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Che Guevara Archives
Notes for the Study of Man and Socialism in Cuba
Guevara wrote "Notes for the Study of Man and
Socialism in Cuba" in the form of a letter to Carlos Quijano,
editor of Marcha, an independent radical weekly published in
Montevideo, Uruguay. It bore the dateline "Havana, 1965."
In addition to appearing in Marcha, it was printed
in Verde Olivo, the magazine of the Cuban armed forces.
It is translated in full below.
Though belatedly, I am completing these notes in the course
of my trip through Africa, hoping in this way to keep my promise.
I would like to do so by dealing with the theme set forth in
the above title. I think it may be of interest to Uruguayan
readers.
 A
common argument from the mouths of capitalist spokesmen, in
the ideological struggle against socialism, is that socialism,
or the period of building socialism into which we have entered,
is characterised by the subordination of the individual to the
state. I will not try to refute this argument solely on theoretical
grounds, but I will try to establish the facts as they exist
in Cuba and then add comments of a general nature. Let me begin
by sketching the history of our revolutionary struggle before
and after the taking of power.
As is well known, the exact date on which the revolutionary
struggle began — which would culminate January 1st, 1959
— was the 26th of July 1953. A group of men commanded
by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada barracks in Oriente Province
on the morning of that day. The attack was a failure; the failure
became a disaster; and the survivors ended up in prison, beginning
the revolutionary struggle again after they were freed by an
amnesty.
In this stage, in which there was only the germ of socialism,
man was the basic factor. We put our trust in him - individual,
specific, with a first and last name - and the triumph or failure
of the mission entrusted to him depended on his capacity for
action.
Then came the stage of guerrilla struggle. It developed in two
distinct elements: the people, the still sleeping mass which
it was necessary to mobilise; and its vanguard, the guerrillas,
the motor force of the movement, the generator of revolutionary
consciousness and militant enthusiasm. It was this vanguard,
this catalysing agent, which created the subjective conditions
necessary for victory.
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Here again, in the course of the process of proletarianizing
our thinking, in this revolution, which took place in our habits
and our minds, the individual was the basic factor. Every one
of the fighters of the Sierra Maestra who reached an upper rank
in the revolutionary forces has a record of outstanding deeds
to his credit. They attained their rank on this basis. It was
the first heroic period and in it they contended for the heaviest
responsibilities, for the greatest dangers, with no other satisfaction
than fulfilling a duty.
In our work of revolutionary education we frequently return
to this instructive theme. In the attitude of our fighters could
be glimpsed the man of the future.
On other occasions in our history the act of total dedication
to the revolutionary cause was repeated. During the October
crisis and in the days of Hurricane Flora we saw exceptional
deeds of valour and sacrifice performed by an entire people.
Finding the formula to perpetuate this heroic attitude in daily
life is, from the ideological standpoint, one of our fundamental
tasks.
In January 1959, the Revolutionary Government was established
with the participation of various members of the treacherous
bourgeoisie. The existence of the Rebel Army as the basic factor
of force constituted the guarantee of power. Serious contradictions
developed subsequently. In the first instance, in February 1959,
these were resolved when Fidel Castro assumed leadership of
the government with the post of Prime Minister. This stage culminated
in July of the same year with the resignation under mass pressure
of President Urrutia.
There now appeared in the history of the Cuban Revolution a
force with well-defined characteristics, which would systematically
reappear — the mass.
This many-faceted agency is not, as is claimed, the sum of units
of the self-same type, behaving like a tame flock of sheep,
and reduced, moreover, to that type by the system imposed from
above. It is true that it follows its leaders, basically Fidel
Castro, without hesitation; but the degree to which he won this
trust corresponds precisely to the degree that he interpreted
the people's desires and aspirations correctly, and to the degree
that he made a sincere effort to fulfil the promises he made.
The mass participated in the agrarian reform and in the difficult
task of the administration of state enterprises; it went through
the heroic experience of Playa Girón; it was hardened
in the battles against various bands of bandits armed by the
CIA; it lived through one of the most important decisions of
modern time during the October crisis; and today it continues
to work for the building of socialism.
Viewed superficially, it might appear that those who speak of
the subordination of the individual to the state are right.
