WHERE IS THE LOVE? WHERE IS THE INDIGNATION?

Mar 08, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”- Ernesto Che Guevara.

A few days ago, I came across a fashionably dressed young lad. From his head to his toes, he exuded the world of fashion.

But what struck me were not his fancy and costly threads. Rather it was the T-shirt that he wore. Emblazoned on its front was the iconic image of one of the greatest revolutionaries that ever lived, Ernesto Che Guevara.

Had Che been alive he would have been revolted at the commercial abuse of his image. He would have abhorred the widespread use of his image as a fashion statement.

The left suffered a mortal blow when Che died. But he knew that he was not indispensable. His final words after being taken prisoner by the Bolivian military with the help of CIA agents were: “I knew you were going to shoot me; I should never have been taken alive. Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere. Tell Aleida to forget this, remarry and be happy, and keep the children studying. Ask the soldiers to aim well.”

Forty years after his death, Fidel proclaimed Che’s spiritual immortality when he asked and answered his own question: “Why did they think that by killing him, he would cease to exist as a fighter? … Today he is in every place, wherever there is a just cause to defend.”

Indeed Che is everywhere today. His face adorns all manner of trendy garments worn by the young and old alike, many of whom are either unaware of the ideals that Che stood for or have long allowed these ideals to wear thin.

Revisionist movies about him are being made, movies which move very few to the ideals that were so dear to Che.

Che’s death made him more popular. The humanity that drove him to political action became the anthem of others, including the disgruntled youth of the West, who found in him an inspirational figure.

Socialism however never conquered the world. The demise of the Soviet Union was the most cataclysmic blow suffered by socialism because it left the Left on its own and without that vital lifeline that was necessary to combat the power of global capitalism.

Today we speak of the end of history and the triumph of capitalism, despite the Left making a revival in Latin America.

Che had left Cuba precisely to help the Cuban Revolution by opening up new fronts of socialism so that Cuba would not be isolated. But his death did not signal the end of his revolutionary romanticism.

This is what he said about those who labeled him an adventurer, “Many will call me an adventurer — and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.”

For him, the greatest attribute of a true revolutionary was not a goat bite but love. In Socialism and Man in Cuba, he noted that the true revolutionary was guided by great feelings 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 or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealise this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible.”

He went on to observe that the true revolutionary “must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.”

This is the moving force that should inform the actions of the Left and the few governments in the region which they still control. But the Left in Guyana has in the main capitulated to western capitalism and stands as naked today as the Emperor in his invisible cloak.

Where are those prophets of socialism that sang the praises of the working class? Many are still singing these praises but to a different tune, one that was coined in the West.

The almost total absence of any reference these days to socialism is inexplicable. While the building of socialism was deferred after the state of economic collapse that pushed the economy into the neo-liberal stratosphere, it is inexcusable that those of the Left should still be ashamed of proclaiming its ideals.

It is even sadder that instead of trying to reclaim this ground, instead of raging with indignation against every injustice, the comrades of the Left or whatever is left of the Left- in Guyana seem content to slowly fade away like the setting sun on a summer day.

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