Dziga Vertov (1896-1954)

My road is towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I decipher in a new way the world unknown to you.

Books from Alibris: Dziga Vertov

Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919-2000)

The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

Books from Alibris: Pierre Elliot Trudeau

Georg Simmel (1858-1918)

For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.

Books from Alibris: Georg Simmel

Pete Seeger (1919-)

I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.

Sheet music: Pete Seeger

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975)

The freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer's way of life.

Books from Alibris: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Ermanno Olmi (1931-)

Every story must have a leading character who becomes an ideal example for us: man or woman, in love’s passion or caught up in hatred… So, whom should I talk about? Whom have I got to know, amongst the throng of historical Greats who have made their mark on my life?…Is it too predictable to say Christ?

Books from Alibris: Italian Cinema

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Quotation

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

Books

Please browse our Amazon list of titles about Karl Marx. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about Karl Marx.

Research

Lecture: The Communist Manifesto
COPAC UK: Karl Marx
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Other Library Catalogs: Karl Marx

Biographical

The Communist Manifesto is a proclamation. It's an in-your-face declaration of a new found awareness about human destiny. It invalidates and rejects any idea or argument that opposes it as a product of the evil that it purports to eradicate. It takes no prisoners. It hears no objections. It comes from the clouds - a juggernaut destined to lead enslaved humanity to the promised-land by breaking its chains and steamrolling into a glorious future. The Manifesto is a turn on for power junkies and young minds. It's graffiti - for graffiti's sake. It sits alone, blood red, forever youthful, and strangely - dangerously - beautiful. Russell McNeil, (Nov 28, 2002)

Education

Karl Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn in 1835 to study Law, but transferred to the University of Berlin the following year. There his interests turned to philosophy and he joined the circle of the "Young Hegelians" led by Bruno Bauer. Some members of this circle drew an analogy between post-Aristotelian philosophy and post-Hegelian philosophy, and Marx defended his doctoral dissertation comparing the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus in 1841.

Career

When his mentor Bauer was dismissed from the philosophy faculty in 1842, Marx abandoned philosophy for journalism and went on to edit the Rheinische Zeitung, a radical German newspaper. After the newspaper was later shut in 1843, in part due to Marx's conflicts with government censors, Marx returned to philosophy, turned to political activism, and worked as a free-lance journalist. Marx first moved to France, where he re-evaluated his relationship withe Bauer and the Young Hegelians, and wrote On the Jewish Question, mostly a critique of current notions of civil-rights and political emancipation. It was in Paris that he met and began working with his life-long collaborator Friedrich Engels, who called Marx's attention to the situation of the working-classes, and guided Marx's interest in economics. After he was forced to leave Paris for his writings, he and Engels moved to Brussels. There they co-wrote The German Ideology, a critique of Hegelian and Young Hegelian philosophy, and then Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy, a critique of French socialist thought. These works lay the foundation for Marx and Engels' most famous work, The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, which was commissioned by the Communist League (formerly, the League of the Just), an organization of German emigrés whom Marx had met in London. That year Europe experienced revolutionary upheaval; a working-class movement seized power from king Louis Philippe in France and invited Marx to return to Paris. When this government collapsed in 1849, Marx moved to London. In 1864 Marx organized the International Workingmen's Association, later called the First International, as a base for continued political activism. This organization collapsed in 1872 in part because of the fall of the Paris Commune, and in part because many members turned to Mikhail Bakunin's anarchism. In London Marx also dedicated himself to historical and theoretical works, the most famous of which is the multivolume Das Kapital, the first volume of which was published in 1867.

Influences on Marx's Philosophy

In general, Marx's thought has been influenced by two often contradictory elements: determinism and activism. On the one hand, Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically, and derive laws the explain and predict the course of history and the outcome of social conflicts. Consequently, some followers of Marx conclude that a communist revolution is inevitable. On the other hand, Marx famously asserted that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it," and dedicated himself to trying to change the world. Consequently, some followers of Marx conclude that dedicated revolutionaries must organize social change. Marx's theory, sometimes called "scientific socialism" or "dialectical materialism" or "historical materialism" is based on Hegel's claim that history occurs through a dialectic, or clash, of opposing forces. Hegel was a philosophical idealist who believed that we live in a world of appearances, and true reality is an ideal. Marx accepted this notion of the dialectic, but rejected Hegel's idealism. In this he was influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach argued that God is really a creation of man, and that the qualities people attribute to God are really qualities of humanity. Accordingly, Marx argued that it is the material world that is real, and that our ideas of it are consequences, not causes, of the world. Thus, like Hegel and other philosophers, Marx distinguished between appearances and reality. But he did not believe that the material world hides from us the "real" world of the ideal; on the contrary, he thought that historically and socially specific ideologies prevented people from seeing the material conditions of their lives clearly. The other important contribution to Marx's revision of Hegelianism was Engel's book, The Condition of the English Working Class, which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict, and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution.

Marx's Philosophy

The notion of labor is fundamental in Marx's thought. Basically, Marx argued that it is human nature to transform nature, and he calls this process of transformation "labor" and the capacity to transform nature labor power. For Marx, this is a natural capacity for a physical activity, but it is intimately tied to the human mind and human imagination: A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. Beyond his claim about the human capacity to transform nature, Marx makes no other claims about "human nature." Although "labor power" for Marx is human nature, he did not believe that all people worked the same way, or that how one works is entirely personal and individual. Instead, he argued that works is a social activity, and that the conditions and forms under and through which people work are socially determined and change over time. Marx's analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means of production, literally those things, like land and natural resources, labor, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods, and the social relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production; Marx observed that within any given society the mode of production changes, and that European societies had progressed from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode of production. In general, Marx believed that the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production (for example, we develop a new technology, and only later do we develop laws to regulate that technology). For Marx this lag is a major source of conflict. Marx understood the "social relations of production" to comprise not only relations among individuals, but between or among groups of people, or classes. As a scientist and materialist, Marx did not understand classes purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources.

Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labor-power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor -- one's capacity to transform the world -- is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in tems of commodity fetishism, in which people come to believe that it is the very things that they produce that are powerful, and the sources of power and creativity, rather than people themselves. He argued that when this happens, people begin to mediate all their relationships among themselves and with others through commodities.

