a letter to a Uruguayan friend,
by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Dear Conrade,
I an finishing these notes in the course ef a voynge to Africa in order to fulfil, if velatedly, my promise to you, I would like to develop the theme of Man and Socialism in Cuba, I believe this could be of interest to Uruguayan readers. One hears currently fron the mouths of the spokesmen for the capitalists the idenlogical obyection that the perind 7f secialist construction in which we are engaged is characterised by the sacrifice of the individual on the altar of the State.
I an not going tn attempt to refute this statement in a purely theoretical way, but I will re-estanlish the facts as they have been experienced in Cuba whilst adding a general commentary.
Firstly, I will sketch, very broadly, the history of sur revolutionary struggle before and after the taking of power, It was on the 26th of July 1653 that the revolutionary struggles began which ended in the Revolution of lst January 1959. A group ef nen, led by Fidel Castre, at dawn cn taat day, attacked the Mencada Barracks in Oriente Provinces The attack received a set-back and the set-back becane a disaster, The survivors found taemselves in prison, put recommenced the struggle as soon as they were amnestied.
During the state of affairs when stcialisn only exists as an influence, Man is a fundamental factor, It is in hin, an individual, unique being, 4 creature with a first and second nane, that people place their confidence. It is sn his ability in action that the success or failure of each struggle depends. ;
Next came the stage of guerilla warfare, which tccok place at two distinct levels; among the people, . mass still largely asleep and needing ts be nobilised, and among the guerilla fighters themselves, who strove to arsuse people's revolutionary ccnscience and enthusiasm for battle. It was this avant-garde which provided the catalyst which brought into being the necessary subjective conditions for victory, And, to the extent that we made cur ideals those of the preletariat, to the extent that a revolution worked in our habits and our spirit, the individual still remained a fundamental factor.
Every fighter ef the Sierra Maestra who obtained a superior rerk in the revolutionary forces could clain a nunber of notable perssral feats ts his credit. It was on this basis that rank was awarded,
It was during this first, heroic period that people argued with each other to get the tasks which carried the greatest respensibility and the biggest dangers, with no other satisfaction to be obtained than that of a duty well done, In our work of revolutionary education we come back again and again to the salient fact. The attitude of our fighters already showed the image of the future man, This total self-dedication to the revolutionary ceuse has been repeated many times in our history; during the October Crisis and under the hurricane "Flora" we saw acts of courage and exceptional sacrifices accomplished by all our people.
One of our fundamental ideological tasks is to find a formula for
perpetuating this hervic attitude in everyday life,
In January 1959, the revolutionary government was set up with the
participation »f various members ef the reactionary beurgeoisie, The presence
of the rebel arny, the factor of force, constituted the guarantee cf power.
There very sosn arose serious contradictions which were partly overcome when
in February 1959 Fidel Castre assumed the direction of the gnvernment as
Prime Minister. This process came to a head in July of the same year when
President Urrutia was dismissed under popular pressures At this point there
appeared clearly in Cuban histery an elenent which would manifest itself
systematically - the masses,
At first glance, it is possible to believe that those who speak of the
suberdination ef the individual to the State are right. The masses achieved,
with an enthusiasm and discipline without equal, all the tasks that the
gevernnent fixed for them, whether the8e concerned the economy, culture,
defence ar sport, etc. The initiative came, as a rule, fron Fidel and the
High Command of the Revolution and was explained to the people who made it
their own goal, But at other times local experiments were launched by the Party
and the government and the results were generalised by the former procedure.
Hawever, the State made mistakes sometines, When one cf these errors occurred,
the lack of enthusiasm vf the masses was made apparent through the decrease
of each person's activity, and work became paralysed to the point where <+
practically ceased,
Such a state of affairs occurred in March 1962 in the face of the
sectarian policies imposed by Anibal Esealante.
The blind laws sf capitalisy, invisible to the eyes of mest people, werk
upen the individual without his being aware of it. He sees only a vast horizon
which seems limitless. It is thus that capitalist propaganda claims ta, present
the case of kockefeller ~ whether true or not = as a lesson on the possibilities
ef success, The misery that must be piled up = the sum total sf baseness, that
a fortune of this size implies, simply does not come into the picture, and
it is nat always possible for the mass of people to see such phenomena slearly.
(Here one cught to study the way in which, in the imperialist countries, the
worxers lose their internationalist conscience under the influence of a
certain complicity in the exploitation of dependent countries, amd how fron
this fact, their combativity in their own country weakens ~ but this is really
getting away from the subject.)