The mass carries out with matchless enthusiasm and discipline
the tasks set by the government, whether economic in character,
cultural, defensive, athletic, or whatever.
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The initiative generally comes from Fidel or from the Revolutionary
High Command, and is explained to the people who adopt it as
theirs. In some cases the party and government utilise a local
experience which may be of general value to the people, and
follow the same procedure.
Nevertheless, the state sometimes makes mistakes. When one of
these mistakes occurs, a decline in collective enthusiasm is
reflected by a resulting quantitative decrease of the contribution
of each individual, each of the elements forming the whole of
the masses. Work is so paralysed that insignificant quantities
are produced. It is time to make a correction. That is what
happened in March 1962, as a result of the sectarian policy
imposed on the party by Anibal Escalante.
Clearly this mechanism is not adequate for insuring a succession
of judicious measures. A more structured connection with the
masses is needed and we must improve it in the course of the
next years. But as far as initiatives originating in the upper
strata of the government are concerned, we are presently utilising
the almost intuitive method of sounding out general reactions
to the great problems we confront.
In this Fidel is a master, whose own special way of fusing himself
with the people can be appreciated only by seeing him in action.
At the great public mass meetings one can observe something
like a counterpoint between two musical melodies whose vibrations
provoke still newer notes. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate
together in a dialogue of growing intensity until they reach
the climax in an abrupt conclusion culminating in our cry of
struggle and victory.
The difficult thing for someone not living the experience of
the revolution to understand is this close dialectical unity
between the individual and the mass, in which the mass, as an
aggregate of individuals, is interconnected with its leaders.
Some phenomena of this kind can be seen under capitalism, when
politicians capable of mobilising popular opinion appear, but
these phenomena are not really genuine social movements. (If
they were, it would not be entirely correct to call them capitalist.)
These movements only live as long as the persons who inspire
them do, or until the harshness of capitalist society puts an
end to the popular illusions which made them possible.
Under capitalism man is controlled by a pitiless code of laws,
which is usually beyond his comprehension. The alienated human
individual is tied to society in its aggregate by an invisible
umbilical cord- the law of value. It is operative in all aspects
of his life, shaping its course and destiny.
The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority,
act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees
only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him.
That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport
to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller - whether or
not it is true — about the possibilities of success.
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The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence
of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation
of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the
picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in
general see this.
(A discussion of how the workers
in the imperialist countries are losing the spirit of working-class
internationalism, due to a certain degree of complicity in the
exploitation of the dependent countries, and how this weakens
the combativity of the masses in the imperialist countries,
would be appropriate here; but that is a theme which goes beyond
the aim of these notes.)
 In
any case the road to success is pictured as one beset with perils
but which, it would seem, an individual with the proper qualities
can overcome to attain the goal. The reward is seen in the distance;
the way is lonely. Further on it is a route for wolves; one
can succeed only at the cost of the failure of others.
I would now like to try to define the individual, the actor
in this strange and moving drama of the building of socialism,
in his dual existence as a unique being and as a member of society.
I think it makes the most sense to recognise his quality of
incompleteness, of being an unfinished product. The sermons
of the past have been transposed to the present in the individual
consciousness, and a continual labour is necessary to eradicate
them. The process is two-sided: On the one side, society acts
through direct and indirect education; on the other, the individual
subjects himself to a process of conscious self-education.
The new society being formed has to compete fiercely with the
past. The latter makes itself felt in the consciousness in which
the residue of an education systematically oriented towards
isolating the individual still weighs heavily, and also through
the very character of the transitional period in which the market
relationships of the past still persist. The commodity is the
economic cell of capitalist society; so long as it exists its
effects will make themselves felt in the organisation of production
and, consequently, in consciousness.
Marx outlined the period of transition as a period which results
from the explosive transformation of the capitalist system of
a country destroyed by its own contradictions.
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However in historical reality we have seen that some countries,
which were weak limbs of the tree of imperialism, were torn
off first — a phenomenon foreseen by Lenin.
In these countries, capitalism had developed to a degree, sufficient
to make its effects felt by the people in one way or another.