Marx's Critique of Capitalism

Marx argues that this alienation of labor power (and resulting commodity fetishism) is precisely the defining feature of capitalism. Prior to capitalism, markets existed in Europe where producers and merchants bought and sold commodities. According to Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe when labor itself became a commodity -- when peasants became free to sell their own labor-power, and needed to sell their own labor because they no longer possessed their own land or tools necessary to produce. A person sells their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for whatever work they do in a given period of time (in other words, they are not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work). In return for selling their labor power they receive money which allows them to survive. The person who must sell their labor power to live is a "proletarian." The person who buys the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is a "capitalist" or "bourgeois." (NOTE: Marx considered this an objective description of capitalism, distinct from any one of a variety of ideological claims of or about capitalism). Marx distinguished capitalists from merchants. Merchants buy goods in one place and sell it in another; more precisely, they buy things in one market and sell it in another. Since the laws of supply and demand operate within given markets, there is often a difference between the price of a commodity in one market and another. Merchants hope to capture the difference between these two markets. According to Marx, capitalists, on the other hand, take advantage of the difference between the labor market and the market for whatever commodity is produced by the capitalist. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry the price for labor was lower than the price of the manufactured good. Marx called this difference "surplus value" and argued that this surplus value was in fact the source of a capitalist's profit. The capitalist mode of production is capable of tremendous growth because the capitalist can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies. Marx considered the capitalist class to be the most revolutionary in history, because it constantly revolutionized the means of production. But Marx believed that capitalism was prone to periodic crises. He suggested that over time, capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies, and less and less in labor. Since Marx believed that surplus value appropriated from labor is the source of profits, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall even as the economy grew. When the rate of profit falls below a certain point, the result would be a recesion or depression in which certain sectors of the economy would collapse. Marx understood that during such a crisis the price of labor would also fall, and eventually make possible the investment in new technologies and the growth of new sectors of the economy. Marx believed that this cycle of growth, collapse, and growth would be punctuated by increasingly severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term consequence of this process was necessarily the empowerment of the capitalist class and the impoverishment of the proletariate. Finally, he believed that were the proletariate to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to periodic crises.

Influence

The body of work of Marx and of Marx and Engels covers a wide range of topics and presents a complex analysis of history and society in terms of class relations. Followers of Marx and Engels have drawn on this work to propose a political and economic philosophy dubbed Marxism (although before he died Marx declared that he was not a "Marxist"). Nevertheless, there have been numerous debates among Marxists over how to interpret Marx's writings and how to apply his concepts to current events and conditions. Essentially, people use the word "Marxist" to describe those who rely on Marx's conceptual language (e.g. mode of production, class, commodity fetishism) to undertand capitalist and other societies, or to describe those who believe that a worker's revolution is the only means to a communist society. Six years after Marx's death, Engels and others founded the "Second International" as a base for continued political activism. This organization collapsed in 1914, in part because some members turned to Edward Bernstein's "evolutionary" socialism, and in part because of divisions precipitated by World War I. World War I also led to the Russian Revolution and the consequent ascendence of Vladimir Lenin's leadership of the communist movement, embodied in the "Third International." Lenin claimed to be both the philosophical and political heir to Marx, and developed a political program, called Leninism or Bolshevism, which called for revolution organized and led by a centrally organized Communist Party. After Lenin's death, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, seized power of the Party and State apparatus. He argued that before a world-wide communist revolution would be possible, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to dedicate itself to building socialism in their own country.

At this time, Leon Trotsky left the Soviet Union and in 1934 founded the competing "Fourth International." Some followers of Trotsky argued that Stalin had created a bureaucratic state rather than a socialist state. In China Mao Zedong also claimed to be an heir to Marx, but argued that peasants and not just workers could play a leading role in a communist revolution. In the 1920s and '30s, a group of dissident Marxists at the Frankfurt School in Germany, among them Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, espoused critical theory (unrelated to Critical philosophy), which offered a non- Bolshevist critique of contemporary capitalism. Other influential non-Bolshevik Marxists at that time include Walter Benjamin?, Antonio Gramsci, and Rosa Luxemburg. In 1949 Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman founded The Monthly Review, a journal and press, to provide a outlet for Marxist thought in the United States independent of the Communist Party.

Contemporary Criticisms

Marxian theory has been criticized from numerous points of view. Many proponents of capitalism have argued that capitalism in fact is ultimately a more effective means of generating and redistributing wealth than socialism or communism, and that the gulf between rich and poor that concerned Marx and Engels was a temporary phenomenon. Some suggest that greed and the need to acquire material wealth is an inherent component of human behavior, and is not caused by the adoption of capitalism or any other specific economic system (although economic anthropologists have questioned this assertion), and that different economic systems reflect different social responses to this fact. Economists generally reject his use of the "labor theory of value," although such critics generally overlook Marx's distinction between value and price. Marx has also been criticized from the left. Evolutionary Socialists reject his claim that socialism can be accomplished only through class conflict and violent revolution. Others argue that class is not the most fundamental inequality in history, and call attention to patriarchy or race. Some today question the theoretical and historical validity of "class" as an analytic construct or as a political actor. In this line, some question Marx's reliance on 19th century notions that linked science with the idea of "progress" (see social evolution). Many observe that capitalism has changed much since Marx's time, and that class differences and relationships are much more complex -- citing as one example the fact that much corporate stock in the United States is owned by workers through pension funds. (see post-structuralism and post-modernism for discussions of two movements generally aligned with the left that are critical of Marx and Marxism.) Outside of Europe and the United States, communism has generally been superseded by anti-colonialist and nationalist struggles (although they sometimes appeal to Marx for theoretical support). Contemporary supporters of Marx argue most generally that Marx was correct that human behavior reflects determinate historical and social conditions (and is therefore changing and cannot be understood in terms of some universal "human nature"). More specifically, they argue his analysis of commodities is still useful and that alienation is still a problem. Some argue that capitalism does not exist as an independent system in any one country, and that one must analyze it as a global system. They further argue that when examined as a global system, capitalism is still organizing and exacerbating the gulf between rich and poor that first caught Marx's attention when he read Engels' book on England. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Karl Marx.]


The Communist Manifesto
Russell McNeil, PhD (Copyright 2005)
[Logos Exclusive]

Why Read?

One knee jerk reaction to the manifesto is to reject it. The political system it advocates failed. Communism is as dead as Nietzsche's God. Here is one Utopian vision we can toss to the vultures. Of course we might say the same thing about a Utopian vision much older than this -- one with a no better political track record -- but one we still read -- 2,500 years after it was written: Plato's Republic! I'll not make the case for equivalency. The Communist Manifesto is a proclamation. It's an in-your-face declaration of a new found awareness about human destiny. It invalidates and rejects any idea or argument that opposes it as a product of the evil that it purports to eradicate. It takes no prisoners. It hears no objections. It comes from the clouds -- a juggernaut destined to lead enslaved humanity to the promised-land by breaking its chains and steamrolling into a glorious future. The manifesto is a turn on for power junkies and young minds. It's graffiti -- for graffiti's sake. It sits alone, blood red, forever youthful, and strangely -- dangerously -- beautiful.

We cannot ignore Marx because it's romantic passion demands that we pay attention. Suppose I was a slave who wanted freedom. I would loathe my master. I would reject everything he represents. I would falsify everything that he has ever done. I would crush him. I would dishonour him. I will bury him. What such a master produces, above all, is his own grave--diggers...and as slave I will bury him in the rubble of his own machinery and with his own machinery. We read Marx still because we can read the events of our current crises, of 9--11, or of the threatened war on Iraq through the filter of this manifesto. But Master slave dichotomies can be found (or imposed) everywhere. We can bring the historical elements of Marxist theory to analyse -- or to re--analyse -- any of the ideas we have encountered to date. And we do, and you will, and the 20th century has pretty much been preoccupied with this sort of thing. Marx does not stand alone. He shares the stage with Nietzsche, and Freud, and Socrates, and Christ. Marx lives -- so we read him still.

