1967

Che Guevara: Murder of a Revolutionary

Published in Labour Worker, November 1967.

 

News from Bolivia, backed by Castro, indicates that Che Guevara is dead. Guevara was a major revolutionary figure in a continent becoming ever more important for the world revolution. As such we mourn his death.

The regime in Bolivia (as has been revealed to those unaware of it by the press reports of the Régis Debray trial) is brutal, corrupt and reactionary. To all those, tin miners, peasants and guerrillas, who have taken arms to overthrow it, we can offer nothing less than unconditional solidarity.

This is not the place to give an assessment of Guevara’s revolutionary strategy. Because he was a serious revolutionary, a serious critique of his theory and practice must be a major task for those concerned with the Latin American revolution.

There are three vital questions for the Latin American revolution. Firstly, does it require peaceful or armed struggle; second, will the main impetus come from the countryside or the towns; third, is the major need devoted bands of guerrillas or mass popular involvement?

On the first point we agree wholeheartedly with Guevara against the social–democrats and Moscow-oriented communists; on the other two we must differ sharply. This is not to claim to lay down, at a comfortable distance, the tactics of the Latin American struggle; it is to assert that the essence of Marxism is that socialism must be established by the self-activity of the working-class.