But having exhausted all its possibilities, it was not its internal
contradictions, which caused these systems to explode. The struggle
for liberation from a foreign oppressor, the misery caused by
external events like war, whose consequences make the privileged
classes bear down more heavily on the oppressed, liberation
movements aimed at the overthrow of neo-colonial regimes - these
are the usual factors in this kind of explosion. Conscious action
does the rest.
In these countries a complete education for social labour has
not yet taken place, and wealth is far from being within the
reach of the masses simply through the process of appropriation.
Underdevelopment on the one hand and the inevitable flight of
capital on the other, make a rapid transition impossible without
sacrifices. There remains a long way to go in constructing the
economic base, and the temptation to follow the beaten track
of material interest as the moving lever of accelerated development
is very great.
There is the danger that the forest won't be seen for the trees.
Following the will-o'-the-wisp method of achieving socialism
with the help of the dull instruments which link us to capitalism
(the commodity as the economic cell, profitability, individual
material interests as a lever, etc.) can lead into a blind alley.
Further, you get there after having travelled a long distance
in which there were many crossroads and it is hard to figure
out just where it was that you took the wrong turn. The economic
foundation, which has been formed, has already done its work
of undermining the development of consciousness. To build communism,
you must build new men as well as the new economic base.
Hence it is very important to choose correctly the instrument
for mobilising the masses. Basically, this instrument must be
moral in character, without neglecting, however, a correct utilisation
of the material stimulus-especially of a social character.
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As I have already said, in moments of great peril it is easy
to muster a powerful response to moral stimuli; but for them
to retain their effect requires the development of a consciousness
in which there is a new priority of values. Society as a whole
must be converted into a gigantic school.
In rough outline this phenomenon is similar to the process by
which capitalist consciousness was formed in its initial epoch.
Capitalism uses force but it also educates the people to its
system. Direct propaganda is carried out by those entrusted
with explaining the inevitability of class society, either through
some theory of divine origin or through a mechanical theory
of natural selection.
This lulls the masses since they see themselves as being oppressed
by an evil against which it is impossible to struggle. Immediately
following comes the hope of improvement — and in this,
capitalism differed from the preceding caste systems, which
offered no possibilities for advancement.
For some people, the ideology of the caste system will remain
in effect: The reward for the obedient after death is to be
transported to some fabulous otherworld where, in accordance
with the old belief, good people are rewarded. For other people
there is this innovation: The division of society is predestined,
but through work, initiative, etc., individuals can rise out
of the class to which they belong. These two ideologies and
the myth of the self-made man have to be profoundly hypocritical:
They consist in self-interested demonstrations that the lie
of the permanence of class divisions is a truth.
In our case direct education acquires a much greater importance.
The explanation is convincing because it is true; no subterfuge
is needed. It is carried on by the state's educational apparatus
as a function of general, technical and ideological culture
through such agencies as the Ministry of Education and the party's
informational apparatus.
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Education takes hold of the masses and the new attitude tends
to become a habit; the masses continue to absorb it and to influence
those who have not yet educated themselves. This is the indirect
form of educating the masses, as powerful as the other.
But the process is a conscious one; the individual continually
feels the impact of the new social power and perceives that
he does not entirely measure up to its standards. Under the
pressure of indirect education, he tries to adjust himself to
a norm, which he feels is just, and which his own lack of development
had prevented him from reaching theretofore. He educates himself
In this period of the building of socialism we can see the new
man being born. His image is not yet completely finished —
it never could be — since the process goes forward hand
in hand with the development of new economic forms.
Leaving out of consideration those whose lack of education makes
them take the solitary road toward satisfying their own personal
ambitions, there are those, even within this new panorama of
a unified march forward, who have a tendency to remain isolated
from the masses accompanying them. But what is important is
that everyday men are continuing to acquire more consciousness
of the need for their incorporation into society and, at the
same time, of their importance as the movers of society do.
 They
no longer travel completely alone over trackless routes toward
distant desires. They follow their vanguard, consisting of the
party, the advanced workers, advanced men who walk in unity
with the masses and in close communion with them. The vanguard
has its eyes fixed on the future and its rewards, but this is
not seen as something personal. The reward is the new society
in which men will have attained new features: the society of
communist man.