This is a political tract -- a manifesto that offers? proclaims? imposes! a program for radical (root), revolutionary, and violent social change. The softer parts of the argument, those justifying the necessity for change had its roots in a long history of western thinking from Plato to Rousseau. But the more immediate influences were German -- and specifically the philosopher Hegel. Marx came from a well--off, cultured and nominally Protestant family. His father was a lawyer. Marx himself studied law, history and philosophy at the University of Berlin. He did his doctoral thesis on Epicurus.

Epicurian Influence

One famous idea attributed to Epicurus reads thus: it is not impious to deny the gods of the masses, but it is impious to think of the gods as the masses do; a sound principle, but one which Epicurus wrongly applied, since he got rid of what was true as well as of what was corrupt in the vulgar religion. Bear this thought in mind as you read the Manifesto.

Hegel's Influence

While at Berlin Marx hung around with a group of so--called left Hegelians. Their goals seem to have been to draw revolutionary and atheistic conclusions from Hegel's philosophy. Hegel's influence on Marx may have been Hegel's method of inquiry -- something called his Doctrine of Development. For instance, the truth about this lectern, for Aristotle, is that it is a lectern. For Hegel, the equally important truth is that it was a tree, and it will be ashes. The whole truth, for Hegel, is that the tree became a table and will become ashes. Thus, becoming, not being, is the highest expression of reality. Hegel's notion of development was applied to a whole range of investigations: science, literature, theology, and for us here through Marx to political economy and political science.

A World Picture

Let's paint a contemporary world picture. And think about Marxist response. In the US the richest 20% earn 50% of all income -- that's been increasing for decades. The poorest 20% earn 3.5% of all income -- and that's been dropping for decades. The ratio of wealth in the top 20% to the wealth in the bottom 20% is 14 to 1. During this same period (1973--1996) the average real wage of all Americans fell by 11% while corporate profit rates rose to an all time high. The rich do get richer -- the poor poorer. In other parts of the world, economies have fared much worse. The situation in Russia is most severe where economic chaos has led to an actual decrease in life expectancy for males from 66 to 57 years in just five years. The east asian Tiger economies have declined rapidly over the past few years. Stock market performances -- one measure of total Capital -- have been bleak: The indicies for the major markets in Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand have dropped from 60--90%. What most East Asians gained from those boom years of apparent prosperity were low wage jobs in modern factories or sweat shops. In Indonesia infant mortality has increased by 30% and school enrollment decreased from 78% to 54%. Many of the children dropping out of school are working in the $3.3 Billion dollar Indonesian child prostitution industry. Marx would nod sagely at these data. It is, he might say a continuation of a process he described 150 years ago but extended now to global dimensions. He might even proclaim that the final death throes of capitalism began on September 11 in graves radical terrorists from distant lands.

The Class Struggle

The Class Struggle Marx describes in his mid nineteenth century Manifesto is still alive and well throughout much of the world. The capital hungry capitalist machine Marx described and admired is still alive. It may be in crisis now, but it will rebound as it always has, and as Marx described, by expanding to the last world frontiers under its last guise: globalization. Marx theory as a political description of a set of warring relationships between classes is still meaningful. Here is how Marx says it works: In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes ... The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization ... No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the pawnbroker. As the song goes: You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in depth. St. Peter don't call me cuz I can't go ... I owe my soul to the company store.

Evolution or Unfolding?

Marx's model of class struggle is dynamic, attractive, organic, colorful. It is filled with passionate rhetoric, redemptive promise, and fiery polemic. But there is also a cool compelling logic: man has a story -- and man is becoming. That is Hegel's influence. In social terms all of this is part of a human progression: we progress from forced slavery, to feudal subservience, to bourgeoise oppression. This is evolution but on a social scale. Some try to compare Darwin and Marx. But Natural selection proceeds from adaption to an environment. Marx changes the environment to allow for the emergence of and flourishing of mind: -- a new human consciousness -- a consciousness hitherto stifled by human enslavement to wage labour. In plain nglish ... it's impossible to think good thoughts when you load 16 tons of coal. Our collective minds have been alienated to work -- and useless work it is. Virtually nothing we produce serves real human purpose -- the emergence of new consciousness. Our lives are wasted, our bodies dissipated and and our minds hijacked by the forces of Capital.

The consciousness is nothing spooky. Engels described it in these words: thought and consciousness are products of the human brain which is a product of Nature and which has developed in and along with its environment; hence it is self--evident that the products of the human brain, being in the last analysis also products of Nature, do not contradict the rest of Nature's interconnections but are in correspondence with them ...

Inevitability

The communist revolution for Marx is an historical inevitability. It is to see man in history as a natural and material social being with unbridled potential. It is to see man as becoming or evolving towards his real purpose in life. And it is to see all these things at once as an unfolding story: wood lecturn, ashes. For Marx, everything is seen through the filter of class warfare: a warfare in which the vast majority of humans are oppressed by a small minority. In mimicking the Epicurian doctrine not to think of the gods as the masses do Marx discards the so called eternal truths embodied in our religions, our philosophies, and our institutions were nothing but the creations of an oppressor and designed to preserve the master slave dichotomy! So, Marx removes these insidious ideas from the intellectual landscape. It abolishes private property -- meaning Bourgeois Capital. It abolishes family -- bourgeois family. It abolishes religion -- bourgeois religion -- and all of its trappings: And so we see most of what we value in our long intellectual tradition discarded: our philosophy (perhaps not Hegel), our institutions (legal, educational), and

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class ...

… communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.

You really got to love this guy! Somehow we suspect this as more than fascist book burning with a human face. Marx would keep the books -- but reject the ideas -- because they were developed by or the agents of the bourgouise to serve the interests of that same class. It's illogical. But our rebellious romantic nature is attracted to this.

Practical Benefits

There are two aspects to this set of ideas. In part one Marx address the historical and contemporary social warfare amongst the classes. What strikes me in reading this today is how strongly Marx's analysis seems to ring true. My seminar seemed to be in perfect agreement with everything Marx says. That's strange. Do we not live in a social democracy in which all of us is created equal? Is it not true that the social adjustments of the past century have remedied the worst aspects of the so--called class struggle? If our world is really as exploitative as Marx portrays, why are we not in revolution? Is it not because the descriptions of warfare offered by Marx have been seen as real warnings and that we have today addressed by offering decent wages, pension benefits, comprehensive education, health, and child care benefits? Yet, as the world picture I drew for you earlier shows -- these gains are an illusion.

