Just as the title says, I wanted to hear everyone's opinion on the man. The feelings I received from some of my friends are very polarized, and I wanted to see what you all thought. Please give reasons for your opinion, if any.
I would hope most of us have learned from history that starting violent revolutions in order to replace one ruling class with another ruling class is... despicable.
If you want to admire a revolutionary, admire Mahatma Gandhi.
But any successful revolution is soon corrupted by the desire to maintain the status quo you've established.
I LIKE HOW PEOPLE BUY CHE GUEVARA T-SHIRTS FROM HOT TOPIC.
Moral arithmetic is a childish way of thinking about people. No good can erase the stains of a wrong, and no bad will ever negate the right.
i dont know what you're are trying to prove. this sort of 'childish' arithmetic is useful for making decisions. making good decisions, because there is a such thing as good decisions.
personally, i think he's an inspiration to us all, a man of passion and principle. a man willing to fight and die for them. still haven't read his book yet though; really want to check it out.
whats wrong with violence? every country that exists today exists because of its victory in violent combat.
> every country that exists today exists because of its victory in violent combat.
You forgot Poland.
El Che himself seems like he was thinking in people's best interests, at least. Although communism pretty much sucks, it's understandable people would want revolution when times are bad. Gotta have someone to blame for the low quality of life, right? Who better to blame than the bourgeois? They're hoarding your money. Get angry, get violent.
Che's legacy, notsogood, for obvious reasons.
Che t-shirts = no.
He's interesting.
That said, I will slap with a brick anyone who dares telling me "lol i love the che i bought his tshirt and beret he is, like, a rebel you know, like, against capitalism" without having done any real research on his whereabouts.
>5
Same here. I don't like him because of socialism or anything like that, but because of his passion and willingness to lay it all down. On a similar vein, Sartre has described him as 'the most complete human being of our time'... more or less in line with my sentiments.
Quick personal story, first time I wore a Guevara t-shirt in public, I got one compliment and one 'ass-raping'. Good times.
Didn't he believe that allying Cuba with the USSR was a terrible idea, arguing that they were trading dependence from one empire to other? I guess in that sense he was smarter than Castro. But OTOH, he is dead and Castro ain't, lol.
Only fatmerican redneck gunwankers would hate Guevara. He may have been a commie, but he fought against people much worse.
Ironic that Castro became the same kind of people Guevara fought against.
Allow a Communist to speak their view:
As a Marxist, I myself do not own a Che Guevara shirt- and there are a few reasons for doing so...
In the U.S., Che merchandise has become so co-opted that it has ceased to have any revolutionary meaning to it anymore. While Che's visage still carries enormous emotional and political impact in Latin America and the rest of the world, in America he is essentially "that Rage Against the Machine dude". Thus, for me as a Communist living in (as Che used to say) "the belly of the beast", it would be useless for me to wear one.
Another thing is the contradictory lines that Che took during his lifetime. Don't get me wrong; Che was a great revolutionary, he had an enormous love for the oppressed and had a great heart. His spirit and unshakable internationalism are things that all revolutionaries should seek to emulate. However, Che had a few fatal flaws:
1) Che did not see the USSR as a new state-capitalist empire under the guise of socialism (as it was after 1956), but rather simply a "rather flawed" socialist country worthy of still being an ally with. He felt that the dispute between the pro-Soviet forces and the genuinely-communist forces in the world were simply a "family argument" (when it was in fact a critical life-and-death question as to the fate of socialism). Thus, Che went along with Castro's openly-revisionist strategy of aligning with the USSR, and Che was utterly oblivious to the fact that his "comrade" (who was not just a "flawed revolutionary", but an actually revisionist) had essentially turned Cuba into a Soviet neo-colony.
2) Che's military strategy of focoismo was incredibly flawed. Che argued that small groups of determined armed fighters (called “focos”) could take to the mountains and use armed actions to rally other forces, thus artificially triggering the crisis and collapse of oppressive governments. Focoism had the added attraction of offering a hope of relatively easy victory, and it essentially said that all a revolutionary had to do was to pick up a gun, go into the jungles, and as long as they were brave and filled with willpower, the revolution would come. However, that is not how
revolution works in the real world: revolutions are triggered by a crisis within the capitalist system and state in which the people will be able to strike a blow at its weakest point. You need a vanguard communist party to carry out the political aspect of revolutionary struggle- not just a people's army. The focoists of Cuba (and later other parts of Latin America), while very brave in the face of the enemy, in the end did not establish well-grounded roots among the masses- they did not carry out proper land reform, or set up alternative forms of popular power within guerrilla-occupied zones (thus not laying an organic grassroots foundation for the new socialist state). Thus, when Castro and Che came to power in Cuba, they ended up with an incredibly lopsided and hollow new state with the people barely involved with the revolution. In the end Che met a terrible death at the hands of CIA-backed Bolivian military goons, but partially it was because his particular military strategy left him isolated from the masses at a time when Bolivia was not in a revolutionary situation.
