Philosophy Of Che Guevara While Socialism example essay topic

REVOLUTION OF ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA Ernesto 'Che' Guevara has undeniably been one of the most powerful icons of the past forty years. The Argentine revolutionary has had his picture widely printed on shirts and posters and has become a symbol for the (often young) anarchist. Yet, how many of us really understand or know what 'Che's to od for? Do we know what his philosophy was about? Very few of us have taken the time to understand the goals and principles of Guevara and what he fought for - to death. Dr. Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (May 14, 1928 - October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, was an Argentine-born revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader.

Guevara was a member of Fidel Castro's '26th of July Movement', which seized power in Cuba in 1959. After serving various important posts in the new government, Guevara left Cuba in 1966 with the hope of fomenting revolutions in other countries, first in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and later in Bolivia, where he was captured in a CIA-organized military operation. The CIA wanted to keep him alive for interrogation, but he was executed by the Bolivian army. After his death, Guevara became a hero of Third World socialist revolutionary movements, as a theorist and tactician of asymmetric warfare. It's in 1952, during a journey Ernesto made with his motorbike around South America, that he became harshly aware of the ravages of capitalism through the situation of the Native Americans. Influenced by the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Ciro Al egr " ia and Karl Marx, Che Guevara devoted his life to fighting the 'capitalist octopuses' to establish a socialist system that would be fairer to the people.

As a young medical student Che set out on a motorcycle to travel around South America. The poverty and oppression and the impact of imperialism aroused his political awareness. In 1954 the Guatemalan government of Jacob Arbenz attempted to nationalism the vast landholdings of the massive US multinational the United Fruit Company. The US government (which included two executive directors of United Fruit) organised an armed coup to overthrow Arbenz.

Guevara who was in Guatemala at the time was appalled. He believed that well organised armed resistance could have defeated the coup and saved the Arbenz government. Escaping to Mexico he met a group of Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro, who were planning the armed overthrow of the Batista dictatorship. Batista's Cuba was dominated by sugar plantations which left the country's peasants in poverty and without land but provided huge profits for the US interests.

In addition, Cuba's capital Havana was a seething cesspool of poverty for the city's poor and a playground for rich Americans with prostitution and gambling. In November 1956, 82 guerrillas in the Granma (name of a boat) landed in Cuba. Batista's army was waiting for them and only 18 escaped with their lives, among them a wounded Guevara. Castro and Guevara built a guerrilla army in the mountains of the Sierra Maestro. Che's writings from this period record his emphasis on the "iron will" and "discipline" of dedicated revolutionaries making a revolution for the mass of people. In the mountains Che personally executed several people and severely punished others for behaviour that failed to live up to these standards.

At the same time Batista's regime was losing the support of nearly all sections of Cuban society and even the US began to abandon his regime. Within two years, in January 1959, Batista regime collapsed and the columns of revolutionaries marched down from the mountains and entered Havana. The Cuban Revolution represented a huge blow to the US. With the fall of Peron in Argentina and the crushing of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, the US was hoping to manipulate a whole string of compliant governments across Latin America.

But the Cuban revolution inspired millions with the hope that poverty and oppression inflicted by loyal agents of US interests could be rolled back. After a brief interlude the US government reacted ferociously to the new government in Havana. The US government put in place an economic blockade preventing trade with Cuba that has lasted 40 years. It stitched up an alliance of states in the region - the "Alliance for Progress" - with economic aid packages as bribes whose overt aim was to crush the revolution. The CIA organised a bunch of Cuban exiles - pimps and gangsters - in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

After the immediate task of organising the state security apparatus, G-2, and dealing with the execution of Batista's henchmen, Guevara took a key role in creating the machinery of the new state, heading the National Bank and taking charge of Industrial Development. Guevara recognised that if Cuba was to maintain its independence it would need to break its dependence on sugar production. Sugar accounted for 95 percent of its export earnings. But to develop a range of industries Cuba would need to import industrial equipment, spare parts, oil and other raw materials.

How would this be paid for? Its isolation in the world market - intensified by the US blockade - put Cuba in a seemingly hopeless position. Cuba entered into a close economic relationship with Russia and for a while Che hoped the USSR would provide the kind of economic assistance necessary to resolve some of these problems. It soon became clear that, whatever the fine speeches of the Russian leaders, the USSR had its own agenda.