Perhaps Marx would laugh at us. Your happiness is illusion. Your addictions prove this. You are narcotized by the very productions of your labour: intellectual and material. Your intellectual rationalizations justify your material excesses. Your false needs have dehumanized you: your music, literature, newspapers, internet, reflect your decadence , ... Your bourgeois machine is as cunning, powerful, and dangerous as I foretold ... you are alienated from your real humanity and ripe now for revolution -- one that has already begun at the margins of your exploitative global economy. Look deeply into the eyes of what your bourgeois media call terrorists and you will see your proletariat comrade, the revolutionary hero of today and tomorrow.

Books from Alibris: Karl Marx

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)

Quotation

...the concentration of capital and the growth of their turnover is radically challenging the significance of the banks. Scattered capitalists are transformed into a single collective capitalist. When carrying the current accounts of a few capitalists, the banks, as it were, transact a purely technical and exclusively auxiliary operation. When, however, these operations grow to enormous dimensions we find that a handful of monopolists control all the operations, both commercial and industrial, of capitalist society. They can, by means of their banking connections.

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Biographical

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (April 22, 1870 - January 21, 1924) who used the alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, first leader of the Soviet Union and the namesake of Leninism. Born in Simbirsk, Russia and died in Gorki, Soviet Union (now Nizhny Novgorod, Russia), after a series of strokes resulting from an assassination attempt. His embalmed body is on permanent exhibition in Moscow.

Lenin was the son of a civil service official, and distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. In May of 1887 his eldest brother Alexander was hanged for participation in a plot on the life of TsarAlexander III. This radicalised Lenin and later that year he was arrested, and expelled from Kazan University for participating in student protests. He continued to study independently and by 1892 he gained a license to practise law. However, rather that settle into a legal career he became more involved in propaganda efforts, and the study of Marxism, much of it in St. Petersburg. On December 7 1895 he was arrested and held by authorities for an entire year, followed by exile to Siberia. In July of 1898 he married N.K. Krupskaya and in April of 1899 he publishes the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In 1900 his exile ends. He travelled in Russia and Europe, and published the paper Iskra as well as other tracts and books related to the movement. He is active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), and in 1903 he leads the Bolshevik faction after the split with the Mensheviks in 1903 that was partly inspired by his pamphlet What is to be Done?. In 1906 he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP. In 1907 he moved to Finland for security reasons. He continued to travel in Europe and partipated in many socialist meetings and activities. In 1917 he returned to Petrograd after Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and took a leading role with the Bolsheviks, publishing the April Theses. After a failed Bolshevik uprising in July Lenin fled to Finland, and returned in October to successfully lead an armed coup against the Kerensky provisional government. A Soviet government was formed with Lenin as Chairman. In August of 1918 he survived a failed assassination attempt by Fanny Kaplan.

In 1921, on Lenin's initiative, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was adopted, allowing a limited amount of private enterprise in an attempt to rebuild industry and especially agriculture. In May of 1922 Lenin had his first stroke. His role in government declined and after a second stroke in December the Politburo ordered that he be kept in isolation. In March of 1923 he suffered a third stroke and was no longer able to speak and died of a fourth stroke in January of 1924. After his first stroke he published a number of papers indicating future directions for the government and critisising Stalin; however, some of these were surpressed for decades and after his death Stalin gained control of the party. Lenin was known for his great intellect (he was a friend of Albert Einstein), his modesty and was not given to personal excess. While he was kind in personal matters, he was hard willed in political matters and was not above exiling, imprisoning and executing thinkers and artists who opposed his regime. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.]

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Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831)

Quotation

What experience and history teach is this-- that people and governments never have learned anything from history.

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Biographical

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart in 1770; died at Berlin in 1831. After studying theology at Tubingen he devoted himself successively to the study of contemporary philosophy and to the cultivation of the Greek classics. After about seven years spent as private tutor in various places, he began his career as university professor in 1801. His first appointment was at Jena. After an intermission of a year which he spent as newspaper editor at Bamberg, and a short term as rector of a gymasium at Nuremberg , he was made professor of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816, whence he was transferred to the University of Berlin in 1818. Hegel's principle works are his "Logic" (Wissenschaft der Logik, 1816), his "Phenomenology of Spirit" (Phanomenologie des Gesites, 1807), his "Encyclopedia" (Encyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, 1817), and his Philosophy of History (Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Geschichte, 1820). His works were collected and published by Rosenkranz in 19 vols., 1832-42, second edition 1840-54.

Aim of his Philosophy

Hegel's philosophy is an attempt to reduce to a more synthetic unity the system of transcendantal idealism bequeathed to him by Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. Kant had taught that, so far as our theoretical experience is concerned, there exists nothing except the appearances of things and the unknown and unknowable noumenal substrate of these appearances, the Ding-an-sich. Hegel starts out by assuming that, if for Kant's destructive criticism of theoretical experience we substitute an incessantly progressive and productive immanent criticism, we shall find that the noumenal reality is not an unknowable substrate of appearances, but an ever-active process, which in thought and in reality constantly passes into its opposite in order to return to a higher and richer form of itself. This process in its barest and most meagre form is being; in its fullest and richest form it is spirit, absolute mind, the state, religion, philosophy. The busines of philosophy is to trace this process through all its stages.

His Method

Hegel's method in philosophy consists, therefore, in following out the triadic development (Entwicklung) in each concept and in each thing. Thus, he hopes, philosophy will not contradict experience, but will give to the data of experience the philosophical, that is, the ultimately true, explanation. If, for instance, we wish to know what liberty is, we take that concept where we first find it, in the unrestrained action of the savage, who does not feeel the need of repressing any thought, feeling, or tendency to act. Next, we find that the savage has given up this freedom in exchange for its opposite, the restraint, or, as he considers it, the tyranny, of civilization and law. Thirdly, in the citizen under the rule of law, we find the third stage of development, namely liberty in a higher and a fuller sense than that in which the savage possessed it, the liberty to do and to say and to think many things which were beyond the power of the savage. In this triadic process we remark that the second stage is the direct opposite, the annihilation, or at least the sublation, of the first. We remark also that the third stage is the first returned to itself in a higher, truer, richer, and fuller form. The three stages are, therefore, styled: in itself (An-sich); out of itself (Anderssein); and, in and for itself (An-und-fur-sich). These three stages are found succeeding one another throughout the whole realm of thought and being, from the most abstract logical process up to the most complicated concrete activity of organized mind in the succession of states or the production of systems of philosophy.

Doctrine of Development

In logic---which really is a metaphysic---we have to deal with the process of development applied to reality in its most abstract form. For in logic we deal in concepts robbed of their empirical content: in logic we are discussing the process in vacuo, so to speak. Thus, at the very beginning of our study of reality, we find the logical concept of being. Now, being is not a static concept, as Aristotle supposed it was. It is essentially dynamic, because it tends by its very nature to pass over into nothing, and then to return to itself in the higher concept, becoming. For Aristotle, there was nothing more certain that that being=being, or, in other words, that being is identical with itself, that everything is what it is. Hegel does not deny this; but, he adds, it is equally certain that being tends to become its opposite, nothing, and that both are united in the concept becoming. For instance, the truth about this table, for Aristotle, is that it is a table. For Hegel, the equally important truth is that it was a tree, and it "will be" ashes. The whole truth, for Hegel, is that the tree became a table and will become ashes. Thus, becoming, not being, is the highest expression of reality. It is also the highest expression of thought; because then only do we attain the fullest kowledge of a thing when we know what it was, what it is, and what it will be---in a word, when we know the history of its development.