Unfortunately, as much as I unite with Che's revolutionary spirit and hope that more people out there today take that up, I also think that Che's martyrdom complex was an antithesis of the idea of "When Communists fight, we fight to win".
>>12
Guerilla warfare revolves around logistics and Che relied almost entirely on the support of the local population rather than supply lines from foreigner supporters as was the case in Vietnam. This is not Che's fatal flaw however, focoismo is a competent strategy because even though total victory is unlikely it does give the movement political negotiating power and after decades of stalemate the hardline elements of the government will lose popularity.
The problem lies with his political ideology. Communism has no safeguards to prevent corruption amongst the ranks, any thug who finds himself in a position of authority can abuse his power because his followers are not willing to risk their lives to preserve their liberty, even if they are willing to do so for "equality". In Vietnam the guerillas had nationalism to counter their barbaric behaviour, Che had nothing, he was the foreigner, he was little more than a literate bandit.
>Guerilla warfare revolves around logistics and Che relied almost entirely on the support of the local population rather than supply lines from foreigner supporters as was the case in Vietnam. This is not Che's fatal flaw however, focoismo is a competent strategy because even though total victory is unlikely it does give the movement political negotiating power and after decades of stalemate the hardline elements of the government will lose popularity.
Oh, indeed, focoismo relied on the people to a certain extent, but it didn't do what, say, the Bolsheviks did in Russia or the CCP in China, where Soviets/People's Committees would be set up and didn't enact land reform, establish people's militias... things that are necessary to truly establish ties among the masses. These things are why the Maoists in Nepal, India, and the Philippines have been so successful in the past 10-15 years.
To see how a people's army should really establish links among the masses, check out Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton, or Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.
>The problem lies with his political ideology. Communism has no safeguards to prevent corruption amongst the ranks, any thug who finds himself in a position of authority can abuse his power because his followers are not willing to risk their lives to preserve their liberty, even if they are willing to do so for "equality". In Vietnam the guerillas had nationalism to counter their barbaric behaviour, Che had nothing, he was the foreigner, he was little more than a literate bandit.
Socialism comes into existence with the weight of tradition and with the "birthmarks of the old society" still within it- including within the Party and State itself (as we have obviously seen with the reversal of socialism in the USSR and China. It is a very real phenomenon that forces do emerge from within the communist party who take up a f*cked-up position of seeking to become a new ruling and exploiting clique and who attempt to put this line into practice. More specificially, within socialist society itself, there is continual emergence of people within the communist vanguard who take the capitalist road and seek to restore capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship.
However, Mao Tse-Tung said that the science of Marxism-Leninism boils down to one thing: "It's Right to Rebel Against Reactionaries!" The fact that it is right to rebel against reactionaries is quite profound- because it says it is right to attack those within the party who oppress the masses and those who wish to prevent the revolutionary transformation of society! This is the greatest thing about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution- it was the most amazing mass upsurge in history. Research it and dig deeper it if you disagree: it was by in large a popular bottom up groundswell of political action and- contrary to the hype against the Cultural Revolution- it was not dominated by the party and in fact much of it was directed at correcting the Chinese Communist Party. Mao of course supported this.
Leading the masses to recognize the essential nature of programmes of forces which promote tyranny, oppression, and capitalist restoration- and leading them to wage revolutionary struggle against this- is a decisive question is socialist society. Further, it is crucial to lead the masses to continually revolutionize the party as a crucial aspect of revolutionizing society overall and carry forward the advance toward communism as part of the world proletarian revolution.
Anyways, I totally digressed. If you want to understand more of what I'm talking about, check out the Kasama Project @ www.kasamaproject.org/ for some food for thought.
>>15
The cultural revolution occured long after the communist party achieved full military dominance over China minus Taiwan, so the CP had different priorities from Che during this period, regardless we can observe the state's behaviour in a different environment to gain insights.
My understanding of the cultural revolution is that it was intended to unify the nation under one belief system, I am not suprised that the communist party was given a shake up because whoever was in command would have been more interested in influential people rather than humble peasants, also I am not convinced Mao was into free speech. Judging by his little red book and the hundred flowers campaign I get the impression criticism was only tolerated within the party, behind closed doors and only for the purpose of increasing organisational efficiency.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch01.htm
I'm not sure what time period "Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village" describes, if it is anywhere in the 20s, 30s and 40s that would be more useful.
Red Star Over China looks interesting
kasamaproject.org seems more of a social club than a political movement and it's aimed at middle classes with access to the internet and time on their hands, though it does have a lot of information on contemporary revolutionary activity.
Information on the political indoctrination of the masses would be more to the point.