The road is long and full of difficulties. At times we wander
from the path and must turn back; at other times we go too fast
and separate ourselves from the masses; on occasions we go too
slow and feel the hot breath of those treading on our heels.
In our zeal as revolutionists we try to move ahead as fast as
possible, clearing the way, but knowing we must draw our sustenance
from the mass and that it can advance more rapidly only if we
inspire it by our example.
The fact that there remains a division into two main groups
(excluding, of course, that minority not participating for one
reason or another in the building of socialism), despite the
importance given to moral stimuli, indicates the relative lack
of development of social consciousness.
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The vanguard group is ideologically more advanced than the mass;
the latter understands the new values, but not sufficiently.
While among the former there has been a qualitative change,
which enables them to make sacrifices to carry out their function
as an advance guard, the latter go only half way and must be
subjected to stimuli and pressures of certain intensity. That
is the dictatorship of the proletariat operating not only on
the defeated class but also on individuals of the victorious
class.
All this means that for total success a series of mechanisms,
of revolutionary institutions, is needed. Fitted into the pattern
of the multitudes marching towards the future is the concept
of a harmonious aggregate of channels, steps, restraints, and
smoothly working mechanisms which would facilitate that advance
by ensuring the efficient selection of those destined to march
in the vanguard which, itself, bestows rewards on those who
fulfil their duties, and punishments on those who attempt to
obstruct the development of the new society.
This institutionalisation of the revolution has not yet been
achieved. We are looking for something which will permit a perfect
identification between the government and the community in its
entirety, something appropriate to the special conditions of
the building of socialism, while avoiding to the maximum degree
a mere transplanting of the commonplaces of bourgeois democracy-like
legislative chambers- into the society in formation.
Some experiments aimed at the gradual development of institutionalised
forms of the revolution have been made, but without undue haste.
The greatest obstacle has been our fear lest any appearance
of formality might separate us from the masses and from the
individual, might make us lose sight of the ultimate and most
important revolutionary aspiration, which is to see man liberated
from his alienation.
Despite the lack of institutions, which must be corrected gradually,
the masses are now making history as a conscious aggregate of
individuals fighting for the same cause. Man under socialism,
despite his apparent standardisation, is more complete; despite
the lack of perfect machinery for it, his opportunities for
expressing himself and making himself felt in the social organism
are infinitely greater.
It is still necessary to strengthen his conscious participation,
individual and collective, in all the mechanisms of management
and production, and to link it to the idea of the need for technical
and ideological education, so that he sees how closely interdependent
these processes are and how their advancement is parallel. In
this way he will reach total consciousness of his social function,
which is equivalent to his full realisation as a human being,
once the chains of alienation are broken.
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This will be translated concretely into the regaining of his
true nature through liberated labour, and the expression of
his proper human condition through culture and art.
In order for him to develop in the first of the above categories,
labour must acquire a new status. Man dominated by commodity
relationships will cease to exist, and a system will be created
which establishes a quota for the fulfilment of his social duty.
The means of production belong to society, and the machine will
merely be the trench where duty is fulfilled.
Man will begin to see himselve mirrored in his work and to realise
his full stature as a human being through the object created,
through the work accomplished. Work will no longer entail surrendering
a part of his being in the form of labour-power sold, which
no longer belongs to him, but will represent an emanation of
himself reflecting his contribution to the common life, the
fulfilment of his social duty.
We are doing everything possible to give labour this new status
of social duty and to link it on the one side with the development
of a technology which will create the conditions for greater
freedom, and on the other side with voluntary work based on
a Marxist appreciation of the fact that man truly reaches a
full human condition when he produces without being driven by
the physical need to sell his labour as a commodity.
Of course there are other factors involved even when labour
is voluntary: Man has not transformed all the coercive factors
around him into conditioned reflexes of a social character,
and he still produces under the pressures of his society. (Fidel
calls this moral compulsion.)
Man still needs to undergo a complete spiritual rebirth in his
attitude towards his work, freed from the direct pressure of
his social environment, though linked to it by his new habits.
That will be communism.
The change in consciousness will not take place automatically,
just as it doesn't take place automatically in the economy.