In the same way as being and nothing develop into the higher concept becoming, so, farther on in the scale of development, life and mind appear as the third terms of the process and are in turn are developed into higher forms of themselves. But, one cannot help asking, what is it that develops or is developed? Its name, Hegel answers, is different in each stage. In the lowest form it is being, higher up it is life, and in still higher form it is mind. The only thing always present is the process (das Werden). We may, however, call the process by the name of spirit (Geist) or idea (Begriff). We may even call it God, because at least in the third term of every triadic development the process is God.

Division of Philosophy

The first and most wide-reaching consideration of the process of spirit, God, or the idea, reveals to us the truth that the idea must be studied (1) in itself; this is the subject of logic or metaphysics; (2) out of itself, in nature; this is the subject of the philosophy of nature; and (3) in and for itself, as mind; this is the subject of the philosophy of mind (Geistesphilosophie).

Philosophy of Nature

Passing over the rather abstract considerations by which Hegel shows in his "Logik" the process of the idea-in-itself through being to becoming, and finally through essence to notion, we take up the study of the development of the idea at the point where it enters into otherness in nature. In nature the idea has lost itself, because it has lost its unity and is splintered, as it were, into a thousand fragments. But the loss of unity is only apparent, because in reality the idea has merely concealed its unity. Studied philosophically, nature reveals itself as so many successful attempts of the idea to emerge out of the state of otherness and present itself to us as a better, fuller, richer idea, namely, spirit, or mind. MInd is, therefore, the goal of nature. It is also the truth of nature. For whatever is in nature is realized in a higher form in the mind which emerges from nature.

Philosophy of Mind

The philosophy of mind begins with the consideration of the individual, or subjective, mind. It is soon perceived, however, that individual, or subjective, mind is only the first stage, the in-itself stage, of mind. The next stage is objective mind, or mind objevtified in law, morality, and the State. This is mind in the condition of out-of-itself. There follows the condition of asboslute mind, the state in which mind rises above all the limitations of nature and instituitions, and is subjected to itself alone in art, religion, and philosophy. For the essence of mind is freedom, and its development must consist in breaking away from the restrictions imposed on it in it otherness by nature and human institutions.

Philosophy of History

Hegel's philosophy of the State, his theory of history, and his account of absolute mind are the most interesting portions of his philosophy and the most easily understood. The Stae, he says, is mind objectified. The individual mind, which, on account of its passions, its prejudices, and its blind impulses, is only partly free, subjects itself to the yoke of necessity---the opposite of freedom---in order to attain a fuller realization of itself in the freedom of the citizen. This yoke of necessity is first met with in the recognition of the rights of others, next in morality, and finally in social morality, of which the primal institution is the family. Aggregates of families form civil society, which, however, is but an imperfect form of organization compared with the State. The State is the perfect social embodiment of the idea, and stands in this stage of development for God Himself. The State, studied in itself, furnishes for our consideration constitutional law. In relation to other States it develops international law; and in its general course through historical vicissitudes it passes through what Hegel calls the "Dialectics of History". Hegel teaches that the constitution is the collective spirit of the nation and that the government is the embodiment of that spirit. Each nation has its own individual spirit, and the greatest of crimes is the act by which the tryrant or the conqueror stifles the spirit of a nation. War, he teaches, is an indispensable means of political progress. It is a crisis in the development of the idea which is embodied in the different States, and out of this crisis the better State is certain to emerge victorious. The "ground" of historical development is, therefore, rational; since the State is the embodiment of reason as spirit. All the apparently contingent events of history are in reality stages in the logical unfolding of the sovereign reason which is embodied in the State. Passions, impulse, interest, character, personality---all these are either the expression of reason or the instruments which reason moulds for its own use.We are, therefore, to understand historical happenings as the stern, reluctant working of reason towards the full realization of itself in perfect freedom. Consequently, we must interpret history in purely rational terms, and throw the succession of events into logical categories. Thus, the widest view of history reveals three most important stages of development. Oriental monarchy (the stage of oneness, of suppression of freedom), Greek democracy (the stage of expansion, in which freedom was lost in unstable demagogy), and Christian constitutional monarchy (which represents the reintegration of freedom in constitutional government).

Philosophy of Absolute Mind

Even in the State, mind is limited by subjection to other minds. There remains the final step in the process of the acquistion of freedom, namely, that by which absolute mind in art, religion, and philosophy subjects itself to itself alone. In art, mind has the intuitive contemplation of itself as realized in the art material, and the development of the arts has been conditioned by the ever-increasing "docility" with which the art material lends itself to the actualization of mind or the idea. In religion, mind feels the superiority of itself to the particularizing limitations of finite things. Here, as in the philosophy of history, there are three great moments, Oriental religion, which exaggerated the idea of the infinite, Greek religion, which gave undue importance to the finite, and Christianity, which represents the union of the infinite and the finite. Last of all, absolute mind, as philosophy, transcends the limitations imposed on it even in religious feeling, and, discarding representative intuition, attains all truth under the form of reason. Wahtever truth there is in art and in religion is contained in philosophy, in a higher form, and free from all limitations. Philosophy is, therefore, "the highest, freest and wisest phase of the uinion of subjective and objective mind, and the ultimate goal of all development.

Hegelian School

Hegel's immediate followers in Germany are generally divided into the "Hegelian Rightists" and the "Hegelian Leftists". The Rightists developed his philosophy along lines which they considered to be in accordance with Christian teaching. They are Goschel, Gabler, Rosenkranz, and Johann Eduard Erdmann. The Leftists accentuated the anti-Christian tendencies of Hegel's system and developed schools of Materialism, Socialism, Rationalism, and Pantheism. They are Feuerbach, Richter, Karl Marx, Bruno Bauer, and Strauss. In England, Hegelianism was represented during the nineteenth century by Stirling, Thomas Hill Green, John Caird, Edward Caird, Nettleship, McTaggart, and Baillie. Of these the most important is Thomas Hill Green. Hegelianism in America is represented by Thomas Watson and William T. Harris. In its most recent form it seems to take its inspiration from Thomas Hill Green, and whatever influence it exerts is opposed to the prevalent pragmatic tendency. In Italy the Hegelian movement has had manydistinguished adherents, the chief of whom at the present time is Benedetto Croce, who as an exponent of Hegelianism occupies in his own country the position occupied in France by Vicherot towards the end of the nineteenth century. Among Catholic philosophers who were influenced by Hegel the most prominent were Georg Hermes (q.v.), and Anton Gunther (q.v.). Their doctrines, especially their rejection of the distinction between natural and supernatural truth, were condemned by the Church.