Che increasingly saw that it was necessary to spread the revolution to the rest of Latin America and beyond if imperialism was to be broken. At the same time Fidel Castro was inclined to deal pragmatically with the Russians. Che was sickened by these compromises. His relations with his former close friend and comrade cooled and secretly Che withdrew from the government.

In February 1965 Che's public criticism of the Soviets for their lack of internationalism further widened the gulf between them. Assembled In April 1965 Che assembled a small group of Cuban guerrillas and went to the Congo. The Congolese resistance at this time consisted of at least 20 different competing groups. Che didn't understand the language and had little knowledge of the political and social conditions of the country, or of the struggle for power between the opposition groups. Bizarrely he believed his guerrilla group could lead a revolution in the country. In the event the expedition was a farce.

After four months the guerrillas had not engaged the enemy and were finally forced to flee across Lake Tanganyika. The last few months of his life were spent in Bolivia. Che attempted to create a guerrilla focus on the Argentine-Bolivian border. Unfortunately this put his force in one of the most isolated areas of the country, in the most inhospitable conditions. In his Bolivian Diaries written at the time, Guevara notes that a militant miners's trike had been going on for a month but the guerrillas had no contact with it - or any other group. For months the guerrillas were pursued through the mountains by the government forces.

Sick and exhausted they were encircled and captured. Guevara was murdered in the village of C amiri while CIA officers were in attendance as witnesses so they could report to their bosses back in Washington that Che Guevara was really dead. Socialists today honour the memory of Che Guevara and his heroism. The Cuban Revolution scored a mighty blow against imperialism. But it would be quite wrong to treat Che's legacy uncritically. The revolution that is needed today will be in many crucial respects different to the Cuban Revolution and the political strategy different to Che's.

Che's emphasis on the a relatively small, dedicated band of guerrillas making the revolution for the mass of people is a long way from Marx's view that the "emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class". In the special conditions of Cuba in the late 1950's, when a weak and corrupt regime had lost the support of practically all its backers and had been hollowed out from the inside, a small guerrilla army might hope to take power and hold it. In the modern industrial states of Latin America and beyond, such a strategy stands no chance of success. Immediately after the Cuban Revolution young Latin American revolutionaries came to Cuba to absorb Guevara's strategy in the light of the Cuban experience, and to train briefly for their own attempts to 'make the revolution'.

In almost every case they were quickly and decisively wiped out by counter-guerrilla forces in their own country. Yet the lessons of that experience seemed to make no impact on Che. The tragedy of Cuba was that it did not manage to break free from the chains of the world system. For all the initial popularity of the regime, and all for its important reforms in the fields of health and education, it was a top-down revolution. The mass of the workers of Havana played little part in the downfall of Batista and no part in the construction of the post revolutionary state. Che argued that development in Cuba would come from the self-sacrifice and enthusiasm of the population.

But after four decades of crippling US embargo and the stranglehold of world market, that enthusiasm is exhausted and conditions get worse for the mass of the population. Forge Tragically corruption, prostitution and poverty once again haunt the streets and tenements of Havana. We must not make the same mistakes. The revolution must crucially involve the working class if the power to smash the chains of capitalism and forge a genuine socialist and democratic liberation is to be unleashed. The coming revolution will no doubt begin in one country. But it will have the capacity to spread to many other countries if our movement is linked up ahead of time across borders.

The internationalism of the present day anti-capitalist movement should be our motto - not the radical nationalism which fuel led the Cuban revolution. In this way we can prevent the international isolation that has crippled the Cuban people's fight to escape impoverishment and degradation. This is the way to turn Che's heroic dream into a reality. Guevara saw the need to overthrow the political and economical structures in South America, rejecting not only capitalism but also orthodox Soviet communism and Imperialism in any form. More than political goals, Che Guevara's fight was motivated by a philosophy that would eradicate the alienation of the individuals and free people. Guevara denounced the propaganda of the capitalist state, which enslaves people and prevents them from struggling, and uses man as a mere commodity.

