Vanishing Green Shoots and the Possibility of Another Crisis

CP Chandrasekhar Jayati Ghosh
April 08, 2019

Governments and central banks that were upbeat about global economic recovery are turning pessimistic. A coordinated fiscal stimulus across nations is the need of hour
When the third estimate of US growth in the last quarter of 2018 was released the euphoria exuded by forecasters of global growth even a few months earlier waned. The annualised quarter-on-quarter growth rate that had risen to a more than comfortable 4.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2018, had fallen to 3.4 and 2.2 per cent in the subsequent two quarters (Chart 1).

The quarterly rates measuring growth relative to the corresponding quarter in the previous year after having risen consistently have stagnated (Chart 2). Once again it appears that growth in the US is losing momentum, contrary to the optimistic projections of recovery that figures relating to the periods prior to the last quarter had generated.

This is having repercussions at a policy level too. The Federal Reserve, which after having tapered out its bond purchasing programme had begun raising interest rates, announced that it would not be implementing the further interest rate hikes in 2019 it had declared it was committed to.

There are a number of messages that can be read into these developments, of which four are particularly significant.

The first is that the stimulus to US growth, if any, that the Trump tax-cuts and infrastructural investments had delivered, had lost its edge.

The second is that the protectionist turn, focused on China, of the Trump administration was not triggering growth.

The third is that though monetary policy initiatives involving infusion of liquidity and near zero interest rates had not helped deliver a recovery, that was the only option that governments seem willing to adopt. There are no signs, despite low inflation, of an effort to restore a role for fiscal policy, which could make a difference.

And, the fourth is that uncertainties generated by the rise of unpredictable right-wing regimes and by the never-ending Brexit prospect have possibly had some dampening effect on investment and growth.

The despondency this has generated is also tinged with an element of alarm, because of signs of an inversion of the yield curve. While it is normal under capitalism for longer term interest rates to rule higher than short-term rates, in late March, the interest rate on a three-month Treasury bill was, at 2.43 per cent, 0.05 percentage points higher than the interest rate on a 10-year Treasury bond of 2.38 per cent.

In the past, an inverted yield curve pointing to little interest in accessing long-term capital was a signal of a possible recession. Combined with the evidence on slowing growth that prospect is being referred to by many observers as a signal that another downturn is likely.

Languishing Euro Zone

For the world economy, these developments on the US front are especially troubling, because the US was expected to pull the rest out of a recessionary quagmire. Economies in the Euro Zone are languishing with annualised quarterly growth rates in the 19 Euro area countries falling consistently since the third quarter of 2017 (Chart 3).

From a high of 2.8 per cent in that quarter, growth is down to just 1.1 per cent in the last quarter of 2018. The long-term buoyancy displayed by Germany has given way to projections that the country’s growth in 2019 would be lower than 1 per cent as compared with earlier expectations of nearly 2 per cent.

As compared with a peak rate of 2.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017, Germany’s GDP rose by just 0.6 per cent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2018. Elsewhere, the two fast growing emerging markets, China and India are also showing signs of losing momentum (Chart 4). After having been stuck with year-on-year growth rates of 6.7-6.8 per cent for seven quarters ending Q2 2018, GDP growth in China has moved further down to 6.4 per cent by Q4 2018.

India’s quarterly rates have been volatile, but have come down from 7.9 per cent to 6.8 per cent in the three quarters ending Q4 2018. These were the economies that were seen as decoupled from the rest of the world system at the time of the 2008 crisis, and capable of lifting the rest out of recession. They too seem to be slipping now.

To any sensible observer, 10 years of waiting for a robust recovery should have driven home one lesson. Since everything tried so far has not worked, the only option left is a strong countercyclical thrust delivered by restoring a leading role for fiscal policy.

Finance power

But there are two among many other factors constraining the exercise of that option. The first is the power of finance, restored after the financial crisis through state action in the form of fiscal support to prevent insolvency and monetary support with cheap and bountiful credit to help financial firms ride back to profit. But having won back strength and power finance stands as a bulwark against any effort to use fiscal policy that would legitimise the state and delegitimise the market.

The second is that in a globalised world with absent capital controls and hence volatile cross-border financial flows, no one nation can choose to adopt a proactive fiscal policy by itself. Since government deficits are anathema for finance, that could trigger capital outflows and a precipitous depreciation of the currency.

What is needed is a coordinated fiscal stimulus. Unfortunately, the cooperative spirit among nations needed for action of that kind is absent, and was seen in recent times only briefly during the worst phase of the 2008 crisis and the Great Recession that followed.

In sum, the world is poised in a peculiar situation. Slow growth can possibly give way to recession. Monetary policy has been pushed to its limits without much success. And even the little effect it had in recent times cannot be realised if there is another recession, since there is little monetary headroom available.

Yet the mainstream consensus is that proactive fiscal policies, whose role circumstances demand must be restored, must be abjured. One crisis has not been enough for the system to restructure itself, so that another is now a real possibility.

Published on April 08, 2019

VIDEO: How the Pentagon and CIA Push Venezuela Regime-Change Propaganda in Video Games

The US military and CIA launder coup propaganda through popular first-person shooter video games like Call of Duty, simulating assassinations of Venezeula’s socialist leader and sabotage of its electrical infrastructure.

By Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton
The Grayzone

We often think of video games as fiction, but the US government has weaponized them to advance its agenda around the globe.

Nowhere is this more clear than in Venezuela, where the US military has laundered regime change propaganda through some of the world’s most popular first-person shooter games.

This March, amid a US-backed right-wing coup attempt overseen by the Donald Trump administration, Venezuela experienced a sudden collapse of its electrical infrastructure, plunging the country into darkness.

This has renewed focus on the role of video games in psychologically conditioning users to support the country’s destruction – and in foreshadowing specific events during the coup.

Simulating Venezuela invasion in “Call of Duty”

Venezuelan citizen journalists Orlenys Ortiz and Sancocho Power have drawn attention to the similarity between the plot of a 2013 first person shooter game, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and alleged acts of US sabotage against the country this March.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is set in a dystopian future after the Middle East is nuked. A Venezuelan general comes into power, establishing a socialist style federation that spreads across Latin America like a disease, uniting all oil producing nations and expelling US citizens.

You as the player are part of an elite force of US commandos that invades the country, murders the socialist leader, and destroys his federation.

The US Special Operations forces open their assault by launching a rocket at a dam that looks strikingly similar to Venezuela’s Guri dam, an act of deliberate terror that floods the streets of Caracas.

The city is recreated in vivid detail, down to the Chavista graffiti that colors city walls.

The mission ends with the execution-style killing of Venezuela’s leader, who is shot in the back in slow motion by America’s finest. In case you weren’t sure about his commitment to socialism, he’s wearing a red beret – just like Hugo Chavez.