Influence of Hegel

The far reaching influence of Hegel is due in a measure to the undoubted vastness of the scheme of philosophical synthesis which he conceived and partly realized. A philosophy which undertook to organize under the single formula of triadic development every department of knowledge, from abstract logic up to the philosophy of history, has a great deal of attractiveness to those who are metaphysically inclined. But hegel's influence is due in a still larger measure to two extrinsic circumstances. His philosophy is the highest expression of that spirit of collectivism which characterized the ninetheenth century, and it is also the most extended application of the principle of development which dominated nineteenth-century thought in literature, science, and even in theology. In theology especially Hegel revolutionized the methods opf inquiry. The application of his notion of development to Biblical criticism and to historical investigation is obvious to anyone who compares the spirit and purpose of contemporary theology with the spirit and purpose of the theological literature of the first half of the nineteenth century. In science, too, and in literature, the substitution of the category of becoming for the category of being is a very patent fact, and is due to the influence of Hegel's method. In political economy and political science the effect of Hegel's collectivistic conception of the State supplanted to a large extent the individualistic conception which was handed down from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth. Whether these changes are for good or for ill remains to be seen. Some of them have certainly wrought so much evil, especially in theology, in our own day, that one can hardly dare to hope that they will in the future be productive of much benefit to philosophy or to scientific method.

Estimate of Hegel's Philosphy

The very vastness of the Hegelian plan doomed it to failure. "The rational alone is real" was a favourite motto of Hegel. It means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories. This is a Gnosticism more detrimental to Christian conceptions than the Agnosticism of Huxley and Spencer. It implies that God, being a reality, must be capable of comprehension by the finite mind. It impliess, moreover, as Hegel himself admits, that Godis only in so far as He is conceived under the category of Becoming; God is a process. It is by this doctrine, which is at once so out of place in a great system of metaphysics and so utterly repugnant to the Christian mind, that Hegel's philosophy is to be judged. Hegel attempted the impossible. A complete synthesis of reality in terms of reason is possible only to an infinite mind. Man, whose mental power is finite, must be content with a partially complete synthesis of reality and learn in his failure to attain completeness he should learn that God, Who evades his rational synthesis and defies the limitations of his categories, is the object of faith as well as of knowledge. [Adapted from Catholic Encyclopedia (1910)]

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Che Guevara (1928-1967)

Quotation

In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.

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Biographical

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (June 14, 1928 - October 9, 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader. Member of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Revolutionary Movement, which seized power in Cuba in 1959. After the revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel Castro in the new government of Cuba, and the man chiefly responsible for moving Castro towards communism. A rebel at heart, Guevara did not settle in as part of the new Cuban government, and tried (without much success) to stage revolutions through guerilla warfare in various countries, notably Congo and Bolivia, where he was captured by the government and executed.

Detailed Biography

Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in a family of mixed Spanish and Irish descent. The date of birth recorded on his birth certificate was June 14, 1928, but his true date of birth was May 14, 1928. The birth certificate was deliberately falsified to help shield the family from scandal relating to his mother's having been three months pregnant when she was married.

Guevara's ancestor Patrick Lynch, founder of the Argentine branch of the Lynches, was born in Ireland in 1715. He left for Bilbao, Spain, and traveled from there to Argentina. Francisco Lynch (Guevara's great-grandfather) was born in 1817, and Ana Lynch (his grandmother) in 1861. Her son Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Guevara's father) was born in 1900. Lynch married Celia de la Serna and had five children.

In this upper-middle class family with significantly left-wing views, Guevara became known for his dynamic and radical perspective even as a boy. Though suffering from the crippling bouts of asthma that were to handicap him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete. In 1948, he entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. There he also excelled as a scholar; he completed his medical studies in March1953.

He spent many of his holidays traveling around Latin America. In 1951, Guevara's older friend, Alberto Granado, a biochemist and a political radical, suggested that Guevara take a year off his medical studies to embark on a trip they had talked of doing for years, traversing South America on a Norton 500 cc motorcycle nicknamed La Poderosa ("The mighty one"), with the idea of spending a few weeks volunteering at a leper colony in Peru on the banks of the Amazon River during the trip. Guevara and the 29-year-old Alberto soon set off from their hometown of Alta Gracia. Guevara narrated this journey in The Motorcycle Diaries, translated in 1996 (and turned into a motion picture of the same name in 2004). Through his first-hand observations of the poverty and powerlessness of the masses, he decided that the only remedy for Latin America's social inequities lay in revolution. His travels also taught him to look upon Latin America not as a collection of separate nations but as a cultural and economic entity, the liberation of which would require an intercontinental strategy. Upon his return to Argentina, he completed his medical studies as quickly as he could, to enable him to continue his adventures traveling around South America.

Guatamala

Following his graduation from the University of Buenos Aires medical school in 1953, Guevara went to Guatemala, where President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman headed a populist left-wing government that, through various reforms, particularly land reform, was attempting to bring about a social revolution. Around this time, Guevara also acquired his famous nickname, "Che". (In Argentina, "Che" is used similarly to "mate" or "pal" in English; in other parts of Latin America, it is slang for someone from Argentina.)

The overthrow of the Arbenz government by a 1954 CIA-backed coup d'etat was, in Guevara's view, proof that the United States would always oppose governments that attempted to address the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries of the world. This helped strengthen his view that socialism was the only true way to remedy such problems. Following the coup, Guevara volunteered to fight, but Arbenz told his supporters to leave the country, and Guevara briefly took refuge in the Argentine consulate.

Cuba

Following his graduation from the University of Buenos Aires medical school in 1953, Guevara went to Guatemala, where President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman headed a populist left-wing government that, through various reforms, particularly land reform, was attempting to bring about a social revolution. Around this time, Guevara also acquired his famous nickname, "Che". (In Argentina, "Che" is used similarly to "mate" or "pal" in English; in other parts of Latin America, it is slang for someone from Argentina.)

The overthrow of the Arbenz government by a 1954CIA-backed coup d'etat was, in Guevara's view, proof that the United States would always oppose governments that attempted to address the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries of the world. This helped strengthen his view that socialism was the only true way to remedy such problems. Following the coup, Guevara volunteered to fight, but Arbenz told his supporters to leave the country, and Guevara briefly took refuge in the Argentine consulate.

Revolutionary Government

After Castro's troops entered the capital of Havana on January 2, 1959, a new socialist government was established. Shortly thereafter, Guevara became a Cuban citizen and divorced his Peruvian wife, Hilda Gedea, with whom he had one daughter. Later, he married a member of Castro's army, Aleida March. The couple would have four children together.

Che Guevara became as prominent in the new government as he had been in the revolutionary army. After serving as the military commander of the La Cabana fort, Guevara became an official at the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, president of the National Bank of Cuba, and Minister of Industries. In this capacity, Guevara faced the challenge of adapting Cuba's capitalist agrarian economy into a socialist industrial economy. After negotiating a trade agreement with the Soviet Union in 1960, Guevara represented Cuba on many commercial missions and delegations to Soviet-aligned nations in Africa and Asia after the United States imposed an embargo on the nation.

