Fidel Castro: ‘Che’s ideas are,absolutely relevant today’

Subject: Re: Fidel Castro: 'Che's ideas are,absolutely relevant today'

This quote from Castro's speech sounds very much like it could have been referring to our Federal government today:  

"...that problems had to be solved
with overtime, with more and more overtime, and this while the regular
workday
was not even being used efficiently. We had fallen into the bog of
bureaucracy, of overstaffing, of work norms that were out of date, the
bog of deceit,
of untruth." 

 

Castro reminds Cubans that power resides within each of us.  Together the workers will overcome.  We must never lose our belief in the People. 

Good advice for all Americans, if we intend to see a new tomorrow. 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Roger Loran Bailey

To: Blind Democracy Discussion List

Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2013 6:52 PM

Subject: Fidel Castro: 'Che's ideas are,absolutely relevant today'

http://www.themilitant.com/2013/7704/770449.html
The Militant - February 4, 2013 --Fidel Castro: 'Che's ideas are
absolutely relevant to-day'
The Militant (logo)

Vol. 77/No. 4      February 4, 2013


Fidel Castro: 'Che's ideas are
absolutely relevant today'
(Books of the Month column)

Below is an excerpt from "Che's Ideas Are Absolutely Relevant Today," an
Oct. 8, 1987, speech by Fidel Castro. It is printed in Che Guevara:
Economics
and Politics in the Transition to Socialism by Carlos Tablada. The
French edition is one of Pathfinder's Books of the Month for January.

Castro gave the speech in an electronics factory in the Cuban city of
Pinar del Río on the 20th anniversary of Guevara's death. The previous
year Castro
had initiated the rectification process, to reverse economic methods
copied from the Soviet Union by strengthening the weight of toilers as
the driving
force of the revolution and to combat the growing economic, social and
political weight of a relatively privileged administrative layer.

Copyright © 1989 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY FIDEL CASTRO
Is there a better date, a better anniversary than this one to remember
Che with all our conviction and deep feelings of appreciation and
gratitude? Is
there a better moment than this particular anniversary, when we are in
the middle of the rectification process?

What are we rectifying? We're rectifying all those things—and there are
many—that strayed from the revolutionary spirit, from revolutionary
work, revolutionary
virtue, revolutionary effort, revolutionary responsibility; all those
things that strayed from the spirit of solidarity among people. We're
rectifying
all the shoddiness and mediocrity that is precisely the negation of
Che's ideas, his revolutionary thought, his style, his spirit, and his
example.

I really believe, and I say it with great satisfaction, that if Che were
sitting in this chair, he would feel jubilant. He would be happy about
what we
are doing these days, just like he would have felt very unhappy during
that unstable period, that disgraceful period of building socialism in
which there
began to prevail a series of ideas, of mechanisms, of bad habits, which
would have caused Che to feel profound and terrible bitterness. [Applause]

For example, voluntary work, the brainchild of Che and one of the best
things he left us during his stay in our country and his part in the
revolution,
was steadily on the decline. It became a formality almost. It would be
done on the occasion of a special date, a Sunday. People would sometimes
run around
and do things in a disorganized way.

The bureaucrat's view, the technocrat's view that voluntary work was
neither basic nor essential gained more and more ground. The idea was
that voluntary
work was kind of silly, a waste of time, that problems had to be solved
with overtime, with more and more overtime, and this while the regular
workday
was not even being used efficiently. We had fallen into the bog of
bureaucracy, of overstaffing, of work norms that were out of date, the
bog of deceit,
of untruth. We'd fallen into a whole host of bad habits that Che would
have been really appalled at. …

But don't think that Che was naive, an idealist, or someone out of touch
with reality. Che understood and took reality into consideration. But
Che believed
in man. And if we don't believe in man, if we think that man is an
incorrigible little animal, capable of advancing only if you feed him
grass or tempt
him with a carrot or whip him with a stick—anybody who believes this,
anybody convinced of this will never be a revolutionary; anybody who
believes this,
anybody convinced of this will never be a socialist; anybody who
believes this, anybody convinced of this will never be a communist.
[Applause]

Our revolution is an example of what faith in man means because our
revolution started from scratch, from nothing. We did not have a single
weapon, we
did not have a penny, even the men who started the struggle were
unknown, and yet we confronted all that might, we confronted their
hundreds of millions
of pesos, we confronted the thousands of soldiers, and the revolution
triumphed because we believed in man. Not only was victory made
possible, but so
was confronting the empire and getting this far, only a short way off
from celebrating the twenty-ninth anniversary of the triumph of the
revolution. How
could we have done all this if we had not had faith in man?

Che had great faith in man. Che was a realist and did not reject
material incentives. He deemed them necessary during the transitional
stage, while building
socialism. But Che attached more importance—more and more importance—to
the conscious factor, to the moral factor.

At the same time, it would be a caricature to believe that Che was
unrealistic and unfamiliar with the reality of a society and a people
who had just emerged
from capitalism.

But Che was mostly known as a man of action, a soldier, a leader, a
military man, a guerrilla, an exemplary person who always was the first
in everything;
a man who never asked others to do something that he himself would not
do first; a model of a righteous, honest, pure, courageous man, full of
human solidarity.
These are the virtues he possessed and the ones we remember him by.

Che was a man of very profound thought, and he had the exceptional
opportunity during the first years of the revolution to delve deeply
into very important
aspects of the building of socialism because, given his qualities,
whenever a man was needed to do an important job, Che was always there.
He really was
a many-sided man and whatever his assignment, he fulfilled it in a
completely serious and responsible manner. …

In essence—in essence!—Che was radically opposed to using and developing
capitalist economic laws and categories in building socialism. He
advocated something
that I have often insisted on: Building socialism and communism is not
just a matter of producing and distributing wealth but is also a matter
of education
and consciousness. He was firmly opposed to using these categories,
which have been transferred from capitalism to socialism, as instruments
to build the
new society.


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