During a follow-up mission, the player returns to Caracas, breaks into a power plant, and inserts a computer virus into the electricity grid, plunging the city into darkness.

Venezuela assassination mission in “Mercenaries 2”

Call of Duty: Ghosts is not the only game that gives gamers the opportunity to simulate the destruction of Venezuela.

In a more crudely designed 2008 first person shooter, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, a populist billionaire named Ramon Solano takes over Venezuela in a coup and pledges to restore the country’s oil profits to its people.

Gamers get to play the part of Mattias Nilson, a Swedish sociopath who’s willing to kill anyone if the price is right. Under contract from a multi-national oil company, Nilson tears Venezuela apart and ultimately winds up blowing Solano’s brains out inside his palace – which looks suspiciously like the 4F compound where Hugo Chavez worked when he was president.

Like so many first person shooting games, The Call of Duty and Mercenaries 2 were developed with substantial input from America’s military-intelligence apparatus.

Pentagon and CIA involvement in video game production

Back in 2003, at the dawn of the so-called war on terror, Pandemic Studios – the company behind Mercenaries 2 – was subcontracted as part of a “$45 million endeavor formed by the army five years earlier to connect academics with local entertainment and video game industries.”

A decade later, Call of Duty designer Dave Anthony was enlisted by a former Pentagon official named Stephen Grundman to advise The Art of Future War Project – an initiative of NATO’s unofficial think tank in Washington, the Atlantic Council.

The project also sought advice from Oliver North, the right-wing military fanatic who was convicted of a felony for his role in destabilizing Central America during the 1980’s.

In fact, North was credited as a military consultant for the 2012 Call of Duty: Black Ops, and made a cameo appearance in the game

Chillingly, one future war scenario envisioned by Anthony was “an assault on Las Vegas similar to the 2008 [terrorist] attacks on Mumbai.”

Makers of a Call of Duty sequel openly boasted of working with a Pentagon advisor.

Did the attack on Venezuela’s electricity grid and hydroelectric dam depicted in Call of Duty forecast another future assault? Venezuela’s government and millions of the country’s citizens certainly think so.

Here’s Marco Rubio on March 7, calling for “widespread unrest” across Venezuela just hours before the hydroelectric dam at Guri collapsed.

Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Failure of Trump Tax Cuts

by Dan Lieberman
April 11th, 2019

For President Donald J. Trump, there is only one goal in life – making money. Lowering taxes gives corporations and individuals more money; therefore, lower taxes must be beneficial. The constant self-serving references to his management of the economy are meaningless – examining President Trump’s essential thrusts for invigorating an already invigorated economy reveals contradictions in his Taxation Policies.

Reducing Income Taxes

President Trump signed the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” into law on December 22, 2017. His belief that reducing income tax rates automatically advances the economy is a shibboleth; a simple analysis exposes the fallacy.

Some economists find subjective reasons for why lower income tax rates benefit the economy. Objectively, income tax rates only determine the transfer of money between government and taxpayers. Neither direction, up or down, adds or subtracts money to the economic system nor allows more or less available spending to the economy; purchasing power stays the same, which means the total purchases of goods and services remain the same. One exception – unlike the consumer who cannot accumulate vast funds for sizable investments, the government can temporarily postpone consumer spending, aggregate billions of dollars, and channel these funds into huge projects that add to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

As one example, the government uses an accumulation of taxes to initiate construction projects. The suppliers to the projects hire workers, and the total wages paid the workers almost matches the taxes raised for the effort. Spending by the new wage earners ripples through the economy, and, in its final appearance, almost matches the reduced consumer spending of the taxed individuals. Consumer spending stays about the same, but money circulates through other channels. Employment, production (new constructions), and GDP increase — give one advantage to tax increases.

Individual workers and taxpayers benefit from tax cuts; however, stimulating the entire economy by income tax breaks is a psychological phenomenon. The exaggerations, promises, and optimism generated by tax breaks fashion a more optimistic public that incorrectly assumes they stimulate additional spending to already combined consumer and government spending. Creeping into the debate are other false assumptions — those who have excess funds will purchase domestic goods, invest, and stimulate growth. Not considered is that individuals might purchase imports, invest in speculative ventures that only churn money, and decrease available purchasing power in the domestic economy. The latter seems to have been one result from the tax cuts.

New York Times, March 6, 2018, “In Blow to Trump, America’s Trade Deficit in Goods Hits Record $891 Billion”.

Money from the tax cuts helped Americans buy more imported goods than ever in 2018. In addition, to finance the tax cuts, the government needed to borrow more dollars, some of which came from foreign investors.

If those who protest vociferously against the ever increasing government debt and its burden to future generations want to ameliorate their children’s problems, why don’t they pay their fair share of taxes now, which will lower the government debt and prevent higher taxes for their descendants in the future?

Overhauling Corporate Taxes

Granted that overhauling an antiquated corporate tax structure could be advantageous to the economy. However, is it necessary for an economy that, despite supposed elevated corporate taxes, achieved great success, which included low unemployment and high corporate profits? Why fix something that was not broken and had no indication of being disrupted? If lowering corporation tax rates promoted more exports and investment, then its value is apparent. Has that happened? Analysis, statistics, and several charts answer the question.

Corporations already paid less than 21% in taxes.

In 2012, among large corporations that met that $10 million in assets threshold, 42.3% paid no federal income taxes after tax credits. Among profitable large companies, 19.5% paid no federal income taxes. The average effective tax rate among the profitable large corporations was 16.1%, under federal tax treatment. Compared to the pretax net income these corporations showed in their annual reports the rate was 14%.

One prominent feature of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” which should be factored into the assessment of the overhaul of the corporate tax structure, is the change from a global to a territorial tax system. Instead of corporations paying the difference between the U.S. tax rate and taxes already paid to the country where income was earned, each subsidiary now pays only taxes to the country in which it earns the income. Under new tax code Section 965, U.S. multinationals are required to pay a one-time “transition tax” on income accumulated overseas since 1986. The law treats the income as repatriated and imposes a 15.5 percent tax on cash or cash equivalents, and an 8 percent tax on illiquid assets, such as factories and equipment.

The amount of offshore cash corporations are bringing back to the U.S. dropped sharply for a second straight quarter, falling short of the trillions of dollars President Donald Trump had promised would result from his tax overhaul.

Companies repatriated $92.7 billion in the July-September period, the lowest amount this year and down almost 50 percent from the previous quarter, according to data released Wednesday by the Commerce Department. U.S. corporations repatriated $294.9 billion in the first three months of 2018 and $183.7 billion in the second quarter.

This provision of the “Tax Act” may be the only tax reform that stimulated the economy.

Assessing benefits of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” examines its effects on:

Corporate Profits

Observe corporation after tax profits (lower figure) during the last several years — companies had high profits, and sufficient funds for investment must have been available.

