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Che and the Return to the Tricontinental

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Che and the Return to the Tricontinental CHE AND THE RETURN TO THE TRICONTINENTAL ROBERT YOUNG1 1 Oxford University. CHE AND THE RETURN TO THE TRICONTINENTAL. 1 1. ‘What we must create is the man of the 21st the end of history. Marx’s legacy was declared century, although this is still a subjective null and void. Yet the active business of aspiration, not yet systematized. This is developing Marx’s legacy in the past fifty years precisely one of the fundamental objectives of had been carried out not in the Soviet Union, our study and work. To the extent that we nor even, I would argue, within much of achieve concrete success on a theoretical European Marxism, but rather in the forms of plane⎯or, vice versa, to the extent that we socialism developed outside the first and draw theoretical conclusions of a broad second worlds, in the course of the anti— character on the basis of our concrete research colonial and anti—imperial struggles in Africa, ⎯we will have made a valuable contribution to Asia and Latin America. Many of these have Marxism—Leninism, to the cause of not survived, shipwrecked on the dangerous humanity’. Che Guevara, ‘Socialism and Man turbulent waters across which every in Cuba’ 1965. decolonised nation has had to navigate. Cuba, 2. How can we think of the legacy of Karl Marx however, is an exception. In 1964 Dean Rusk, today? A legacy involves the act of US Secretary of State, remarked of the new bequeathing, usually in a will or testament. Cuban government ‘we regard that regime as 3 More generally, it is something handed down temporary’. Forty years later, Rusk’s own by an ancestor or predecessor. As a result, we expectations look a good deal more transitory. tend to think of a legacy only in terms of Against huge odds, Cuba has survived, with its something that has been received. Originally, sovereignty intact and its dignity ever however, the term operated quite closely to that increasing. Its survival into the twenty—first of ‘embassy’, referring to ‘the function or office century marks it out as one of Marx’s great of a delegate or deputy’ and, beyond that, ‘the legacies, as a nation that continues to function message or business committed to a delegate or as an example of a state dedicated to values of deputy … a body of persons sent on a mission humanity to which ordinary people in the world or as a deputation’.2 If Marx left us a legacy, aspire. therefore, it involves not only what he 4. Cuba has not only survived as an bequeathed to us through his theoretical and autonomous sovereign socialist power, it has political writings and activist example. He also survived as a phenomenon that increasingly, sent us on a mission. Marx’s legacy is not particularly to the younger generations of something ossified in the past but involves Europe and the Americas, stands for the most business to be done in the present and future, significant alternative to the globalising culture ‘for the cause of humanity’. The work that has of Anglo—America⎯ namely Hispano— to be done is to address that legacy to the America, the America of José Martí. In a recent challenges of the twenty—first century. There visit to Puerto Rico, I was very struck by the is no better place on earth to address Marx’s extent to which Cuba represented for many legacy than in Cuba. Puerto Ricans the symbol and guarantee of their 3. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the own non—US identity. Why do young people end of the twentieth century was hailed by even in Britain walk around with T—shirts that many as the moment of the death of Marxism, have the simple word CUBA printed across 2 3 Oxford English Dictionary. Guevara 1997, 264. CHE AND THE RETURN TO THE TRICONTINENTAL. 2 them? It is not because of a sudden interest in meant that it absorbed somewhat uncritically the imperial history of Castilian Spain that certain characteristics of the decaying Spanish is rapidly becoming the most popular bureaucratic Soviet system. That Cuba survived foreign language for students to study at school after the collapse of the Soviet Union, on the and university in the UK. This affection for other hand, points to the degree that it Cuba comes not only because young people maintained its own ideological independence enjoy the increasingly popular son, salsa and and a very different relation between the state other vibrant varieties of Cuban music, but also and the people than that which had obtained in because Cuba represents a different kind of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s survival as a socialist society to those of the west: a socialist society country points to the way in which it continues organised on humanitarian principles in which to show the way forward not as a model, in the the individual is defined as part of the sense of a universal model whose paradigm community, not