The alterations are slow and are not harmonious; there are periods
of acceleration, pauses and even retrogressions.
Furthermore we must take into account, as I pointed out before,
that we are not dealing with a period of pure transition, as
Marx envisaged it in his Critique of the Gotha Program, but
rather with a new phase unforeseen by him: an initial period
of the transition to communism, or the construction of socialism.
It is taking place in the midst of violent class struggles and
with elements of capitalism within it which obscure a complete
understanding of its essence.
If we add to this the scholasticism which has hindered the development
of Marxist philosophy and impeded the systematic development
of the theory of the transition period, we must agree that we
are still in diapers and that it is necessary to devote ourselves
to investigating all the principal characteristics of this period
before elaborating an economic and political theory of greater
scope.
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The resulting theory will, no doubt, put great stress on the
two pillars of the construction of socialism the education of
the new man and the development of technology. There is much
for us to do in regard to both, but delay is least excusable
in regard to the concepts of technology, since here it is not
a question of going forward blindly but of following over a
long stretch of road already opened up by the world's more advanced
countries. This is why Fidel pounds away with such insistence
on the need for the technological training of our people and
especially of its vanguard.
In the field of ideas not involving productive activities it
is easier to distinguish the division between material and spiritual
necessity. For a long time man has been trying to free himself
from alienation through culture and art. While he dies every
day during the eight or more hours that he sells his labour,
he comes to life afterwards in his spiritual activities.
But this remedy bears the germs of the same sickness; it is
as a solitary individual that he seeks communion with his environment.
He defends his oppressed individuality through the artistic
medium and reacts to aesthetic ideas, as a unique being whose
aspiration is to remain untarnished.
All that he is doing, however, is attempting to escape. The
law of value is not simply a naked reflection of productive
relations: The monopoly capitalists - even while employing purely
empirical methods - weave around art a complicated web which
converts it into a willing tool. The superstructure of society
ordains the type of art in which the artist has to be educated.
Its machinery subdues rebels and only rare talents may create
their own work. The rest become shameless hacks or are crushed.
A school of artistic "freedom" is created, but its
values also have limits even if they are imperceptible until
we come into conflict with them - that is to say, until the
real problem of man and his alienation arises. Meaningless anguish
and vulgar amusement thus become convenient safety valves for
human anxiety. The idea of using art as a weapon of protest
is combated.
If one plays by the rules, he gets all the honours — such
honours as a monkey might get for performing pirouettes. The
condition that has been imposed is that one cannot try to escape
from the invisible cage.
When the revolution took power there was an exodus of those
who had been completely housebroken, the rest - whether they
were revolutionaries or not - saw a new road open to them. Artistic
inquiry experienced a new impulse. The paths, however, had already
been more or less laid out and the escapist concept hid itself
behind the word "freedom." This attitude was often
found even among the revolutionaries themselves, reflecting
the bourgeois idealism still in their consciousness.
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In those countries, which had gone through a similar process,
they tried to combat such tendencies by an exaggerated dogmatism.
General culture was virtually tabooed, and it was declared that
the acme of cultural aspiration was the formally exact representation
of nature. This was later transformed into a mechanical representation
of the social reality they wanted to show: the ideal society
almost without conflicts or contradictions, which they sought
to create.
Socialism is young and has made errors. Many times revolutionaries
lack the knowledge and intellectual courage needed to meet the
task of developing the new man with methods different from the
conventional ones - and the conventional methods suffer from
the influences of the society, which created them.
(Again we raise the theme of the relationship between form and
content.)
Disorientation is widespread, and the problems of material construction
preoccupy us. There are no artists of great authority who at
the same time have great revolutionary authority. The men of
the party must take this task to hand and seek attainment of
the main goal, the education of the people.
But then they sought simplification. They sought an art that
would be understood by everyone - the kind of 'art' functionaries
understand. True artistic values were disregarded, and the problem
of general culture was reduced to taking some things from the
socialist present and some from the dead past (since dead, not
dangerous). Thus Socialist Realism arose upon the foundations
of the art of the last century.
But the realistic art of the nineteenth century is also a class
art, more purely capitalist perhaps than this decadent art of
the twentieth century, which reveals the anguish of alienated
man. In the field of culture capitalism has given all that it
had to give, and nothing of it remains but the offensive stench
of a decaying corpse, today's decadence in art.
