Neither Mao, Nor Che: The Practical Evolution of Revolutionary Theory. A Comment on J. Moreno's ‘Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare’

Abstract

An official, albeit implicit, Chinese critique of Che Guevara's methods in Bolivia in 1966–67 can be found in Peking's praise in 1969 for a Bolivian Communist Draft Peasant-Agrarian Program. Peking stresses Bolivia's feudal character and its domination by American imperialism. That is, the revolution should ally with bourgeois nationalism. Consequently it must be based on a minimalist program to attract a maximum of support. The National Liberation Front in Vietnam follows that course. The Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro took that road. Nonetheless, R6gis Debray insists that ‘Cuba remembered from the beginning that the socialist revolution is the result of an armed struggle against the armed power of the bourgeois state’. While Peking Review agreed on the need for an ‘armed struggle… rely[ing] firmly on the peasants’, it did not propose making the middle classes the main target of that fight. By stressing socialism instead of alliance with nationalistic capitalists, Che isolates himself from a potential source of support and forces those rich entrepreneurs to help reactionary militarists and landed oligarchs whom they may abhor. Nationalist anti-imperialism is a major issue in Latin America as most everywhere else in the world. Yet there is no necessary reason why narrowly based Che-style guerrillas must win the nationalist mantle. It has been the bourgeois parties and interests in Latin America which usually have expropriated Yankee businesses. It is the native national bourgeoisie who are most obviously hurt by Yankee competition. But if the guerrillas cannot appear as the nationalists, they will not win the thousands upon thousands of patriotic youth needed to educate, organize, lead and die.