“Socialism and Man in Cuba” Revisited

Abstract

Ernesto “Che” Guevara's 1965 essay, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” is a milestone in twentieth-century emancipatory social thought. One of the most important topics addressed in Guevara's wide-ranging essay is, without question, the problem of work, which Guevara considers the chief source of alienation in capitalist society and the key to collective liberation in a communist society. For Guevara, the status of work must undergo a fundamental transformation, and it is in connection with this conviction that Guevara develops two of his best known practical proposals: the concept of voluntary work and the use of moral incentives to achieve society's economic goals. Careful consideration of Guevara's conception of voluntary work reveals that it is vulnerable to a number of theoretical and practical objections. However, several of Che's other ideas pertaining to the transformation of work and the moral dimensions of socialist development, including his insistence on the use of moral incentives under socialism, remain quite relevant today. Indeed, some of these ideas provide a useful framework for reflecting on and assessing recent developments in Cuban socialism.

Keywords:

• Che Guevara
• work
• socialism
• Cuban Revolution
• alienation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Renzo Llorente teaches philosophy on Saint Louis University's Madrid Campus. He specializes in social and political philosophy, ethics, and Latin American philosophy, and is the author of numerous articles in these areas. He is also the author of Beyond the Pale: Exercises in Provocation (Vagabond Voices, 2010), and the translator and editor of The Marxism of Manuel Sacristán: From Communism to the New Social Movements (Brill, 2014).

Notes

¹After reviewing a seven-volume edition of his works (writings, speeches, interviews and recorded interventions from a variety of meetings) published in 1966, Che stated that “Socialism and Man in Cuba” struck him as his most finished work (Borrego 2011, 378).

²I refer to, and briefly cite from, some of these texts below.

³It bears noting here that Lenin ([1919] 1965) had defended the practice of voluntary work 40 years before the Cuban Revolution. But as Yaffe (2009, 216) rightly observes, Che, unlike Lenin, developed a relatively systematic conception of this practice. Moreover, Che was, without a doubt, a more steadfast and ardent proponent of voluntary work than any other major Marxist thinker.

⁴It is worth bearing in mind that Che developed his ideas in the midst of social mobilizations—the creation of a national militia, Cubans’ response to the Bay of Pigs invasion, extensive neighborhood organizing, etc.—involving many different forms of voluntary work. It would be worthwhile to analyze the influence of such events on the evolution of Che's thought, but such a study lies beyond the scope of the present essay.

⁵In the original, Che uses the word “necesidad,” which can be translated as either “need” or “necessity.” Of course, “necessity” suggests an even more vital, critical requirement than “need”; indeed Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., defines “necessity” as “an urgent need or desire.”

⁶After describing the Cuban people's responses to the “missile crisis” in October 1962 and Hurricane Flora the following year, responses characterized by “act[s] of total dedication to the revolutionary cause,” Che writes of the need to “perpetuate this heroic attitude in daily life” ([1965] 2003b, 213). But heroism is normally identified with deeds that go beyond the demands of duty (“supererogatory” acts, in the parlance of moral philosophy). Accordingly, if voluntary work likewise requires a “heroic attitude in daily life,” it is reasonable to assume that people will not regard performance of voluntary work as a “duty.”

⁷This phrase comes from a communiqué drafted by Che, along with three of his colleagues, in August 1964. Incidentally, some passages in Lenin's 1919 essay on voluntary work (e.g., [1919] 1965, 427) suggest that he, too, would endorse the claim that “voluntary work is the most authentic expression of the communist attitude toward work.”

⁸Perhaps the aim of voluntary work is actually more modest, namely, as Germán Sánchez puts it, “to favor the tendency to the disalienation of labor” (2007, 117; originally in Spanish). But if this formulation, from an authority on Che's thought, accurately represents Che's view, it is hard to understand why he attaches such great importance to voluntary work, at least as compared with the other disalienating measures that I have mentioned.

⁹Che's call for worker participation in decision-making within factories (Guevara [1962] 2003a, 147) can also be interpreted as a condemnation of the capitalist division of labor and, of course, a commitment to eliminate it.

¹⁰ A complete English translation of the Guidelines is available at: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/documentos/2011/ing/l160711i.html.

¹¹ “Supply quality, price and assortment shall be diversified in order to meet the demand from different segments of the population on the basis of purchasing power, as an additional factor that may encourage employment.” http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/documentos/2011/ing/l160711i.html. The passage cited from the Guidelines’ introductory remarks can also be found on this webpage.