Why then should we try to find the only valid prescription for
art in the frozen forms of Socialist Realism? We cannot counterpose
the concept of Socialist Realism to that of freedom because
the latter does not yet exist and will not exist until the complete
development of the new society. Let us not attempt, from the
pontifical throne of realism-at-any-cost, to condemn all the
art forms which have evolved since the first half of the nineteenth
century for we would then fall into the Proudhonian mistake
of returning to the past, of putting a straitjacket on the artistic
expression of the man who is being born and is in the process
of making himself.
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What are needed are the development of an ideological-cultural
mechanism which permits both free inquiry and the uprooting
of the weeds which multiply so easily in the fertile soil of
state subsidies.
In our country we don't find the error of mechanical realism,
but rather its opposite, and that is so because the need for
the creation of a new man has not been understood, a new man
who would represent neither the ideas of the nineteenth century
nor those of our own decadent and morbid century.
 What
we must create is the man of the twenty-first century, although
this is still a subjective and not a realised aspiration. It
is precisely this man of the next century who is one of the
fundamental objectives of our work; and to the extent that we
achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane-or, vice versa,
to the extent we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character
on the basis of our concrete research-we shall have made an
important contribution to Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of
humanity.
Reaction against the man of the nineteenth century has brought
us a relapse into the decadence of the twentieth century; it
is not a fatal error, but we must overcome it lest we open a
breach for revisionism.
The great multitudes continue to develop; the new ideas continue
to attain their proper force within society; the material possibilities
for the full development of all members of society make the
task much more fruitful. The present is a time for struggle;
the future is ours.
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To sum up, the fault of our artists and intellectuals lies in
their original sin: They are not truly revolutionary. We can
try to graft the elm tree so that it will bear pears, but at
the same time we must plant pear trees. New generations will
come who will be free of the original sin. The probabilities
that great artists will appear will be greater to the degree
that the field of culture and the possibilities for expression
are broadened.
Our task is to prevent the present generation, torn asunder
by its conflicts, from becoming perverted and from perverting
new generations. We must not bring into being either docile
servant of official thought or scholarship students who live
at the expense of the state - practising "freedom."
Already there are revolutionaries coming who will sing the song
of the new man in the true voice of the people. This is a process,
which takes time.
In our society the youth and the party play an important role.
The former is especially important because it is the malleable
clay from which the new man can be shaped without any of the
old faults. The youth is treated in accordance with our aspirations.
Its education steadily grows more full, and we are not forgetting
about its integration into the labour force from the beginning.
Our scholarship students do physical work during their vacations
or along with their studying. Work is a reward in some cases,
a means of education in others, but it is never a punishment.
A new generation is being born.
The party is a vanguard organisation. The best workers are proposed
by their fellow workers for admission into it. It is a minority,
but it has great authority because of the quality of its cadres.
Our aspiration is that the party will become a mass party, but
only when the masses have reached the level of the vanguard,
that is, when they are educated for communism.
Our work constantly aims at this education. The party is the
living example; its cadres should be teachers of hard work and
sacrifice. They should lead the masses by their deeds to the
completion of the revolutionary task, which involves years of
hard struggle against the difficulties of construction, class
enemies, the sicknesses of the past, imperialism . . .
Now, I would like to explain the role played by personality,
by man as the individual leader of the masses, which make history.
This has been our experience; it is not a prescription.
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Fidel gave the revolution its impulse in the first years, and
also its leadership. He always strengthened it; but there is
a good group who are developing in the same way as the outstanding
leader, and there is a great mass which follows its leaders
because it has faith in them, and it has faith in them because
they have been able to interpret its desires.
This is not a matter of how many pounds of meat one might be
able to eat, nor of how many times a year someone can go to
the beach, nor how many ornaments from abroad you might be able
to buy with present salaries. What is really involved is that
the individual feels more complete, with much more internal
richness and much more responsibility.
