What Che Guevara is Famous for: Political Life of a Freedom Fighter

Che Guevara is known for his image that has been plastered on millions of t-shirts. Most of those who wear Che’s image just think that it looks cool or symbolizes defiance. Yet they generally know very little of the man and his ideas. The mainstream media and the Cuban exile mafia would have us believe that Che was some kind of ruthless executioner. To those who bother to read beyond imperialist propaganda, Che Guevara was a selfless Marxist revolutionary, who gave his life fighting for revolution in a land not his own. Yet he was also involved in economic debates, striving to develop a humanistic and democratic communism. Che Guevara served many posts during his service to the Cuban revolution. His most well-known was that of guerrilla fighter. Yet he also head of the National Bank.

This position may not be quite as glamorous as a freedom fighter, but it was no less important. Che Guevara, as head of the National Bank found himself opposed to the school of financial self-management. He also strenuously urged for Cuba to break its dependence on sugar (which he saw as a mark of imperialism). Che questioned any form of market socialism. He did not believe that plans could operate via markets; in fact he counter posed plans to markets. To Che, you can’t build communism with capitalist methods. He wanted all industries to be unified under a single bank with the same budget. In this way, all industries would be part of the same enterprise and there would be no buying or selling between enterprises. Yet this was not the end of Che’s ideas. To him, centralized planning was not just about developing the economy. Planning needed to create communist human beings, embodying new values and a new consciousness. What Che wanted was to raise consciousness and not rely upon the economic ‘laws’ of capitalism. He sought to encourage voluntary work and other forms of moral incentives. Che did not deny the need for material incentives, but believed they needed to be more collective in order to help raise workers’ consciousness. Che firmly believed that planning and communism were they to be meaningful, needed the participation of the masses in the process (making planning all inclusive).

What Che advocated was in line with classical Marxist conceptions of communism as realizing the full potential of human beings. As Minister of Industries, Che set up nine research and development institutes, studying everything from the mechanization of the sugar harvest and a sugar derivatives industry, nickel production, green medicine, oil exploration, the chemical industry, to computing and electronics. He integrated psychology as a management tool, secretly organized the printing of new banknotes, devised a new salary scale, promoted workers' management, inventions and innovations. In six tumultuous years, Che made an indelible contribution to Cuban development. There have been few more emotional moments in history to talk about the economics of revolution. 2009 is the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution - contradictions and challenges persist, but the revolution remains vibrant. This is also a period of acute crisis for the global capitalist system.

In late September 2008, George W Bush, perhaps the US's most neoliberal, anti-regulation, aggressively imperialist front man in history declared: 'The market is not functioning properly. 'Huge companies like General Motors are going bankrupt, not because they are technologically stagnant or unproductive, but because of the restraints imposed by capitalism's financial mechanisms and the crisis of profitability. Workers, skilled and manual, are being made redundant. Hundreds of US citizens join tent cities scattered around the capitals of highly industrialized US states, not because there are insufficient houses, but because families are thrown onto the street when they can't afford to pay rent and mortgages. After years of rolling back the state, governments around the world are now impelled to intervene. Guevara was right to recognize the technological advances of the capitalist corporations and aspire to their high productivity and efficiency. But he was also correct in the view that state planning and centralized budgets are the only rational way to organize the economy; with production for people's need, not for financial profit.