But the day will come when they get their just desert.

THURSDAY DECEMBER 13, 1962
Yesterday Khrushchev delivered a speech on the international situation and Soviet foreign policy at the session of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Beside him in the presidium of the meeting he had his brother and close comrade, the traitor Tito. The main purpose of his long speech was to make a long-winded explanation of his betrayal (in fact, to avoid explaining it), of his retreat before the strength of American imperialism. His whole problem was to try to clear himself, to wipe out the bad impression created and the great disgrace which he brought upon the Soviet Union. But he could not and never will be able to do this. Now the whole revisionist chorus has adopted this theme and aim. Nikita Khrushchev presented the removal of missiles from Cuba as a victory, as a road open (through a catastrophe) to new victories (new scandalous compromises and concessions). The second aim of the speech was the complete, official, public rehabilitation of the Titoite renegades, both from the state stand-point and, especially, from the ideological stand-point. On this issue he threw off all disguise. The predictions of the Party of Labour of Albania have been confirmed.

As usual, Khrushchev attacked the Party of Labour of Albania and its leadership without any argument. In this way he pleased Tito greatly. Likewise, he attacked the Communist Party of China. The treacherous aims of the Khrushchevite revisionist group, the splitting of the camp, the formation of the international revisionist bloc, the feverish open approaches to American imperialism, the efforts on Khrushchev's part to provide Kennedy with more and more proofs of his goodwill so that the agreements they will reach with his agent Tito will be welcomed by Kennedy, are becoming clearer every day. The future will make clear all their intrigues and capitulationist plans.From foreign corespondent Henry Brandon's conversation in 1962 (cited in Griffith, Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift, 1963, p. 161): "When I asked Che Guevara, for instance, how Marxist-Leninist he considered the Poles, he shook his head slowly as if he wanted to say 'only middling.' For the Jugoslavs, however, there is little sympathy, chiefly disdain; for the Albanians, on the other hand, there is a certain respect..." The Polish revisionist Gomułka was to the right of Khrushchev, as was Tito obviously.

And when Guevara was in charge of the ministry of industry he rejected (http://gazeta-lajmi.info/1961-tirane-prage-beteja-e-baltes-se-kuqe/) the participation of Cuba in the Soviet revisionists' attempts to economically isolate Albania, saying that the Albanians were "our brothers" in response to a Czechoslovak attempt to buy nickel from Cuba instead of Albania.

I strongly doubt he'd be a "Hoxhaist" if he lived longer though. As Hoxha noted, Che did not fight as a Marxist, his "foco" theories on guerrilla warfare were revisionist and had more in common with anarchism than a vanguard of the working-class leading a proletarian revolution. He noted that following Guevara's path could only harm the Marxist-Leninist parties in Latin America. The Chinese said to the Albanians that Che's death was objectively a blow against revisionism in Latin America.

A good read on Che's views on political economy can be found here: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n1/che.htm