In 1959, Guevara was appointed commander of the La Cabana Fortress prison. During his term as commander of the fortress from 1959-1963, he oversaw the executions of hundreds of political prisoners and regime opponents (estimates range from 500 to 1700). Many individuals imprisoned at La Cabana, such as poet and human rights activist Armando Valladares, allege that Guevara took particular and personal interest in the interrogation, torture, and execution of some prisoners.

Guevara helped guide the Castro regime on its leftward and pro-Communist path. An active participant in the economic and social reforms brought about by Castro's government, he became known in the West for his outspoken opposition to all forms of imperialism and neocolonialism and for his fiery attacks on U.S. foreign policy in Africa, Asia, and especially Latin America.

During this period, he defined Cuba's policies and his own views in many speeches, articles, letters, and essays, the most important of which are two books on guerrilla warfare. El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba is an examination of Cuba's new brand of socialism and Communist ideology. His highly influential manual on guerrilla strategy and tactics (English translation, Guerrilla Warfare, 1961) advocated peasant-based revolutionary movements in the developing countries.

Prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Guevara was part of a Cuban delegation to Moscow in early 1962 with Raúl Castro where he endorsed the planned placement of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Guevara believed that the placement of Soviet missiles would protect Cuba from any direct military action against it from the United States. Jon Lee Anderson reports that after the crisis Guevara told Sam Russell, a British correspondent for the socialist newspaper Daily Worker, that if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off.

Guevara's book, Guerrilla Warfare, was seen for a time as the definitive philosophy for fighting irregular wars. Guevara believed that a small group (foco) of guerrillas, by violently targeting the government, could actively foment revolutionary feelings among the general populace, so that it was not necessary to build broad organizations and advance the revolutionary struggle in measured steps before launching armed insurrection. However, the failure of his "Cuban Style" revolution in Bolivia was thought to have been due to his lack of grassroots support there, and hence this strategy is now thought by some to be ineffective.

Congo

He persuaded Castro to back him in the first, covert Cuban involvement in Africa. Guevara desired to first work with the pro-Lumumba, Marxist Simba movement in the former Belgian Congo (later Zaire and currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo). In 1964, Guevara was assisted for a time in the former Belgian Congo by guerrilla leader Laurent Kabila, who helped Lumumba supporters lead a revolt that was eventually suppressed in 1965 by the Congolese army as well as the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Guevara dismissed Kabila as insignificant. "Nothing leads me to believe he is the man of the hour," Guevara wrote.

Guevara was only 35 at that time and had never had any formal military training. His asthma prevented him from going in to military service in Argentina, a fact of which he was proud, given his opposition to the government. He had the experiences of the Cuban revolution, including his successful march on Santa Clara, Cuba, in late 1958, which was central to Batista finally being overthrown by Castro's forces. However, as Guevara was to discover, working under the direction of a gifted revolutionary leader does not make oneself a gifted revolutionary leader.

U.S. Army Special Forces advisors working with the Congolese army were able to monitor Guevara's communications, arrange to ambush the rebels and the Cubans whenever they attempted to attack, and interdict Guevara's supply lines. Guevara proved unable to supplant the native Simba leadership, and in fact was forced to place his troops under Simba command. Late that same year, ill, humiliated and with only a few survivors of the force he had brought into the country, Guevara left the Congo.

Disappearance from Cuba

After April 1965 Guevara dropped out of public life and then vanished altogether. Guevara was not seen in public after his return to Havana on March 14 from a three-month tour of the People's Republic of China, the United Arab Republic (Egypt), Algeria, Ghana, and Congo-Brazzaville. Guevara's whereabouts were the great mystery of 1965 in Cuba, as he was regarded as second in power to Castro himself.

His disappearance was variously attributed to the relative failure of the industrialization scheme he had advocated while minister of industry, to pressure exerted on Castro by Soviet officials disapproving of Guevara's pro-Chinese Communist outlook as the Sino-Soviet split grew more pronounced, and to serious differences between Guevara and the Cuban leadership regarding Cuba's economic development and ideological line.

Guevara's pro-Chinese orientation was increasingly problematic for Cuba as the Cuban economy became more and more dependent on the Soviet Union. Since the early days of the Cuban revolution Guevara had been considered an advocate of Maoist strategy in Latin America and the originator of a plan for swift industrialization of Cuba. According to Western observers of the Cuban situation, the fact that Guevara was opposed to Soviet recommendations that Castro seemed obliged to agree to might have been the reason for his disappearance.

Indeed, by this point Guevara had grown more skeptical of the Soviet Union. He saw the Northern Hemisphere, led by the U.S. in the West and the Soviets in the East, as the exploiter of the Southern Hemisphere. But he strongly supported the Communist side in the Vietnam War, despite North Vietnam's pro-Soviet position, and urged his comrades in South America to create "many Vietnams".

Pressed by international speculations on Guevara's fate, Castro said on June 16 that the people would be informed about Guevara when Guevara himself wished to let them know. Numerous rumors about his disappearance spread both inside and outside Cuba. On October 3 of that year, Castro revealed an undated letter purportedly written to him by Guevara some months earlier in which Guevara reaffirmed his enduring solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but stated his intention to leave Cuba to fight abroad for the cause of the revolution. He explained that "other nations are calling for the help of my modest efforts" and that, having "always identified with the world outcome of our Revolution", he had decided to go and fight as a guerrilla in different parts of the world. In the letter Guevara announced his resignation from all his positions in the government, in the party, and in the Army, and renounced his Cuban citizenship, which had been granted to him in 1959 in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the revolution.

During an interview with four foreign correspondents on November 1, Castro remarked that he knew where Guevara was but that he would not disclose the place, and added, denying reports that his former comrade-in-arms was dead, that "he is in the best of health". Despite Castro's assurances the fate of Guevara remained a mystery at the end of 1965. Guevara's movements and whereabouts remained a secret for the next two years.

Bolivia

May Day rally in Havana, the Acting Minister of the armed forces, Maj. Juan Almeida, announced that Guevara was "serving the revolution somewhere in Latin America". The persistent reports that he was assisting the guerrillas in Bolivia were ultimately proven true.

A parcel of jungle land in Nancahazu was purchased by native Bolivian Communists and turned over to him for use as a training area. The evidence suggests that this training was more hazardous than combat to Guevara and the Cubans accompanying him. Little was accomplished in the way of building a guerrilla army. On learning of his presence in Bolivia, President Rene Barrientos is alleged to have expressed the desire to see Guevara's head displayed on a pike in downtown La Paz. He ordered the Bolivian Army to hunt Guevara and his followers down.

Guevara's guerrillas, numbering about 120, were well equipped and scored a number of early successes in difficult terrain in the mountainous Camiri region of the country against Bolivian regulars. In September, however, the Army managed to eliminate two guerrilla groups, reportedly killing one of the leaders.