against it, and in which the could be imposed elsewhere, but as an example, community defines itself according to the needs in the sense of the way Manuel Piñeiro spoke of of the whole society. A living socialist society Che as ‘a great example’.5 The broader effects that is confident, energetic, and youthful. It says of the Cuban example continue to be felt across a lot for Cuba that over forty years after the Latin America—one thinks particularly for revolution, it has developed the reputation for example of recent developments in Brazil—and being the most vibrant, youthful society in the beyond. Cuba stands for a form of socialism world. very different from that which obtained in the 5. Cuba, therefore, has carried into the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin. It shows twentieth century a socialism that looks not that socialism can be developed as a process backwards but forwards. A socialism that developed by the people themselves from evolved after a revolutionary triumph over a within their own resources, and according to neocolonial regime, and developed in the most their own needs and priorities. What Cuba has difficult of circumstances ⎯the contestation demonstrated is that socialism is an objective with the forces of US imperialism that have towards which a society must move through been arraigned against Cuba for over forty popular consensus and debate. One of the years for no better reason, it seems, than anger things that has distinguished Cuban leaders and at the Cuban assertion of independence after its intellectuals from the leaders of many other own long submission to neo—colonial control socialist and, just as much, non—socialist by the US from 1898. Cuba represents a society countries, is the admission of the possibility of that has held out for its own values against the mistake. ‘The state sometimes makes intimidation from its giant neighbour, against mistakes’, announces Che, and this honesty is a all odds. very evident feature of his writing on the Cuban 6. The title of Julio García Luis’ introduction to experiment.6 A leadership that can admit that it his recent Cuban Revolutionary Reader was made mistakes, that does not attempt to rewrite ‘Relic of the Cold War or Herald of the Third history and thus lose the trust of the people, is a Millennium?’.4 Luis argues persuasively that leadership that can learn from experience and Cuba’s history was indelibly marked by the allow policy to evolve in a productive way. Cold War. After the US campaign against the 7. Another way to think of this would be to say Cuban Revolution began, the Cold War at once that socialism does not come in ready—made enabled Cuba to benefit from the friendship and formulas, or forms of organisation and aid of the Soviet Union and at the same time 5 Piñeiro 2001, 76. 4 Luis 2001, 1—11. 6 Guevara 1997, 199. CHE AND THE RETURN TO THE TRICONTINENTAL. 3 production applicable in a uniform way to all developed in the course of the twentieth century societies, but has to be adapted to the special as a part of the anti—colonial and anti— needs and history of the nation, or, as in Kerala imperial struggles. In my book in India, the state within the federal nation. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction Anyone who claims that socialism cannot work (2001), I argued that the Cuban Revolution should visit Kerala, the most equitable and should be seen first and foremost within the relaxed state of India and the one in which broad context of the anti—colonial movements, wealth is most effectively distributed, and to which it subsequently made decisive where the literacy rate is at a level comparable contributions, both by direct assistance, as in to that of Cuba. Kerala is an interesting Angola, and by its outstanding example. In that comparison to make because there socialism book, I offer a history of the anticolonial has been developed outside the special movements of the twentieth century in which I constraints of the blockade and associated argue that despite all the diversity of the economic and political pressures that Cuba has different struggles across the world, with only a suffered in the past forty years. Cuba, in that few exceptions it was Marxism which provided sense, has been a limit case, an exceptional the theoretical and political inspiration for example of what can be achieved even in such anti—colonial resistance. While tracing Marx difficult circumstances. What Cuba has shown and Engel’s increasing interest in anti—colonial is that socialism is indeed a dialectical process, resistance in Algeria, Ireland and elsewhere, I in which it must transform itself in response to argue that it was Lenin’s Imperialism: The the needs of society at the same time as it Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917) that transforms that society itself, as well as the constituted, and remains, the founding text for people who make it.
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