Compare after tax to before tax profits (upper figure with slightly different scale) and note the low tax rate on the profit. As examples,

Profits in 2014 reached $2320 billion and after tax profits were $1920 billion.

Tax Rate = $400b/$2320b = 17.2 percent.

Profits in 2015 were $2000 billion and after tax profits were $1640 billion.

Tax Rate = $360b/$2000b = 18.0 percent.

Profits at end of 2018 (after Tax Act) were $2220 billion and after tax profits were $1980 billion.

Tax Rate = $250b/$2230b = 10.8 percent.

Calculations verify that Tax Rates for most corporations were much below the previous 35% rate and, presently, are only about 6-7 percent below that of the previous average rate.

Another supposition is that, with increased after tax profits, corporations can improve competition from foreign sources by trading the profits for lower prices. How much can prices be lowered? Calculations, shown in the following table, demonstrate what products will cost for two different profit margins with reduction of the corporate tax from 35 percent to 20 percent, and if the corporation forfeited all of the profit increase by reducing its prices.

Price That Maintains After Tax Profit

Is the cutting of prices by 2.0% – 4.0% sufficient to make products more competitive? Unlikely! Advantage from the more realistic 6 percent tax cut makes it more unlikely.

How additional profits were used

Stock buybacks, increased dividends, and net domestic investment provide the answers.

Stock buybacks increased by $330 billion; dividends increased slightly.

Net Domestic Investment increased by $200 billion.

As shown before, the repatriated profits, less the 15.5% tax rate, amounted to about $424 billion in year 2108. The sum of additional usage of profits amounted to $530 billion in year 2018. Obviously, the repatriated profits played the major role in additional usage of profits, and tax cuts had little effect on profit usage.

Using repatriated profits to enrich stockholders might have merits – stockholders deserve benefits from their corporations and this benefit has an added significance. Unlike normal stock market trades, where money is exchanged and no new money enters the system, these stock buybacks took external funds and injected them into the domestic system, which increased the available money supply and purchasing power.

Trade Balance

It is difficult to assign a relation between tax cuts and Trade in Goods and Services. President Trump’s tariff policies add confusion to determining the causes for the trade deficit and how it was affected by tax cuts. Clearly, despite President Trump’s stress on improving it, the tax cuts did not reverse the trend, and the trade deficit increased by a large margin ($69b) in year 2018.

Foreign Competition

Exports, which had already been increasing, additionally increased, and imports, especially of goods, increased much more. Bottom line is that the corporate tax cuts cannot be shown to have improved competition with foreign sources.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

The GDP grew at a more rapid rate during year 2018, up about $1160b compared to growth of $852b in year 2017, or an additional $300b in the rate of growth. The kicker is that Federal Government Spending (shown above), which added $110B to the GDP, coupled with the $200b increase in net domestic investment (cited previously) accounted for that added growth. The additional trade deficit of $69b (cited previously) subtracted from the GDP growth, but can be accounted for by a partial spending stimulus from the $330b stock buybacks due to the profit repatriation (cited previously). Sufficient evidence exists that other mechanisms than the tax cuts were responsible for the added growth to the GDP.

Government Deficit

According to Department of the Treasury reports, corporate tax receipts fell by 28 percent – from $223 billion in 2017 to $162 billion during the first nine months of fiscal year 2018. For that reason, as the following chart shows, the Federal Government deficit, which has increased in all of years of Trump’s presidency, increased by $114 billion. If $75b taxes had not been collected on the $500b of repatriated profits, the deficit would have increased by $189b. Because the defict increased, it can be argued that the deficit increase, caused by the tax cuts, stimulated the economy.

Conclusions

Evidently, corporations flush with repatriated profits, used these retained earnings for about $330 billion in stock buybacks and about $200 billion for additional investment. The repatriated profits also increased the money supply and GDP.

This indicates the tax cut are responsible for (1) increased after tax profits for already highly profitable corporations, (2) increased trade deficit, (3) about $80 billion loss (annualized) in government revenue, and (4) increased federal deficit to $114b. One more result – lowering of competition — corporations with large profits can use the funds to buy out and provide stiffer competition to corporations that have miniscule profits or losses.

President Trump’s corporate and income tax cuts enriched corporations, satisfied those already employed and flush with money, and did little to stimulate the national economy.

Note: Deciphering a multitude of economic statistics and using them to evaluate the effectiveness of tax cuts is a complicated task. It is believed that the statistics have been correctly applied and the results are credible. If not, rebuttals to lapses in argument and incorrect formulations, as well as advice to obtaining more precise numbers, are welcome

Dan Lieberman is Editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web based newsletter and author of the book A Third Party Can Succeed in America. He can be reached at: alternativeinsight@earthlink.net. Read other articles by Dan.

Ernesto Che Guevara: Mobilizing the Masses for the Invasion

Speech made to sugar workers in Santa Clara on March 28, 1961; twenty days before the Bay of Pigs invasion.

We have to remind ourselves of this at every moment: that we are in a war, a cold war as they call it; a war where there is no front line, no continuous bombardment, but where the two adversaries - this tiny champion of the Caribbean and the immense imperialist hyena - are face to face and aware that one of them is going to end up dead in the fight.

The North Americans are aware, they are well aware, compa?eros, that the victory of the Cuban Revolution will not be just a simple defeat for the empire, not just one more link in the long chain of defeats to which its policy of force and oppression against peoples has been dragging it in recent years. The victory of the Cuban Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster. It will mean the beginning of the end of colonial domination in America, that is, the definitive beginning of the end for North American imperialism.

That is why the imperialists do not resign themselves, because this is a struggle to the death. That is why we cannot take one backward step. Because the first time we retreat a step would mean the beginning of a long chain for us too, and would end up the same way as with all the false leaders and all the peoples who at a particular moment of history did not measure up to the task of withstanding the drive of the empire.

That is why we must move forward, striking out tirelessly against imperialism. From all over the world we have to learn the lessons which events afford. Lumumba's murder should be a lesson for all of us.

The murder of Patrice Lumumba is an example of what the empire is capable of when the struggle against it is carried on in a firm and sustained way. Imperialism must be struck on the snout once, and again, and then again, in an infinite succession of blows and counter-blows. That is the only way the people can win their real independence.

Never a step backward, never a moment of weakness! And every time circumstances might tempt us to think that the situation might be better if we were not fighting against the empire, let each one of us think of the long chain of tortures and deaths through which the Cuban people had to pass to win their independence. Let all of us think of the eviction of peasants, the murder of workers, the strikes broken by the police, of all those kinds of class oppression which have now completely disappeared from Cuba. . . . And, further, let us understand well how victory is won by preparing the people, by enhancing their revolutionary consciousness in establishing unity, by meeting each and every attempt at aggression with our rifles out in front. That is how it is won. . . .

We must remember this and insist again and again upon this fact: The victory of the Cuban people can never come solely through outside aid, however adequate and generous, however great and strong the solidarity of all the peoples of the world with us may be. Because even with the ample and great solidarity of all the people of the world with Patrice Lumumba and the Congolese people, when conditions inside the country were lacking, when the leaders failed to understand how to strike back mercilessly at imperialism, when they took a step back, they lost the struggle. And they lost it not just for a few years, but who knows for how many years! That was a great setback for all peoples.

That is what we must be well aware of, that Cuba's victory lies not in Soviet rockets, nor in the solidarity of the socialist world, nor in the solidarity of the whole world. Cuba's victory lies in the unity, the labour, and the spirit of sacrifice of its people.

Ernesto Che Guevara: Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution

Written: October 8, 1960
Published: Verde Olivo
Transcription/Markup: A .N./Brian Baggins
Online Version: Ernesto Che Guevara Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2002

This is a unique revolution which some people maintain contradicts one of the most orthodox premises of the revolutionary movement, expressed by Lenin: "Without a revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement." It would be suitable to say that revolutionary theory, as the expression of a social truth, surpasses any declaration of it; that is to say, even if the theory is not known, the revolution can succeed if historical reality is interpreted correctly and if the forces involved are utilised correctly. Every revolution always incorporates elements of very different tendencies which, nevertheless, coincide in action and in the revolution's most immediate objectives.

It is clear that if the leaders have an adequate theoretical knowledge prior to the action, they can avoid trial and error whenever the adopted theory corresponds to the reality.

The principal actors of this revolution had no coherent theoretical criteria; but it cannot be said that they were ignorant of the various concepts of history, society, economics, and revolution which are being discussed in the world today.

Profound knowledge of reality, a close relationship with the people, the firmness of the liberator's objective, and the practical revolutionary experience gave to those leaders the chance to form a more complete theoretical concept.

The foregoing should be considered an introduction to the explanation of this curious phenomenon that has intrigued the entire world: the Cuban Revolution. It is a deed worthy of study in contemporary world history: the how and the why of a group of men who, shattered by an army enormously superior in technique and equipment, managed first to survive, soon became strong, later became stronger than the enemy in the battle zones, still later moved into new zones of combat, and finally defeated that enemy on the battlefield even though their troops were still very inferior in number.

Naturally we, who often do not show the requisite concern for theory, will not run the risk of expounding the truth of the Cuban Revolution as though we were its masters. We will simply try to give the bases from which one can interpret this truth. In fact, the Cuban Revolution must be separated into two absolutely distinct stages: that of the armed action up to January 1, 1959, and the political, economic and social transformations since then.

Even these two stages deserve further subdivisions; however, we will not take them from the viewpoint of historical exposition, but from the viewpoint of the evolution of the revolutionary thought of its leaders through their contact with the people. Incidentally, here one must introduce a general attitude toward one of the most controversial terms of the modern world: Marxism. When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist or a biologist when asked if he is a "Newtonian," or if he is a "Pasteurian".

There are truths so evident, so much a part of people's knowledge, that it is now useless to discuss them. One ought to be "Marxist' with the same naturalness with which one is "Newtonian" in physics, or "Pasteurian" in biology, considering that if facts determine new concepts, these new concepts will never divest themselves of that portion of truth possessed by the older concepts they have outdated. Such is the case, for example, of Einsteinian relativity or of Planck's "quantum" theory with respect to the discoveries of Newton; they take nothing at all away from the greatness of the learned Englishman. Thanks to Newton, physics was able to advance until it had achieved new concepts of space. The learned Englishman provided the necessary stepping-stone for them.

The advances in social and political science, as in other fields, belong to a long historical process whose links are connecting, adding up, moulding and constantly perfecting themselves. In the origin of peoples, there exists a Chinese, Arab or Hindu mathematics; today, mathematics has no frontiers. In the course of history there was a Greek Pythagoras, an Italian Galileo, an English Newton, a German Gauss, a Russian Lobachevsky, an Einstein, etc. Thus in the field of social and political sciences, from Democritus to Marx, a long series of thinkers added their original investigations and accumulated a body of experience and of doctrines.

The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny. At that moment Marx puts himself in a position where he becomes the necessary target of all who have a special interest in maintaining the old-similar to Democritus before him, whose work was burned by Plato and his disciples, the ideologues of Athenian slave aristocracy. Beginning with the revolutionary Marx, a political group with concrete ideas establishes itself. Basing itself on the giants, Marx and Engels, and developing through successive steps with personalities like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and the new Soviet and Chinese rulers, it establishes a body of doctrine and, let us say, examples to follow.

The Cuban Revolution takes up Marx at the point where he himself left science to shoulder his revolutionary rifle. And it takes him up at that point, not in a revisionist spirit, of struggling against that which follows Marx, of reviving "pure" Marx, but simply because up to that point Marx, the scientist, placed himself outside of the history he studied and predicted. From then on Marx, the revolutionary, could fight within history.

We, practical revolutionaries, initiating our own struggle, simply fulfil laws foreseen by Marx, the scientist. We are simply adjusting ourselves to the predictions of the scientific Marx as we travel this road of rebellion, struggling against the old structure of power, supporting ourselves in the people for the destruction of this structure, and having the happiness of this people as the basis of our struggle. That is to say, and it is well to emphasise this once again: The laws of Marxism are present in the events of the Cuban Revolution, independently of what its leaders profess or fully know of those laws from a theoretical point of view. . .

Each of those brief historical moments in the guerrilla warfare framed distinct social concepts and distinct appreciations of the Cuban reality; they outlined the thought of the military leaders of the revolution-those who in time would also take their position as political leaders.

Before the landing of the Granma, a mentality predominated that, to some degree, might be called "subjectivist": blind confidence in a rapid popular explosion, enthusiasm and faith in the power to liquidate the Batista regime by a swift, armed uprising combined with spontaneous revolutionary strikes, and the subsequent fall of the dictator. . . .

After the landing comes the defeat, the almost total destruction of the forces, and their regrouping and integration as guerrillas. Characteristic of those few survivors, imbued with the spirit of struggle, was the understanding that to count upon spontaneous outbursts throughout the island was a falsehood, an illusion. They understood also that the fight would have to be a long one and that it would need vast campesino participation. At this point, the campesinos entered the guerrilla war for the first time.

Two events - hardly important in terms of the number of combatants, but of great psychological value - were unleashed. First, antagonism that the city people, who comprised the central guerrilla group, felt towards the campesinos was erased. The campesinos, in turn, distrusted the group and, above all, feared barbarous reprisals of the government. Two things demonstrated themselves at this stage, both very important for the interrelated factors: To the campesinos, the bestialities of the army and all the persecution would not be sufficient to put an end to the guerrilla war, even though the army was certainly capable of liquidating the campesinos' homes, crops, and families. To take refuge with those in hiding was a good solution. In turn, the guerrilla fighters learned the necessity, each time more pointed, of winning the campesino masses. . . .

[Following the failure of Batista's major assault on the Rebel Army,] the war shows a new characteristic: The correlation of forces turns toward the revolution. Within a month and a half, two small columns, one of eighty and the other of a hundred forty men, constantly surrounded and harassed by an army that mobilised thousands of soldiers, crossed the plains of Camagüey, arrived at Las Villas, and began the job of cutting the island in two.

It may seem strange, incomprehensible, and even incredible that two columns of such small size - without communications, without mobility, without the most elementary arms of modern warfare - could fight against well-trained, and above all, well-armed troops.

Basic [to the victory] is the characteristic of each group: the fewer comforts the guerrilla fighter has, the more he is initiated into the rigors of nature, the more he feels himself at home; his morale is higher, his sense of security greater. At the same time, he has learned to risk his life in every circumstance that might arise, to trust it to luck, like a tossed coin; and in general, as a final result of this kind of combat, it matters little to the individual guerrilla whether or not he survives.

The enemy soldier in the Cuban example, which we are now considering, is the junior partner of the dictator; he is the man who gets the last crumbs left to him in a long line of profiteers that begins in Wall Street and ends with him. He is disposed to defend his privileges, but he is disposed to defend them only to the degree that they are important to him. His salary and pension are worth some suffering and some dangers, but they are never worth his life; if the price of maintaining them will cost it, he is better off giving them up, that is to say, withdrawing from the face of guerrilla danger. From these two concepts and these two morals springs the difference which would cause the crisis of December 31, 1958 . . . .

Here ends the insurrection. But the men who arrive in Havana after two years of arduous struggle in the mountains and plains of Oriente, in the plains of Camagüey, and in the mountains, plains, and cities of Las Villas, are not the same men, ideologically, who landed on the beaches of Las Coloradas, or who took part in the first phase of the struggle. Their distrust of the campesino has been converted into affection and respect for his virtues; their total ignorance of life in the country has been converted into a knowledge of the needs of our guajiros; their flirtations with statistics and with theory have been fixed by the cement which is practice.

With the banner of Agrarian Reform, the execution of which begins in the Sierra Maestra, these men confront imperialism. They know that the Agrarian Reform is the basis upon which the new Cuba must build itself. They know also that the Agrarian Reform will give land to all the dispossessed, but that it will dispossess its unjust possessors; and they know that the greatest of the unjust possessors are also influential men in the State Department or in the government of the United States of America. But they have learned to conquer difficulties with bravery, with audacity and, above all, with the support of the people; and they have now seen the future of liberation that awaits us on the other side of our sufferings.

Ernesto Che Guevara On Revolutionary Medicine

Spoken: August 19, 1960 to the Cuban Militia
Source: Obra Revolucionaria, Ano 1960, No. 24 (Official English translation)
Translated: Beth Kurti
Online Version: Che Guevara Internet Archive (marxists.org), 1999
Transcription/Markup: Brian Baggins

This simple celebration, another among the hundreds of public functions with which the Cuban people daily celebrate their liberty, the progress of all their revolutionary laws, and their advances along the road to complete independence, is of special interest to me.

Almost everyone knows that years ago I began my career as a doctor. And when I began as a doctor, when I began to study medicine, the majority of the concepts I have today, as a revolutionary, were absent from my store of ideals.

Like everyone, I wanted to succeed. I dreamed of becoming a famous medical research scientist; I dreamed of working indefatigably to discover something which would be used to help humanity, but which signified a personal triumph for me. I was, as we all are, a child of my environment.

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming a famous or making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.

But I continued to be, as we all continue to be always, a child of my environment, and I wanted to help those people with my own personal efforts. I had already traveled a great deal - I was in Guatemala at the time, the Guatemala of Arbenz- and I had begun to make some notes to guide the conduct of the revolutionary doctor. I began to investigate what was needed to be a revolutionary doctor.

However, aggression broke out, the aggression unleaded by the United Fruit Company, the Department of State, Foster Dulles- in reality the same thing- and their puppet, called Castillo Armas. The aggression was successful, since the people had not achieved the level of maturity of the other Cuban people of today. One fine day, a day like any other, I took the road of exile, or at least, I took the road of flight from Guatemala, since that was not my country.

Then I realized a fundamental thing: For one to be a revolutionary doctor or to be a revolutionary at all, there must first be a revolution. Isolated individual endeavour, for all its purity of ideals, is of no use, and the desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone, solitarily, in some corner of America, fighting against adverse governments and social conditions which prevent progress. To create a revolution, one must have what there is in Cuba - the mobilization of a whole people, who learn by the use of arms and the exercise of militant unity to understand the value of arms and the value of unity.

And now we have come to the nucleus of the problem we have before us at this time. Today one finally has the right and even the duty to be, above all things, a revolutionary doctor, that is to say a man who utilizes the technical knowledge of his profession in the service of the revolution and the people. But now old questions reappear: How does one actually carry out a work of social welfare? How does one unite individual endeavour with the needs of society?

We must review again each of our lives, what we did and thought as doctors, or in any function of public health before the revolution. We must do this with profound critical zeal and arrive finally at the conclusion that almost everything we thought and felt in that past period ought to be deposited in an archive, and a new type of human being created. If each one of us expends his maximum effort towards the perfection of that new human type, it will be much easier for the people to create him and let him be the example of the new Cuba.

It is good that I emphasize for you, the inhabitants of Havana who are present here, this idea; in Cuba a new type of man is being created, whom we cannot fully appreciate here in the capital, but who is found in every corner of the country. Those of you who went to the Sierra Maestra on the twenty-sixth of July must have seen two completely unknown things. First, an army with hoes and pickaxes, an army whose greatest pride is to parade in the patriotic festivals of Oreinte with hoes and axes raised, while their military comrades march with rifles. But you must have seen something even more important. You must have seen children whose physical constitutions appeared to be those of eight or nine-year-olds, yet almost all of whom are thirteen or fourteen. They are the most authentic children of the Sierra Maestra, the most authentic offspring of hunger and misery. They are the creatures of malnutrition.

In this tiny Cuba, with its four or five television channels and hundred of radio stations, with all the advances of modern science, when those children arrived at school for the first time at night and saw the electric light bulbs, they exclaimed that the stars were very low that night. And those children, some of whom you must have seen, are learning in collective schools skills ranging from reading to trades, and even the very difficult science of becoming revolutionaries.