The individual in our country knows that the illustrious epoch
in which it was determined that he lives is one of sacrifice;
he is familiar with sacrifice. The first came to know it in
the Sierra Maestra and wherever else they fought; afterwards
all of Cuba came to know it. Cuba is the vanguard of the Americas
and must make sacrifices because it occupies the post of advance
guard, because it shows the road to full freedom to the masses
of Latin America.
Within the country the leadership has to carry out its vanguard
role, and it must be said with all sincerity that in a real
revolution, to which one gives himself entirely and from which
he expects no material remuneration, the task of the revolutionary
vanguard is at one and the same time glorious and agonising.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true
revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible
to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps
it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he must combine
a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful
decisions without contracting a muscle. Our vanguard revolutionaries
must idealise this love of the people, the most sacred cause,
and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small
doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary men put
their love into practice.
The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to
talk, who are not learning to call their fathers by name; wives,
from whom they have to be separated as part of the general sacrifice
of their lives to bring the revolution to its fulfilment; the
circle of their friends is limited strictly to the number of
fellow revolutionists. There is no life outside of the revolution.
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In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity
and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall
into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation
from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love
of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into
acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
The revolutionary, the ideological motor force of the revolution,
is consumed by his uninterrupted activity, which can come to
an end only with death until the building of socialism on a
world scale has been accomplished. If his revolutionary zeal
is blunted when the most urgent tasks are being accomplished
on a local scale, and he forgets his proletarian internationalism,
the revolution which he leads will cease to be an inspiring
force, and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy which imperialism,
our irreconcilable enemy, will utilise well. Proletarian internationalism
is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we educate
our people.
Of course there are dangers in the present situation, and not
only that of dogmatism, not only that of weakening the ties
with the masses midway in the great task. There is also the
danger of weaknesses. If a man thinks that dedicating his entire
life to the revolution means, that in return he should not have
such worries as that his son lacks certain things, or that his
children's shoes are worn out, or that his family lacks some
necessity, then he is entering into rationalisations which open
his mind to infection by the seeds of future corruption.
In our case we have maintained that our children should have
or should go without those things that the children of the average
man have or go without, and that our families should understand
this and strive to uphold this standard. The revolution is made
through man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit day
by day.
 Thus
we march on. At the head of the immense column we are neither
afraid nor ashamed to say it - is Fidel. After him come the
best cadres of the party, and immediately behind them, so close
that we feel its tremendous force, comes the people in its entirety,
a solid mass of individualities moving toward a common goal,
individuals who have attained consciousness of what must be
done, men who fight to escape from the realm of necessity and
to enter that of freedom.
This great throng becomes organised; its clarity of program
corresponds to its consciousness of the necessity of organisation.
it is no longer a dispersed force, divisible into thousands
of fragments thrown into space like splinters from a hand grenade,
trying by any means to achieve some protection against an uncertain
future, in desperate struggle with their fellows.
We know that sacrifices lie before us and that we must pay a
price for the heroic act of being a vanguard nation. We leaders
know that we must pay a price for the right to say that we are
at the head of a people, which is at the head of the Americas.
Each and every one of us must pay his exact quota of sacrifice,
conscious that he will get his reward in the satisfaction of
fulfilling a duty, conscious that he will advance with all toward
the image of the new man dimly visible on the horizon.
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Let me attempt some conclusions:
We socialists are freer because we are more complete; we are
more complete because we are freer.
The skeleton of our complete freedom is already formed. The
flesh and the clothing are lacking. We will create them.
Our freedom and its daily maintenance are paid for in blood
and sacrifice.
Our sacrifice is conscious: an instalment payment on the freedom
that we are building.
The road is long and in part unknown. We understand our limitations.
We will create the man of the twenty-first century — we,
ourselves.
We will forge ourselves in daily action, creating a new man
with a new technology.
Individual personality plays a role in mobilising and leading
the masses insofar as it embodies the highest virtues and aspirations
of the people and does not wander from the path.
It is the vanguard group, which clears the way, the best among
the good, the party.
The basic clay of our work is the youth. We place our hope in
them and prepare them to take the banner from our hands.
If this inarticulate letter clarifies anything it has
accomplished the objective which motivated it. I close with
our greeting — which is as much of a ritual as a handshake
or an 'Ave Maria Purissima' — Our Country or Death!
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