Instead, Guevara wanted to establish socialism in order to give humanity its freedom back, with a system that would allow every individual to participate and have a concrete role in society, thus becoming more fulfilled. The Philosophy of Che Guevara While socialism today often appears as a watered down version of capitalism, Guevara's concept of socialism was a lot more radical. First of all, it involved an active participation of all individuals and not only of a bourgeois state. Each individual was seen as a 'basic factor' and 'an unique being as well as a member of the community. ' Each being was considered a fighter for not only freedom but also for any change necessary to the society. This concept is intimately tied to Existentialist philosophy, for which the fulfillment of each person as conscious being is the priority and final goal.

Guevara believed that man was the conscious actor of History and that only man had the power to accomplish changes. Work is also seen as a source of frustration for the individuals, who create a product that they will soon no longer own, in exchange for a very small reward. In this situation, creation is not a source of fulfillment anymore but a mere step of a process the final goal of which is the profit of a third party, and the worker is only a commodity for whom working and producing has simply become a necessity. Ernesto Guevara's priority was set on education, as the only way to give people the tools they need to understand the world around them and be able to fight efficiently against any form of injustice. Guevara believed in the need of a vanguard, a group of educated people who would teach the masses and free them through knowledge and culture - and eventually transmit this education to the youngest. In Man and Socialism in Cuba, Guevara wrote: 'Society as a whole must become a huge school.

' He also believed that a technological and scientific education of all people was necessary. Che Guevara also attached a lot of importance to the arts. He believed that arts had lost their initial purpose, which was to free man through spiritual creation. But capitalism gave birth to the art establishment, limiting the freedom of the artists and only rewarding those who follow established principles. Even artistic experimentation has its own limits imposed on, and as Ernesto explained: ' (... ) the idea of making art a weapon of denunciation and accusation is combatted. ' Artistic experimentation is seen as a pseudo-rebellion that often lacks real radical substance: 'If the rules of the game are respected, all honours are obtained - the hours that might be granted to a pirouette-creating monkey.

The condition is not attempting to escape from the invisible cage. ' Guevara also rejected 19th and 20th century art. While 19th century art was considered capitalist, the decadent art of the 20th century was the proof of the malaise of society. In order to fight the ravages caused by capitalism and organize a new system, Che Guevara advocated the action of not only the revolutionary vanguard, but also of each individual as a member of a society that struggles for common goals. Guevara wrote a lot about military theory (particularly in his book Guerrilla Warfare) but one mustn't forget that Che's concept of revolutionary action was coupled with a profound sense of humanity.

To Ernesto Guevara, 'the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. ' One cannot dissociate Guevara's military actions from his humanism, and even altruism, and its primary goal: the happiness of people. Che's action was also guided by a feeling of justice and a profound faith in man; to reach his goals, Che highlighted the necessity of creating a 'new man,' a 'twenty-first century man,' freed from his alienation, educated and ready to struggle every day for his liberty. Authenticity is also a major condition to Guevara's battle. In Man and Socialism in Cuba, he explained: ' (... ) if it is not an authentic social movement (... ), the movement will have the same life span as its promoter or until the rigors of capitalist society put an end to popular illusions. ' Preoccupied with the human condition, Guevara explained that the ultimate revolutionary aspiration was to free man from alienation and his most important goal to educate the people.

Revolutionary, humanist and extremely charismatic, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara surely appeared as dangerous to many political leaders of the time, and still today, no one knows for sure who was behind his execution, in 1967. Two sides have particularly been designated as possible culprits: the CIA and Fidel Castro, who could have both felt threatened by the growing influence and determination of the revolutionary. Authentic to the extreme, Guevara dedicated his life, his existence to the cause he believed in, even if it implied sacrifices: 'Our sacrifice is a conscious one; it is in payment for the freedom we are building. ' Today, 'Che' has become a popular symbol while his image is too often dissociated from the philosophy that built it. Che Guevara remains, to many, a modern time hero, whose struggle and devotion made him one of the greatest revolutionary figures of all times. Maybe this incredible popularity is due to the humanist, sincere personality of a man who never stepped back, never sold out and fought passionately, to death ('Patria o ').

Maybe it is also due to the fact that, in today's world, many people feel that his fight is still necessary.! Hasta, Com andante!