Link to Archive of Weekly Issues Che and Marx

Dear Habermas Logo and Link to Site Index A Justice Site

Transforming Discourse
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan, Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 11, 2001
Latest Update: November 11, 2001
E-Mail jeannecurran@habermas.org
E-Mail takata@uwp.edu
E-Mail Olivier Urbain, Soka University

Che and Marx

Journal entry by Abel Beltran

Copyright: Jeanne Curran, Susan R. Takata, and Olivier Urbain: November 2001.
and Individual Authors. "Fair Use" encouraged.

On Thursday, November 8, 2001, Abel Bertran wrote:

Trying to link Che's social justice and love for his people to communism is difficult. I would think that those terms in Marx's work don't exist. He talks about capitalism causing exploitation, alienation, and marginalization. Those are totally different from love and social justice. There is certainly no love in alienation, exploitation, and marginalization. I'm sure that that is also true for social justice. Che i would think used communism as a stepping stone toward his real goal of having a cultural and educated society living in harmony.

On Sunday, November 11, 2001, jeanne responded:

Gee, I'm glad I fussed at you, Abel. You realize that I could never have gotten all that down the way you said it. Because you sent it by e-mail, now all of us can ponder it and react to it.

I don't have time to plug in lots of links right now. Nag me, and I'll go back and do that later. But I'd like to answer you in terms of public and private spheres, and macro/micro spheres.

Remember when we talked about the problem in communication in which we talk right past each other? In McLaren you are reading about the private sphere, about the exchanges between Che and his colleagues in their private domain. In Marx you are reading about the public sphere and the overview of political sociology as it plays out, not in private, but over the whole society and its governance.

I'm not an expert on Marx, but my instincts tell me that any man that focused his whole life and existence on combatting the exploitation of the underdog actually felt very deeply the need for love and social justice. Farganis, at p. 27, says:

"It was Marx's objective to recount the conditions of human development undr capitalism and logically to project the dynamic changes that would ensue, bringing people to a fuller realization of their free and creative potentialities."

See what I mean? Do you think that way of stating Marx's objective might be applied to Che? I think it might.

Marx describes "alienation, exploitation, and marginalization" as the results of the social injustice to which capitalism subjected the "worker." And Marx saw the solution to that injustice as evolving through the revolutionary struggle of the workers united against the owner class. Che, a century later, had no such illusion that capitalism would self destruct through class struggle. Che, like Freire, came to recognize education and critical thinking as the keys to overcoming social injustice.

Freire's greater emphasis on peacemaking instead of war, may seem a great contrast to Che's revolutionary fighting. But Freire understood and sympathized with Che's choices. And Freire became a model for many third-world revolutionaries. I need to go back and link for you our discussion, I think by Ben Graham, on the difficulty of preaching peace just after a terrible and inhumane blow like September 11. But war and peace are not the only two alternatives. As Graham points out, we need to recognize that there are times when there is no choice but to fight. Certainly Che's death by torture would suggest that his case may have been one in which there was little choice. But Che, like Freire, would have chosen to move forward in peace, educating and teaching critical thought, had that opportunity existed for him.

Does this help?

love and peace, jeanne

Relevant Resources: