On Work in Socialist Society (1964)

Excerpts from a speech given on the occasion of the delivery of communist work certificates by the Ministry of Industries, from the collection Reflections on Work in Socialist Society: Notebook of Writings and Speeches of Ernesto Che Guevara (1960- 1965) (2020), by the Commission to perpetuate the memory of Comandante Ernesto Guevara. The original document, available in Spanish, goes much more extensively into production statistics and also speaks more at length about revolutionary struggles around the world, in Guinea and elsewhere.

Comrades,

I believe that today, in this occasion, celebrating an act of such revolutionary significance as this one, in which the Ministry of Industries exhibits sincere pride at having always been at the forefront of deepening of revolutionary consciousness through collective work of a social and voluntary nature, one should make some remarks on the nature of work in socialism.

If you’ll allow me, I’ll start by “pushing” a little verse on you. (Applause.) Don’t worry! It’s not, as one might say, an original of mine. It’s a poem — a mere handful of lines of a poem — written by a despairing man; it’s a poem written by an old poet nearing the end of his life. He is over 80 years old. He saw the Spanish Republic, whose political cause he defended, fall years ago. ^[1] He’s been in exile ever since, residing today in Mexico. In the last book he published a few years ago he penned down the following lines, which read as follows:

But Man is a laborious and stupid child
who turned work into a sweaty grind,
who turned the drum’s stick into a hoe,
and who, instead of playing a joyful song on earth,
started digging.

And then it said — more or less, I don’t have a very good memory:

What I mean to say is that nobody has been able to dig at the rhythm of the sun,
and that nobody yet has ever harvested an ear of corn with love and grace.

This captures well the defeated attitude of those living in a world different to ours; the world that we, as pertains work, already left behind. It captures the aspiration to return to nature, of experiencing mere existence as a passionate fire. That said, extremes do overlap, and that is why I wanted to quote those words at you. Because today we could tell that great desperate poet to come to Cuba, to see how man, after going through all the stages of capitalist alienation, and after considering himself a beast of burden bound to the yoke of the exploiter, has rediscovered his own path — he has once again found the path of fire. Today in our Cuba, work increasingly acquires a new significance; it is carried out with newfound joy.

We could invite him to our cane fields to see our women cutting the cane with love and grace, to see the virile strength of our workers cutting the cane with love, to see a new attitude towards work; to see that it’s not work as such that enslaves man, but rather his not being an owner of the means of production; and that when society reaches a certain stage of its development, and is capable of initiating a struggle for its own sake — to destroy the oppressive power, to destroy its armed wing, which is the army, and install itself in power — one acquires once again, before work, the old joy: the joy of fulfilling a duty; of feeling important within the social mechanism; of feeling oneself a cog that has its own unique characteristics, that is necessary — although not indispensable — to the production process. And, moreover, a conscious cog. A cog that has its own engine, driven further and further every time, in order to bring about to happy conclusion one of the key premises of socialist construction: the availability of a sufficient quantity of consumer goods for the entire population.

And alongside that, right alongisde the day-to-day work being carried out for the sake of creating new wealth to distribute throughout society, the man who works with this new attitude is perfecting himsef. This is why we say that volunteer work should not be valued from the point of view of the economic importance it has today for the State, but rather because voluntary work is the fundamental factor that develops the conscience of the workers more than any other.

This is especially the case when workers labour away from their comfort zones — be that our cane-cutters, who often labour under very difficult conditions, or our administrative and technical workers, who learned the fields and factories of Cuba from the inside due to the volunteer work they carried out in them. Capitalist productive technique endeavors to keep administrative and manual work as separate production factors, to ensure that this way administrators can help maintain a large reserve army of unemployed workers, of desperate people willing to fight for a crust of bread against all long-term projects, and even sometimes against their own stated principles. Voluntary work here then is a vehicle for promoting bonding and understanding between administrative workers and manual workers, thus paving the way for a new stage of society where classes cease to exist and where, therefore, there ceases to be a difference between manual worker and intellectual worker, or between worker and peasant.

[…]

The difficult days are not remotely over. They’re not remotely bygone in the field of the economy, let alone in the field of threats of foreign military aggression. These are truly difficult days, but they’re also days truly worth living.

The whole underdeveloped world — or, some might say, the exploited and dependent world, upon which the imperialists foist crises, sic their tycoons and armies of plunderers in order to extract every last drop of wealth — wakes up and fights. And this struggle represents a danger to us. We are singled out and condemned in meetings of colonial ministries.

But the name of Cuba also travels the lips of revolutionaries all over the world; (applause) Cuba’s name already transcends our borders; it has been transcending them for some years now! And this is the case not only in the rest of America, where our growth sets an example and brings hope, but also in other regions of the world — regions that our people, sunk in exploitation and deprived of culture, hardly used to know about.

But today all of our people know that there is such a place as Vietnam; (prolonged applause) they know that this country — exploited in the past, divided today — fights with all its forces united against imperialist oppression; they know that the parallel line that artificially divides the country will soon be nothing but a fast-fading memory. (Applause.) And our people, who did not know world geography, and who barely had a vague notion that there was a French colony called Indochina in the confines of Asia, in the Antipode Islands, today knows all about the exploits of our Vietnamese brothers!

And there in Vietnam we’ve seen how only a few days ago our “Playa Girón” battalion or brigade heroically intervened in action — as the combatants of Vietnam always do (applause). Playa Girón is a symbol for all oppressed peoples; Playa Girón is the first defeat of imperialism in Latin America, but it is also one of the first defeats of imperialism on a world scale. And the people recognize its name. ^[2]

[…]

This has happened to us many times on journeys we’ve had to make on behalf of the government. It’s for us a great badge of pride. It’s what compensates our people for all the hardships of the blockade, for all the threats of invasion, for all the difficulties that pile atop what is already in itself a challenge — the great task of the construction of socialism. And in spite of everything, we are moving forward; we are getting better and better regardless of the fact that the political situation is always changing; that the economic situation does not follow a straight upward line but rather exhibits ups and downs; that there are better and worse years, better and worse harvests. But regardless of the material and concrete aspect of any given year, our people are always growing more and more aware.

Our work — our work as fighters of production — is to develop consciousness more and more every single day on this road that we are on; to develop it so well that every worker can love their workplace; and also that every worker knows that if the price of keeping his factory intact — of saving his work, or the lives of himself and his children — was for him to fall to his knees, that Cuban people will never pay this price. (Applause.)

[…]

Of course, there is still the imperialist blockade, and it will remain in place for some time — until they get tired of it or until some other event brings it down. But this should serve as nothing other than as a stimulus for our work. It should push us to create our own industrial base, our own spare parts, our own technology; and to depend less and less on the capitalist sector, which is not a very reliable sector for us, since they are always subject to enormous political pressures and routinely experience defections.

You all recently saw how the government of Chile, which was a government of the bourgeoisie, even though it had a correct juridical attitude and voted against the OAS, ^[3] because of pressure from the United States or perhaps because of internal political scheming, broke with us. Through this act it signed up to the blockade decreed against us by imperialism.

And this could happen with any other country. So we have to have a very solid base that allows us to take full advantage of world trade, but without becoming dependent on it. In other words, our industrial base should allow us, for example, to have relations with all the countries with which we have relations now, and to strengthen them, but we should not allow it to override matters of conscience, or the principles of the Revolution.

Once, some time ago, the French government became very angry with us over our support of Algeria, because we recognized the Algerian government’s uprising. At that time, therefore, the French also somehow joined the imperialist blockade. But later still the French government acquired a better understanding. Algeria liberated itself — historically it was destined to liberate itself, there could be no solution other than the liberation of Algeria — and any attempt to stave off that outcome merely plunged a heroic people into disgrace and, moreover, sent many French soldiers to the slaughter. That problem was resolved in the best possible way. Today Algeria and France maintain good relations, and we maintain excellent relations with the brotherly people of Algeria and good relations with France as well. (Applause.)

But we have to remain prepared and not depend on good relations with anyone. And to that end we have to study, we have to prepare ourselves, because without an adequate technological base, our efforts — no matter how great or heroic they may be — will not allow us to move forward with sufficient speed. We should uphold, as always, that slogan which young communists have long since taken for themselves: “The study, the work, and the rifle.” (Applause.) In other words, the three flags of this three-word slogan must always be flown, because the three are always important at all times. And in order to maintain our right to live and speak with the authority of a revolutionary country, we must have all three: work, to lead the construction of socialism; study, to deepen our knowledge and enhance our capacity to act; and the rifle, obviously, to defend the Revolution. (Applause.)

[…]

We as a country know that we depend on the great strength of all the countries of the world that form the socialist bloc, and on the peoples fighting for their liberation, (applause) and on the strengh and cohesion of our people — on our decision to fight down to the last man or woman or human being capable of wielding a weapon. This commitment of our people is what lets imperialists know that with us, despite our small size and our relative lack of physical strength, they cannot play around.

And thus we are proud to represent what we do for liberation movements around the world, without excessive pride and without overconfidence; we know how to measure the exact magnitude of our strength, and we do not allow ourselves to be provoked. We ought to do what Fidel recommended a few days ago: keep a cool head, bring courage and intelligence together. Neither of the two should surpass the other, the two should go together. In this way we will be able to maintain and consolidate our position as a country that speaks with its own distinct voice in the world, as a country which has something to say to the world, as a country that is part of the great brotherhood of socialist countries. We proclaim that with pride. And we also proclaim with pride that we are able to speak here, in Spanish, on the American continent, a mere 150 kilometers away from North American beaches, as the first country to build socialism in America. (Applause.)

For you, comrades, who are the vanguard of the vanguard; for all those who on the work-front have shown their spirit of sacrifice, their communist spirit, and their new attitude towards life; the Fidel line that you etched on one of the walls of this auditorium should always be championed: “What we were able to muster for the hours of mortal danger let us now muster for production: We’ll be workers of Patria o Muerte!” (Ovation.)