Those are the new humans being born in Cuba. They are being born in isolated areas, in different parts of the Sierra Maestra, and also in the cooperatives and work centres. All this has a lot to do with the theme of our talk today, the integration of the physician or any other medical worker, into the revolutionary movement. The task of educating and feeding youngsters, the task of educating the army, the task of distributing the lands of the former absentee landlords to those who laboured every day upon that same land without receiving its benefits, are accomplishments of social medicine which have been performed in Cuba.

The principle upon which the fight against disease should be based is the creation of a robust body; but not the creation of a robust body by the artistic work of a doctor upon a weak organism; rather, the creation of a robust body with the work of the whole collectivity, upon the entire social collectivity.

Some day, therefore, medicine will have to convert itself into a science that serves to prevent disease and orients the public toward carrying out its medical duties. Medicine should only intervene in cases of extreme urgency, to perform surgery or something else which lies outside the skills of the people of the new society we are creating.

The work that today is entrusted to the Ministry of Health and similar organizations is to provide public health services for the greatest possible number of persons, institute a program of preventive medicine, and orient the public to the performance of hygienic practices.

But for this task of organization, as for all the revolutionary tasks, fundamentally it is the individual who is needed. The revolution does not, as some claim, standardize the collective will and the collective initiative. On the contrary, it liberates man's individual talent. What the revolution does is orient that talent. And our task now is to orient the creative abilities of all medical professionals toward the tasks of social medicine.

We are at the end of an era, and not only here in Cuba. No matter what is hoped or said to the contrary, the form of capitalism we have known, in which we were raised, and under which we have suffered, is being defeated all over the world. The monopolies are being overthrown; collective science is coring new and important triumphs daily. In the Americas we have had the proud and devoted duty to be the vanguard of a movement of liberation which began a long time ago on the other subjugated continents, Africa and Asia. Such a profound social change demands equally profound changes in the mental structure of the people.

Individualism, in the form of the individual action of a person alone in a social milieu, must disappear in Cuba. In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity. It is not enough that this idea is understood today, that you all comprehend the things I am saying and are ready to think a little about the present and the past and what the future ought to be. In order to change a way of thinking, it is necessary to undergo profound internal changes and to witness profound external changes, especially in the performance of our duties and obligations to society.

Those external changes are happening in Cuba every day. One way of getting to know the Revolution and becoming aware of the energies held in reserve, so long asleep within the people, is to visit all Cuba and see the cooperatives and the work centres which are now being created. And one way of getting to the heart of the medical question is not only to visit and become acquainted with the people who make up these cooperatives and work centres, but to find out what diseases they have, what their sufferings are, what have been their chronic miseries for years, and what has been the inheritance of centuries of repression and total submission. The doctor, the medical worker, must go to the core of his new work, which is the man within the mass, the man within the collectivity.

Always, no matter what happens in the world, the doctor is extremely close to his patient and knows the innermost depths of his psyche. Because he is the one who attacks pain and mitigates it, he performs and invaluable labour of much responsibility in society.

A few months ago, here in Havana, it happened that a group of newly graduated doctors did not want to go into the country's rural areas, and demanded remuneration before they would agree to go. From the point of view of the past it is the most logical thing in the world for this to occur; at least, so it seems to me, for I can understand it perfectly. The situation brings back to me the memory of what I was and what I thought a few years ago. [My case is the] story all over again of the gladiator who rebels, the solitary fighter who wants to assure a better future, better conditions, and to make valid the need people have of him.

But what would have happened if instead of these boys, whose families generally were able to pay for their years of study, others of less fortunate means had just finished their schooling and were beginning the exercise of their profession? What would have occurred if two or three hundred peasants had emerged, let us say by magic, from the university halls?

What would have happened, simply, is that the peasants would have run, immediately and with unreserved enthusiasm, to help their brothers. They would have requested the most difficult and responsible jobs in order to demonstrate that the years of study they had received had not been given in vain. What would have happened is what will happen in six or seven years, when the new students, children of workers and peasants, receive professional degrees of all kinds.

But we must not view the future with fatalism and separate all men into either children of the working and peasant classes or counter-revolutionaries, because it is simplistic, because it is not true, and because there is nothing which educates an honorable man more than living in a revolution. None of us, none of the first group which arrived in the Granma, who settled in the Sierra Maestra, and learned to respect the peasant and the worker living with him, had a peasant or working-class background. Naturally, there were those who had had to work, who had known certain privations in childhood; but hunger, what is called real hunger, was something none of us had experienced. But we began to know it in the two long years in the Sierra Maestra. And then many things became very clear.

We, who at first punished severely anyone who touched the property of even a rich peasant or a landowner, brought ten thousand head of cattle to the Sierra one day and said to the peasants, simply, 'Eat'. And the peasants, for the first time in years and years, some for the first time in their lives, ate beef.

The respect which we had had for the sacrosanct property right to those ten thousand head of cattle was lost in the course of armed battle, and we understood perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth a million time more than all the property of the richest man on earth. And we learned it; we, who were not of the working class nor of the peasant class. And are we going to tell the four winds, we who were the privileged ones, that the rest of the people in Cuba cannot learn it also? Yes, they can learn it, and besides, the Revolution today demands that they learn it, demands that it be well understood that far more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one's neighbor; that much more definitive and much more lasting than all the gold that one can accumulate is the gratitude of a people. And each doctor, within the circle of his activities, can and must accumulate that valuable treasure, the gratitude of his people.

We must, then, begin to erase our old concepts and begin to draw closer and closer to the people and to be increasingly aware. We must approach them not as before. You are all going to say, 'No. I like the people. I love talking to workers and peasants, and I go here or there on Sundays to see such and such.' Everybody has done it. But we have done it practising charity, and what we have to practice today is solidarity. We should not go to the people and say, 'Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you our science, to show you your errors, your lack of culture, your ignorance of elementary things.' We should go instead with an inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn at that great source of wisdom that is the people.

Later we will realize many times how mistaken we were in concepts that were so familiar they became part of us and were an automatic part of our thinking. Often we need to change our concepts, not only the general concepts, the social or philosophical ones, but also sometimes, our medical concepts.

We shall see that diseases need not always be treated as they are in big-city hospitals. We shall see that the doctor has to be a farmer also and plant new foods and sow, by example, the desire to consume new foods, to diversify the Cuban nutritional structure, which is so limited, so poor, in one of the richest countries in the world, agriculturally and potentially. We shall see, then, how we shall have to be, in these circumstances, a bit pedagogical- at times very pedagogical. It will be necessary to be politicians, too, and the first thing we will have to do is not to go to the people to offer them our wisdom. We must go, rather, to demonstrate that we are going to learn with the people, that together we are going to carry out that great and beautiful common experiment: the construction of a new Cuba.