Guevara's hope of fomenting revolution in Bolivia appears to have been predicated upon a number of misconceptions. He had expected to deal only with the country's military government. However, there was a U.S. presence in Bolivia. After the U.S. government learned of his location, CIA operatives were sent into Bolivia to aid the anti-insurrection effort. He had expected to deal with a poorly trained and equipped national army. Instead, the Bolivian Army was being trained by U.S. Army Special Forces advisors, including a recently organized elite battalion of Rangers trained in jungle warfare. Guevara had also not received the expected assistance and cooperation from the local dissidents when he undertook his journey. Moreover, Bolivia's Moscow-oriented Communist Party did not aid him in the insurrection.

Guevara and his associates found themselves hamstrung in Bolivia by the American aid and military trainers to the Bolivian government and a lack of assistance from his allies. In addition, the CIA also helped anti-Castro Cuban exiles set up interrogation houses for those Bolivians thought to be assisting Guevara and/or his guerrillas. Some were tortured for information.

The Bolivians were notified of the location of Guevara's guerrilla encampment by a deserter. On October 8, the encampment was encircled and Guevara was captured while leading a patrol in the vicinity of La Higuera. His surrender was offered after being wounded in the legs and having his rifle destroyed by a bullet. According to soldiers present at the capture, during the skirmish as soldiers approached Guevara he allegedly shouted, "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead". Barrientos ordered his execution immediately upon being informed of Guevara's capture. Guevara was executed; he was taken to an old schoolhouse and bound by his hands to a board. Che Guevara did have some last words before his death; he allegedly said to his executioner, "I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man". He was shot in the heart.

A CIA agent and veteran of the U.S. invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, Felix Rodriguez headed the hunt for Guevara in Bolivia. After hearing of Guevara's capture Rodriguez relayed the information to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia via CIA stations in various South American nations. Although Rodriguez despised Guevara for his involvement in the execution of several of his own family members, he noted how bravely Guevara accepted his fate after his initial cowardice. After the execution, Rodriguez took Guevara's Rolex watch, often proudly showing it to reporters during the ensuing years. Rodriguez had removed Guevara's hands to send to different parts of the world to verify his identity.

A side issue connected with the guerrillas was the arrest and trial of Regis Debray. In April 1967 government forces captured Debray, a young French Marxist theoretician and writer, and accused him of collaborating with the guerrillas. Debray claimed that he had merely been acting as a reporter, and that Che, who had mysteriously disappeared several years earlier, was leading the guerrillas.

As Debray's trial -- which had become an international cause celebre -- was beginning in early October, Bolivian authorities on October 11 reported that Guevara had been shot and killed in an engagement with government forces on October 9. The former Cuban leader's body was publicly displayed and photographed, and fingerprints were offered as proof of identification.

On October 15 Castro admitted that the death had occurred and proclaimed three days of public mourning throughout Cuba. The death of Guevara was regarded as a severe blow to the socialist revolutionary movements throughout Latin America.

In 1997, the skeletal remains of Guevara's body were exhumed, positively identified by DNA matching and returned to Cuba, where he is revered as a heroic revolutionary leader. On the 12 July1997 Guevara's remains were buried with full military honours in the city of Santa Clara, in the province of Las Villas, where Guevara won the decisive battle of the Cuban Revolution.

The Bolivian Diary

Also removed was Guevara's diary, which outlined the guerrilla war being fought in Bolivia. It tells of the group being forced to begin operations due to discovery by the Bolivian Army, the eventual split of the group, and the general failure of the guerrillas. It shows the split between Guevara and the Bolivian Communist Party that resulted in Guevara having significantly fewer soldiers than originally anticipated. It shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty recruiting from the local populace, due mainly to the fact that the guerrilla group had learned Quechua and not the local language. As the campaign drew to an unexpected close, Guevara became increasingly ill. He suffered from asthma, and most of his last offensives were carried out to obtain medicine. The Bolivian Diary was quickly and crudely translated by Ramparts magazine and circulated around the world. Fidel Castro has denied involvement with this.

Hero Cult

While pictures of Guevara's dead body were being circulated and the circumstances of his death were being debated, Guevara's legend began to spread. Demonstrations in protest against his assassination occurred throughout the world, and articles, tributes, and poems were written about his life and death.

Even liberal elements that felt little sympathy with Guevara's Communist ideals during his lifetime expressed admiration for his spirit of self-sacrifice. He is singled out from other revolutionaries by many young people in the West because he rejected a comfortable background to fight for global revolution. And when he gained power in Cuba, he gave up all the trappings of privilege and power in Cuba in order to return to the revolutionary battlefield and ultimately, to die.

In the late 1960s, he became a popular icon for revolution and youthful political ideals in Western culture. A dramatic photograph of Guevara taken by photographer Alberto Korda in 1961 soon became one of the century's most recognizable images, and the portrait was simplified and reproduced on a vast array of merchandise, such as T-shirts, posters, and baseball caps. Guevara's reputation even extended into theatre, where he is depicted as the narrator in the musical Evita. This portrays Guevara as becoming disillusioned with Eva Peron and her dictator husband, Juan Domingo Peron because of Peron's increasing corruption and tyranny. It was written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The narrator role involves creative license, because Guevara's only interaction with Eva Peron was to write her a facetious letter in his youth, asking for a jeep. Called "the most complete human being of our age" by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Guevara's supporters believe he may yet prove to be the most important thinker and activist in Latin America since Simon Bolivar, leader of the South American independence movement and hero to subsequent generations of nationalists throughout Latin America.

26th of July Movement

The 26th of July Movement (Movimiento 26 de Julio) was the revolutionary organisation led by Fidel Castro that in 1959 overthrew the Fulgencio Batista regime in Cuba. Its name originated from the attack on the Santiago army barracks on July 26, 1953. The movement began organising from Mexico in 1955 by a group of exiled revolutionaries (including Castro and numbering a mere 81 people). Their task was to form a disciplined guerrilla force ready to overthrow Batista. Some members of the movement remaining in Cuba carried out acts of sabotage and tried to stir up political discontent there. The Argentinian Che Guevara joined the group in Mexico.

On December 2, 1956, 82 men landed in Cuba, having sailed in the boat Granma from Mexico, ready to organise and lead a revolution to be rid of the Batista regime. The early signs were not good for the movement as they landed in broad daylight and were spotted by the Cuban Air Force. The landing party were split into two and wandered lost for two days with most of their supplies abandoned where they landed.

They managed to regroup though and headed for the Sierra mountain range where they encountered the Cuban Army with Guevara taking a minor injury to the neck in the fighting. This was the opening phase of the war of the Cuban Revolution which was to last for two years. It ended in January, 1959 after Batista had fled Cuba on New Year's Eve. The movement's forces marched into Havana to be greeted by a general strike of the workers. Of the 82 who came ashore sailed aboard the Granma only 12 eventually regrouped in the Sierra Maestra.

After the revolution's success the 26th of July Movement was joined with other bodies to form the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which in turn became the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Che Guevara.]

Books from Alibris: Che Guevara