In every way in such a society the path to take is full of olstacles and
apparently only an individual possessing certain qualities can break Savough
them to arrive at his goal; he strives after the distant reward, but 3,5 road
is lonely, and, moreover, it is the law of the jungle and only ty txdapllze on
other people can he win success,
I will now try to define the individual, the actor in this strange and
passionate drama called socialist construction, in his double existence
as a unique being and a nember of the community,
I think the simplest way of looking at it is to recognise his quality as an unfulfilled being. The blemishes of the old society are perpetuated in the individual consciousness and it needs incessant work to make them disappear, The process:is a double one = on the one hand society works with its di-ect and indirect educations on the other it is the individual himself who undertakes conscious effort of self-education. :
What with the fact of underdevelopment on the one haad, and the flight of cupital to the "civilised" countries on the other, a swift improvement without sacrifices is impossible. We have still a long way to go before we arrive at a sufficiently high level of development, and the temptation to stick to the beaten track and to use individual material interest as a lever to achieve an accelerated economic growth is a big one,
Then you run the risk of not seeing the wood for the trees; in pursuing the spectre of 2 "socialism" achieved by means of 211 the armoury inherited from capitalism (the commodity as the economic unit, ¢riterton of profitability, individual material interest as the stinulant, etc., etc.) you riak arriving at an impasse. In fact you come to a halt after travelling a long way cn a road with many intersections, so that when you finall; stop, it is difficult to know at exactly which point you went wrong. During all this tine the econumic system you have adopted has been doing its deadly work of undermining the socias consciousness.
In order to construct genuine socialism you must chenge Man at the same time as you change the economic basis of society.
From all this it is clearly of vital importance to choose the correct instrument for mobilising the masses, The instrument needed must be fundamentally of an ethical sort, without denying the proper usage of material stimulants, especially those of a social nature.
During this period of socialist construction we can help in the birth of the New Man, His image is not yet clearly fixed in our minds, nor indeed can it ever be, given that his development proceeds parallel to that of, the new economic structures. Outside of those whose poverty of education pushes then into a solitary oath concerned with the egotistic satisfaction of their ow ambitions, there are those who, even within the ranks of the new cadres, have a tendency to advance in isolation frori the masses who accompany thee
The important thing is that men should acquire every day a greater and greater consciousness of the need to be integrated into society and at the same time a greater consciousness of their own importance as its motor force. they must no longer filter separately along winding paths towerds their distant aspirations. They must advance together with their avant-garde, made up of the Party, the advanced workers, an avant-garde inseparably linked with the masses and in direct communion with theme :
The leadership has its eyes on the future and on its reward, But this is not something individual; this reward is the new society itself where men are different - the society of Socialist Man.
The road is long and full of difficulties, Sometimes, having taken a
wrong path, we have to go back. At other times, having advanced too fast, we
get separated from the masses. Occasionally we go too slowly and we feel
their breath on the back of our necks, As revolutionaries, we ought to go
as fast as possiole, blazing the trail, but we must always remember that it
is from the masses that we draw our strength, and the masses will not advance
faster than the speed of the encouragement they get from our example,
Inspite of the importance of moral stimulants, the very fact that soc=
iety is divided into two principal groups (not counting the small minority
which for one reason or another stands aloof from the socialist construction)
indicates thet the social consciousness is %ill insufficiently developed.
We have not yet arrived at the point of fully instelling the institutions
of the Revolution, We are secking for something new which will achieve a
perfect identification of government and the community. This means institu-
tions adapted to the special conditions of socialist construction and utterly
removed from the commonplaces of bourgeois democracy ( such as Legislative
Chambers, etce,) We have carried out various experiments with a view to
creating, little by little, the institutions of the Revolution, but without
too much haste. Our greatest constraint has been the fear that a fornel
link might separate us from both the masses and the individual, and even make
us lose sight of the most imsortant revolutionary ambition - to see man
liberated from alienation,
Inspite of the shortage of institutions, which should be overcome gradually
the masses are making history as a conscious assembly of individuals fighting
for the same cause, Under a socialist regime , inspite of its apparent
standardisation, Man is more complete. Inspite of the absence of a perfectly
adapted mechanism, his ability to express himself and to make his weight felt
in the social apparatus is infinitely greater.
If Man is to retake possession of his own nature, it is necessary that
commodity-man should cease to exist and that society should turn over to him
a "quota" in exchange for the accomplishment of his social duty. The means of
production belong to society end the machine is like the "front line" where
one's duty is done. Man is now beginning to free his thought from the anguish
caused by the need to satisfy his immediate wants by work. He begins to recog-
nise himself in his work, and to recognise his grandeur as a human being in
relation to the object created and, to his labour, transformed, His work no
longer requires the loss of a part of his being in the shape of labour-povwer
sold, and no longer belonging to him, It becomes an expression of himself, 2
contribution to the community, the achievement of his social duty.