Many steps have already been taken. There is a distance that cannot be measured by conventional means between that first day of January in 1959 and today. The majority of the people understood a long time ago that not only a dictator had fallen here, but also a system. Now comes the part the people must learn, that upon the ruins of a decayed system we must build the new system which will bring about the absolute happiness of the people.

I remember that some time in the early months of last year comrade Guillên arrived from Argentina. He was the same great poet he is today, although perhaps his books had been translated into a language or two less, for he is gaining new readers every day in all languages of the world. But he was the same man he is today. However, it was difficult for Guillên to read his poems here, which were popular poetry, poetry of the people, because that was during the first epoch, the epoch of prejudices. And nobody ever stopped to think that for years and years, with unswerving dedication, the poet Guillên had placed all his extraordinary poetic gift at the service of the people and at the service of the cause in which he believed. People saw him, not as the glory of Cuba, but as the representative of a political party which was taboo.

Now all that has been forgotten. We have learned that there can be no divisions due to the different points of view of certain internal structures of our country if we have a common enemy and a common goal. What we have to agree upon is whether or not we have a common enemy and whether or not we are attempting to reach a common goal.

By now we have become convinced that there definitely is a common enemy. No one looks over his shoulder to see if there is anyone who might overhear- perhaps some agent from the embassy who would transmit the information- before giving an opinion against monopolies, before saying clearly, 'Our enemy, and the enemy of all America, is the monopolistic government of the United States of America.' If now everyone knows that is the enemy, and it is coming to be known also that anyone who fights against that enemy has something in common with us, then we come to the second part. Where and now, for Cuba, what are our goals? What do went want? Do we or do we not want the happiness of the people? Are we, or are we not fighting for the total economic liberation of Cuba?

Are we or are we not struggling to be a free nation among free nations, without belonging to any military bloc, without having to consult the embassy of any great power on earth about any internal or external measure that is going to be taken here? If we plan to redistribute wealth of those who have too much in order to give it to those who have nothing; if we intend to make creative work a daily, dynamic source of all our happiness, then we have goals toward which to work. And anyone who has the same goals is our friend. If he has other concepts besides, if he belongs to some organization or other, those are minor matters.

In moments of great danger, in moments of great tensions and great creations, what count are great enemies and great goals. If we are already agreed, if we all know now where we are going - and let him grieve to whom it will cause grief- then we have to begin our work.

I was telling you that to be a revolutionary you have first to have a revolution. We already have it. Next, you have to know the people with whom you are going to work. I think that we are not yet well acquainted, that we still have to travel a while on that road. You ask me what are the vehicles for getting to know the people beside the vehicle of living in the cooperatives and working in them. Not everyone can do this, and there are many places where the presence of a medical worker is very important. I would say that the revolutionary militias are one of the great manifestations of the solidarity of the Cuban people. Militias now give a new function to the doctor and prepare him for what was, until a short time ago, a sad and almost fatal reality for Cuba, namely, that we are going to be the victim of an armed attack of great breadth.

I ought to warn you that the doctor, in the function of soldier and revolutionary, should always be a doctor. You should not commit the same error which we committed in the Sierra. Or maybe it was not an error, but all the medical comrades of that period know about it. It seemed dishonorable to us to remain at the side of a wounded man or a sick one, and we looked for any way possible of grabbing a rifle and going to prove on the battlefront what we could do.

Now the conditions are different, and the new armies which are being formed to defend the country must be armies with different tactics. The doctor will have an enormous importance within the plan of the new army. He must continue being a doctor, which is one of the most beautiful tasks there is and one of the most important in a war. And not only the doctor, but also the nurses, laboratory technicians, all those who dedicate themselves to this very human profession, are of he utmost importance.

Although we know of latent danger and are preparing ourselves to repel the aggression which still exists in the atmosphere, we must stop thinking about it. If we make war preparations the centre of our concern, we will not be able to devote ourselves to creative work. All the work and all the capital invested in preparing for a military action is wasted work and wasted money. Unfortunately, we have to do it, because there are others who are preparing themselves. But it is- and I say this in all honesty, on my honour as a soldier- the truth is that the outgoing money which most saddens me as I watch it leave the vault of the National Bank is the money that is going to pay for some weapon.

Nevertheless, the militias have a function in peacetime; the militias should be, in populous centres, the tool which unifies the people. An extreme solidarity should be practiced, as I have been told it is practised in the militias of the doctors. In time of danger they should go immediately to solve the problems of the poor people of Cuba. But the militias offer also an opportunity to live together, joined and made equal by a uniform, with men of all social classes of Cuba.

If we medical workers- and permit me to use once again a title which I had forgotten some time ago- are successful, if we use this new weapon of solidarity, if we know the goals, know the enemy, and know the direction we have to take, then all that is left for us to know is the part of the way to be covered each day. And that part no one can show us; that part is the private journey of each individual. It is what he will do every day, what he will gather from his individual experience, and what he will give of himself in the exercise of his profession, dedicated to the well-being of the people.

Now that we have all the elements for our march toward the future, let us remember the advice of Martí. Although at this moment I am ignoring it, one should follow it constantly, "The best way of telling is doing." Let us march, then, toward Cuba's future.

Ernesto Che Guevara Abstract of A New Old Interview--Recorded: April 18, 1959 

Publisher: Shih-chieh Chih-shih (World Knowledge), June 5, 1959
Translated: William E. Ratliff in the Hispanic American Historical Review of August, 1966.
Transcription/Markup: Brian Baggins
Online Version: Ernesto Che Guevara Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2002

Two Chinese journalists, K'ung Mai and Ping An, interviewed Che Guevara at his home on April 18, 1959, or, as they put it, on "the 108th evening after the victory of the revolution. " Peking radio and the New China News Agency in London gave summaries and a few direct quotations from it, though the interview was not reported in any of Peking's three leading newspapers. The Agrarian Reform, which Guevara speaks about in the future tense, became law on May 17, 1959, i. e., in the interval between the granting of the interview and its publication in China.

[...]

Reporter: Will you please tell us how Cuba achieved her revolutionary victory?

Guevara: Certainly. Let us begin at the time I joined the 26th of July Movement in Mexico. Before the dangerous crossing on the Granma the views on society of the members of this organisation were very different. I remember, in a frank discussion within our family in Mexico, I suggested we ought to propose a revolutionary program to the Cuban people. I have never forgotten how one of the participants in the attack on the Moncada army camp responded at that time. He said to me: "Our action is very simple. What we want to do is to initiate a coup d 'etat. Batista pulled off a coup and in only one morning took over the government. We must make another coup and expel him from power… Batista has made a hundred concessions to the Americans, and we will make one hundred and one." At that time I argued with him, saying that we had to make a coup on the basis of principle and yet at the same time understand clearly what we would do after taking over the government. That was the thinking of a member of the first stage of the 26th of July Movement. Those who held the same view and did not change left our revolutionary movement later and adopted another path.

