ECONOMY
9.4 ON MASS PARTICIPATION AND DEMOCRACY 7
says, 'must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible'. Guevara holds that the new individual plays a role in mobilising and leading the masses insofar as he/she embodies the highest virtues and aspirations of the people' (EG 1965/2003u, 225-26).
Already in his 1961 address to the Inter-American Economic and Social Council in Paraguay, Guevara sought to advocate that the Cuban revolution is a 'revolution with humanist characteristics' that it seeks to affirm 'the dignity of the human being' (EG 196112003i, 252-53, emphasis added).
9.4.2 Democracy
Guevara's standpoints on mass participation, as a consequence immediately provoke questions on his notion of the broader concept of democracy itself. In an article written in the final weeks before the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship (EG 1958/2003a), he advances the proposition that the future revolution is not about the use of 'demagogic tactics in order to display political cleverness' that the revolutionary leadership will not 'investigate the feelings of the masses out of simple scientific curiosity', but, that 'we respond to their call' (EG 1958/2003a, 62). Guevara reasons that the combative front line of the workers and peasants, for example, should not be secluded from the popular masses, but is very much part of the people. The leadership'S role, he argues further, does not isolate it from the masses but rather imposes obligations on those leading the revolution (ibid.).
Addressing the concept directly, Guevara notes that the word 'democracy' should not be utilised 'apologetically' in order merely to represent 'the dictatorship of the exploiting classes' (EG 1963/2003n, 74). More importantly, he argues that the deeper meaning of democracy should not be lost - that of granting people their liberties. To struggle only to reinstate 'a certain degree of bourgeois legality', without considering the fundamental interests of the masses, is to struggle for the return of 'a dictatorial order established by the dominant social classes', he reasons. Hence Guevara argues that the struggle for real participatory democracy should not be a struggle for continued oppression, albeit in subdued forms - 'for a lighter iron ball to be fixed to the prisoner's chain' (ibid., emphasis added). The toppling of the Batista dictatorship presents for Cubans a 'strategic objective to re-establish all the ideas of democracy and sovereignty and independence that were trampled underfoot by the foreign monopolies (EG 1960/2003c, 102, emphasis added). Since the early 1950s, he justifies, all of Cuba had 'become a garrison' (ibid.).
Guevara's August 1962 Trade Unions speech more clearly defines his perceptions of a workers' democracy. In it he stresses firstly the significance of 'discipline' in the working environment (EG 1962/2003j, 147), reasoning that 'discipline' is fundamental to the growth of production that it should not be considered a negative factor or as submission to power structures, but that it
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should be viewed rather in dialectical terms: he explains that discipline consists of 'abiding by majority decisions in accordance with democratic centralism,.8 The latter concept, something he returns to time and again, 'follows the guidelines of a government supported by the masses' (ibid.).
For Guevara 'democracy' means 'collectively discussing, on each level, the fundamental problems of the shop, the factory or enterprise to ensure better production' (EG 1962/2003j, 147). Most importantly, though, he argues that democratic practice involves taking part in the decision- making process itself, and that all - including the leadership should abide by the same set of rules (ibid., emphasis added). Hence, for Guevara, democracy fundamentally entails
increasing the workers' participation through their organisations in the management of the factory, in the sense of being able to participate in discussions and decisions about production and to constantly supervise the administration in carrying out everyone of the disciplinary rules that we must all impose upon ourselves (ibid., emphasis added).
In his introduction (EG 1963/20030) to his book entitled The A1arxist-Leninist Party (Deutschmann 2003, 169), Guevara offers greater clarity on the broader implications of 'democratic centralism' (EG 1963/20030, 175). In this instance, he looks at the fundamental link that should exist between the ruling party, public workers, and ordinary citizens, proclaiming
The party of the future will be intimately linked to the masses and will absorb from them those great ideas that will then take shape as concrete guidelines. It will be a party that will strictly apply its discipline in keeping with democratic centralism and, at the same time, where there will permanently be discussion and open criticism and self-criticism, in order to continuously improve our work . ... [The] cadres will have to carry out their dynamic task of being in contact with people, of transmitting their experiences to higher bodies, of transmitting concrete guidelines to the masses ..
. (EG 1963120030, 175, emphasis added).
His thought essentially contradicts totalitarian, autocratic, undemocratic governmental practice. Conceivably Guevara's most premeditated pronouncement on 'democracy', is presented in his historic 1961 speech 'The
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OAS conference at Punta del Este' (EG 1 96112003i). The speech - in large measure both a condemnation of US imperialism and validation of the Cuban revolution was delivered when Guevara headed Cuba's delegation to the 1961 ministerial meeting of the inter-American Economic and Social Council sponsored by the Organisation of American States (OAS). Also present at Punta del Este, where a crowd of thousands of supporters welcomed him, was the US delegation which presented Washington's proclaimed Alliance for Progress for official ratification by the OAS. Accordingly Guevara's speech should be considered in the context of his complex audience, i.e., (1) Latin American officials, described by Rose as 'the willing tools of US imperialism' (Rose 2001, 3), (2) Latin American leaders who, in Rose's words, were 'deeply compromised in their acquiescence to US hegemony' (ibid.), and (3) representatives of US capitalism, at whom Guevara 'principally directs his deviance' (ibid.). But, according to Rose again, Guevara also sought to address not only the people of Latin America, but the entire third world, 'the full spectrum of imperialism's victims' (ibid., 4). It is within this broad framework, then, that Guevara offers his perspective on the concept of democracy. Citing entirely from the Declaration of Havana proclaimed in Cuba on April 16, 1961, Guevara announces that
The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba expresses the Cuban conviction that democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians, but rather it lies in the right of the citizens to determine their own destiny, as this Assembly of the People is now doing. Furthermore, democracy will come to exist in Latin America only when people are really free to make choices, when the poor are not reduced - by hunger, social discrimination, illiteracy and the legal system - to the most wretched impotence . ... The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba condemns, in sum: the exploitation of man by man and the exploitation of the underdeveloped countries by imperialist finance capital (cited in EG 1961/2003 i, 247, emphasis added).
The announcement demonstrates the Cuban regime's departure from western- style democracy which Castro, on occasion, had called 'the dictatorship of the capitalists' (cited in Wright 1991,25). Wright is of the view that the regime was 'undoubtedly correct in asserting the incompatibility of western democracy with
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social revolution, given the corrupting power of money in elections and the restraints on action inherent in constitutional democracies' (Wright 1991,25).
On another note, in the following year in a piece written for Verde Olivo 9 the mouthpiece of Cuba's revolutionary anned forces Guevara returns to the topic of the US-inspired Alliance for Progress programme. In the piece he views the programme as 'nothing more than an imperialist endeavour to prevent the growth of the revolutionary situation of the masses'. This it sought to accomplish by 'sharing a small quantity of the profits with the native exploiting classes', thus creating 'allies of the exploited classes'. In other words, he writes, 'they [US capitalists] sought to suppress the internal contradictions of the capitalist system as much as possible' (EG 1968/2003x, 299).