Of course, there are still coercive aspects to work, even when it is
voluntary. Man has not yet succeeded in doing work as a conditioned reflex,
and he often produces under pressure from his environment (that is what Fidel
calls "noral constraint"). He cannot give fully of his work, accomplished in
the manner of a new habit, unless this environmental pressure is there, In
other words he cannot work as under "Communism" in the full sense.
y)
The change will not happen automatically in his consciousness any more than it will in the economy. Progress in this direction is slow and irregular. There are periods of acceleration but there are other periods of standstill even of retrogression,. :
When the revolution took power, those intellectuals who were completely domesticated went into exile. The others, whether revolutionaries or not, entered upon a new course, Research received a new boost. Meanwhile, these roads had been already more or less traced out, and the absconders were dissimulating their ideas under the word "liberty". Among the revolutionaries this attitude is often supported reflecting the influence of bourgeois idealtsm on their thoughts,
In other countries which have undergone a similar process, they have tried to attack these tendencies with an exaggerated dogmatism, General culture has thus been transformed almost into a taboo, and the sum total of cultural aspiration has been declared to be a formally exact representation of nature. This in tuyvn has transformed itself into a mechanical representation of a social reality that is desired to be seen, a kind of idealised society virtually without conflicts or contractions, that is to be created sometime in the future,
Socialism is young; it makes mistakes, We revolutionaries often lack the knowledge and the intellectual boldness that is needed to face the task of developing the new kind of man by different methods from these which are too conventional and hallmarked by the society which has created them, Once more there appears the problem of the relationship between content and forme
We are in great disarray and the problem of material construction absorbs much of our time, There are no great artists who happen also to be revolutionaries of authority.
The Party members ought to take this matter in hand and seck to attain the principle objective - educating the people,
Instead, what happens is a search for the simplification on a level that everyone can understand, meaning, of course, a level that the functionaries can understand, Authentic artistic research goes-to the wall and the problem of general culture is reduced to an appropriation of the socialist present and of the past which is dead (and therefore inoffensive |)
This is how "socialist realism" was born on the basis of the art of the last century, But the realist art of the 19th century is a more purely capitalist art form, perhaps, than this decadent art of the 20th century through which there truly breathes the anguish of alienated men,
The more we enlarge the field of culture and the possibilities of expression, the more we will have the chance of seeing exceptional artists arise, Our task is to make sure that the present generation, tom by its conflicts, does not become perverted, and in its turn pervert future generations, We ought not to create a body of salaried officials who submit to "official thought" , nor a class of bursaried intellectuals living comfortably in the shelter of their grants, and exercising a "freedom", in inverted commas,
The revolutionaries who sing of the "new man" with the real voice of the people are on the way. But it is a process which demands time,
The leaders of the Revolution have children who, in their first stuttering, do not learn the names of their fathers; wives who are also sacrificed to the dream of the Revolution. Outside the revolution there is no life, Under these conditions we must have much humanity, a great sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into dogmatism, into frigid scholasticism, in order not to become isolated from the masses, Always we must struggle to ensure that this love of humanity assumes concrete forms in deeds which serve as an example to others,
The revolutionary in his Party - the idealogical motor of the Revolution consumes himself in this uninterrupted task which will end only with death, at least until the construction of socialism starts on a world scale,
If his revolutiongry enthusiasm fades once the most urgent local tasks have been accomplished, and if he forgets his proletarian internationalisn, then the Revolution he controls will cease to be a motor force and will sink into a confortable torpor. This will be quickly put to profit by our irreconcilable enemies, the imperialists, who will thus gain ground,
Proletarian: internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. That is what we teach our people.
It is certain that the present situation holds great dangers, Not only that of dogmatism or of losing our links with the masses in the middle of our great work, but the danger of weaknesses we can fall into,
We have always maintained that our children ought to possess the same things as other children, but also that they should be deprived of what other children are deprived. Our family ought to understand and fight for this,
The Revolution is made by man, but it is required that day by day he forges his own revolutionary spirit.
And so we all advance. At the head of the immense column (we are not ashamed of saying it $) marches Fidel, Behind him come the avant-garde of the Party, and behind them = so close that you can feel their enormous force = come the people, all marching resolutely towards their common goal. This assembly is composed of individuals who have acquired the necessary consciousness of what needs to be done, of men who are struggling to quit the realm of necessity, and enter the realm of freedom.