From that time on, the small organisation that later made the crossing on the Granma encountered repeated difficulties. Besides the never-ending suppression by the Mexican authorities, there was also a series of internal problems, like those people who were adventurous in the beginning but later used this pretext and that to break away from the military expedition. Finally at the time of the crossing on the Granma there remained only eighty-two men in the organisation. The adventurous thought of that time was the first and only catastrophe encountered within the organisation during the process of starting the uprising. We suffered from the blow. But we gathered together again in the Sierra Maestra. For many months the manner of our life in the mountains was most irregular. We climbed from one mountain peak to another, in a drought, without a drop of water. Merely to survive was extremely difficult.

The peasants who had to endure the persecution of Batista's military units gradually began to change their attitude toward us. They fled to us for refuge to participate in our guerrilla units. In this way our rank and file changed from city people to peasants. At that same time, as the peasants began to participate in the armed struggle for freedom of rights and social justice, we put forth a correct slogan -land reform. This slogan mobilised the oppressed Cuban masses to come forward and fight to seize the land. From this time on the first great social plan was determined, and it later became the banner and primary spearhead of our movement.

It was at just this time that a tragedy occurred in Santiago de Cuba; our Comrade Frank Pa?s was killed. This produced a turning point in our revolutionary movement. The enraged people of Santiago on their own poured into the streets and called for the first politically oriented general strike. Even though the strike did not have a leader , it paralysed the whole of Oriente Province. The dictatorial government suppressed the incident. This movement, however, caused us to understand that working class participation in the struggle to achieve freedom was absolutely essential! We then began to carry out secret work among the workers, in preparation for another general strike, to help the Rebel Army seize the government.

The victorious and bold secret activities of the Rebel Army shook the whole country; all of the people were stirred up, leading to the general strike on April 9 last year. But the strike failed because of a lack of contact between the leaders and the working masses. Experience taught the leaders of the 26th of .July Movement a valuable truth: the revolution must not belong to this or that specific clique, it must be the undertaking of the whole body of the Cuban people. This conclusion inspired the members of the movement to work their hardest, both on the plains and in the mountains. At this time we began to educate our forces in revolutionary theory and doctrine. This all showed that the rebel movement had already grown and was even beginning to achieve political maturity....

Every person in the Rebel Army remembered his basic duties in the Sierra Maestra and other areas: to improve the status of the peasants, to participate in the struggle to seize land, and to build schools. Agrarian law was tried for the first time; using revolutionary methods we confiscated the extensive possessions of the officials of the dictatorial government and distributed to the peasants all of the state-held land in the area. At this time there rose up a peasant movement, closely connected to the land, with land reform as its banner....

To carry out thoroughly the law providing for the abolition of the latifundia system will be the concern of the peasant masses themselves. The present State Constitution provides for mandatory monetary compensation whenever land is taken away, and land reform under it will be both sluggish and difficult. Now after the victory of the revolution, the peasants who have achieved their freedom must rise up in collective action and democratically demand the abolition of the latifundia system and the carrying out of a true and extensive land reform.

Reporter: What problems does the Cuban Revolution now face, and what are its current responsibilities?

Guevara: The first difficulty is that our new actions must be engaged in on the old foundations. Cuba's antipeople regime and army are already destroyed, but the dictatorial social system and economic foundations have not yet been abolished. Some of the old people are still working within the national structure. In order to protect the fruits of the revolutionary victory and to enable the unending development of the revolution we need to take another step forward in our work to rectify and strengthen the government. Second, what the new government took over was a rundown mess. When Batista fled he cleaned out the national treasury, leaving serious difficulties in the national finances.... Third, Cuba's land system is one in which latifundistas hold large amounts of land, while at the same time many people are unemployed.... Fourth, there is still racial discrimination in our society which is not beneficial to efforts to achieve the internal unification of the people. Fifth, our house rents are the highest in the world; a family frequently has to pay over a third of its income for rent. To sum up, the reform of the foundations of the economy of the Cuban society is very difficult and will take a long time.

In establishing the order of society and in democratising the national life, the new government has adopted many positive measures. We have exerted great effort to restore the national economy. For example, the government has passed a law lowering rents by fifty percent. Yesterday a law regulating beaches was passed to cancel the privileges of a small number of people who occupy the land and the seashores....

Most important is the land reform law, which will soon be promulgated. Moreover. we will found a National Land Reform Institute. Our land reform here is not yet very penetrating; it is not as thorough as the one in China. Yet it must be considered the most progressive in Latin America....

Reporter: How will Cuba struggle against domestic and foreign reactionary enemies? What are the prospects of the revolution ?

Guevara: The Cuban Revolution is not a class revolution, but a liberation movement that has overthrown a dictatorial, tyrannical government. The people detested the American-supported Batista dictatorial government from the bottoms of their hearts and so rose up and overthrew it. The revolutionary government has received the broad support of all strata of people because its economic measures have taken care of the requirements of all and have gradually improved the livelihood of the people. The only enemies remaining in the country are the latifundistas and the reactionary bourgeoisie. They oppose the land reform that goes against their own interests. These internal reactionary forces may get in league with the developing provocation’s of the foreign reactionary forces and attack the revolutionary government.

The only foreign enemies who oppose the Cuban Revolution are the people who monopolise capital and who have representatives in the United States State Department. The victory and continuous development of the Cuban Revolution has caused these people to panic. They do not willingly accept defeat and are doing everything possible to maintain their control over the Cuban government and economy and to block the great influence of the Cuban Revolution on the people's struggles in the other Latin American countries....

Our revolution has set an example for every other country in Latin America. The experience and lessons of our revolution have caused the mere talk of the coffee houses to be dispersed like smoke. We have proved that an uprising can begin even when there is only a small group of fearless men with a resolute will; that it is only necessary to gain the support of the people who can then compete with, and in the end defeat, the regular disciplined army of the government. It is also necessary to carry out a land reform. This is another experience that our Latin American brothers ought to absorb. On the economic front and in agricultural structure they are at the same stage as we are.

The present indications are very clear that they are now preparing to intervene in Cuba and destroy the Cuban Revolution. The evil foreign enemies have an old method. First they begin a political offensive, propagandising widely and saying that the Cuban people oppose Communism. These false democratic leaders say that the United States cannot allow a Communist country on its coastline. At the same time they intensify their economic attack and cause Cuba to fall into economic difficulties. Later they will look for a pretext to create some kind of dispute and then utilise certain international organisations they control to carry out intervention against the Cuban people. We do not have to fear an attack from some small neighbouring dictatorial country, but from a certain large country, using certain international organisations and a certain kind of pretext in order to intervene and undermine the Cuban Revolution....