Hiero
23rd September 2004, 03:18
This was from ernesto-guevara forums. Althought i swear it had a link to the iraqi comunist party.
The Militant Communist Legacy of Ernesto Che Guevara
ERNESTO (Che) GUEVARA is a cult figure of the leftist youth all over the world. While nearly everyone on the left admires Guevara few really understand who he was and what he stood for. There has been an attempt on the part of wide circles of liberal leftists to convert Guevara into a harmless cultural icon. It is unfortunate that “Che” as understood by the liberal left is mainstream Che. The real Che Guevara is obscured from view and rendered harmless with this subtle liberal subversion.
Just like there is an attempt to make Faiz Ahmed Faiz into a “humanist” and to ignore his life-long affiliation with the communist movement, there is a similar attempt to render Che into “an idealistic rebellious young man.” Many young people are shocked to even hear that Che was a communist. They hear of him as a rebel but never as a communist rebel. They are even more shocked to find that Che abhorred anarchism, pacifism, liberalism, and all ‘non-hierarchical’ forms of organizations or resistance movements. In fact, Che was a strict (some even say overly strict) disciplinarian and an extremely exacting taskmaster. If anything he was the equivalent of the Latin American Jacobin for the communist movement.
Guevara was totally opposed to bourgeois individualism. In March of 1960, he declared that, "one has to constantly think on behalf of masses and not on behalf of individuals...It's criminal to think of individuals because the needs of the individual become completely weakened in the face of the needs of the human conglomeration." In August of 1964, Che postulated that the individual, "becomes happy to feel himself a cog in the wheel, a cog that has its own characteristics and is necessary though not indispensable, to the production process, a conscious cog, a cog that has its own motor, and that consciously tries to push itself harder and harder to carry to a happy conclusion one of the premises of the construction of socialism -- creating a sufficient quantity of consumer goods for the entire population."(Anderson, pp.470, 605)
And if that wasn’t enough to shock you about the person on your coffee mug or hip T-shirt, Che Guevara was an open admirer of Joseph Stalin. While traveling across Latin America Che witnessed first hand the awful exploitation of the continent by US imperialism and specifically the United Fruit Company. This experience made Guevara a supporter of the Soviet Union and Stalin. While traveling through Costa Rica he wrote to his aunt Beatriz telling her that he had sworn "before a picture of our, old much lamented comrade Stalin that I will not rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated." Another letter to the same aunt was signed with the words "Stalin II." (p.62 and Anderson, p.167). Even after Khrushchev's so-called ‘revelations’ of Stalin's crimes at the 20th Congress, Che did not change his views about Stalin. In fact, when Guevara visited the USSR in his capacity as one of the most important leaders of the victorious Cuban revolution in November of 1960, he insisted on depositing a floral tribute at Stalin's tomb (p. 181).
The Militant Communist Legacy of Ernesto Che Guevara
ERNESTO (Che) GUEVARA is a cult figure of the leftist youth all over the world. While nearly everyone on the left admires Guevara few really understand who he was and what he stood for. There has been an attempt on the part of wide circles of liberal leftists to convert Guevara into a harmless cultural icon. It is unfortunate that “Che” as understood by the liberal left is mainstream Che. The real Che Guevara is obscured from view and rendered harmless with this subtle liberal subversion.
Just like there is an attempt to make Faiz Ahmed Faiz into a “humanist” and to ignore his life-long affiliation with the communist movement, there is a similar attempt to render Che into “an idealistic rebellious young man.” Many young people are shocked to even hear that Che was a communist. They hear of him as a rebel but never as a communist rebel. They are even more shocked to find that Che abhorred anarchism, pacifism, liberalism, and all ‘non-hierarchical’ forms of organizations or resistance movements. In fact, Che was a strict (some even say overly strict) disciplinarian and an extremely exacting taskmaster. If anything he was the equivalent of the Latin American Jacobin for the communist movement.
Guevara was totally opposed to bourgeois individualism. In March of 1960, he declared that, "one has to constantly think on behalf of masses and not on behalf of individuals...It's criminal to think of individuals because the needs of the individual become completely weakened in the face of the needs of the human conglomeration." In August of 1964, Che postulated that the individual, "becomes happy to feel himself a cog in the wheel, a cog that has its own characteristics and is necessary though not indispensable, to the production process, a conscious cog, a cog that has its own motor, and that consciously tries to push itself harder and harder to carry to a happy conclusion one of the premises of the construction of socialism -- creating a sufficient quantity of consumer goods for the entire population."(Anderson, pp.470, 605)
And if that wasn’t enough to shock you about the person on your coffee mug or hip T-shirt, Che Guevara was an open admirer of Joseph Stalin. While traveling across Latin America Che witnessed first hand the awful exploitation of the continent by US imperialism and specifically the United Fruit Company. This experience made Guevara a supporter of the Soviet Union and Stalin. While traveling through Costa Rica he wrote to his aunt Beatriz telling her that he had sworn "before a picture of our, old much lamented comrade Stalin that I will not rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated." Another letter to the same aunt was signed with the words "Stalin II." (p.62 and Anderson, p.167). Even after Khrushchev's so-called ‘revelations’ of Stalin's crimes at the 20th Congress, Che did not change his views about Stalin. In fact, when Guevara visited the USSR in his capacity as one of the most important leaders of the victorious Cuban revolution in November of 1960, he insisted on depositing a floral tribute at Stalin's tomb (p. 181).