The solidarity between villages belonging to the same group is very great, and the solidarity among members of the same village is even greater, although within the limited framework of the natural life I have described, at least for our zone. In other regions, they are forced to gather certain products of the bountiful Congolese nature to serve the capitalists: for example, resin, elephant tusks in an earlier period or palm nuts for oil. This gives rise to a different type of relation, which I have not examined in depth. At the other extreme, there are nuclei of a developing proletariat in areas where the Union Minière decided to run some of its processing operations in the Congo. At first, these workers were brought in by force because their natural environment meant they had no need to change the way they lived. Now it seems that, despite starvation wages (in European terms), this proletariat is not a rebellious element. Perhaps there is still nostalgia for the old life of freedom, but it has been tempted by a few of the comforts that civilization provides. I must apologize again for the superficiality of this analysis, which is based on fragmentary practical experience and poor general knowledge of the social question in the Congo.
In any case, what strategy should be pursued? Evidently there are points of conflict in the towns, significant inflation, recolonization with a marked discrimination not only by whites against blacks but now also by rich blacks against poor blacks, and a certain return to the villages by many people who had been drawn to the city lights. These sources of discontent may stir isolated revolts, but the only decisive force is the colonial army, which offers all the good perks and intervenes only to protect them or to develop them further.
The peasantry lives in absolute poverty, but it is not much worse than it was 10 years ago. Except in the war zones, the peasant feels no need to pick up a gun because objectively declining conditions of life make that course of action a vital necessity. Furthermore, it should be explained that, in order to evaluate the objective conditions properly, it is much less important to consider one people’s level in comparison to that of other peoples, than it is to consider it in comparison with itself. The poverty of our peasantry in South America is real with respect to itself; exploitation is increasing, as are hunger and poverty. In many parts of the Congo, however, this is presumably not the case. All this gives some idea of how difficult it is to stir a country into revolt around largely economic slogans. I have already referred to the main demand of this kind in a people’s war, and the obvious one is the demand for land. Tribal relations are one lever that is widely used, but you can’t get very far with that in a war of liberation. I can’t say whether it is useful or necessary to have recourse to it at an early stage, but obviously there can be no advance unless it leads toward destruction of the tribal concept. As long as this remains in place amid attempted advances, the evolving tribal group will tend to clash not with the army of the oppressors, but with the neighboring tribe. In the development of the struggle, tribes must unite in pursuit of a common objective, which is why it is so important to establish that objective and the party or the man who symbolizes it.
A very important factor in the development of the struggle is the universality that it is acquiring. Clearly imperialism scores a victory when there is a retreat in the popular struggle anywhere in the world; and by the same token, it suffers a defeat when a genuinely progressive government comes to power anywhere in the world. We should not think of countries as self-contained areas for the purpose of social analysis. Rather, we can say today that Latin America as a whole is a neocolonized continent where capitalist relations of production prevail, despite the numerous examples of feudal relations, and where a clearly popular, anti-imperialist (that is, anti-capitalist) struggle is, at the end of the day, a socialist struggle. Similarly, in the Congo or any other country of Africa, we must accept the possibility that new ideas about the world will develop that afford a glimpse of something entirely new, beyond the little local preserve for the hunting of game or the growing of crops for immediate consumption. The impact of socialist ideas must reach the broad masses in the countries of Africa, not as a transplant, but as an adaptation to new conditions. Moreover, it must offer a down-to-earth vision of major changes that can be, if not actually felt, then clearly imagined by the population.
For all this, what would be ideal would be to organize a party with a truly national base and real status among the masses, a party with solid and well-developed cadres. Such a party does not exist in the Congo. All the Lumumbaist movements are vertical structures, with leaders of a certain intellectual level totally surrounded by capitulationist and accommodating petty-bourgeois cadres.
In the conditions of the Congo, a new party based on the teachings of Marxism and adapted to the new conditions should, at least initially, base itself on prestigious figures who are recognized as honest, genuinely representative of the new Congolese nationality, self-sacrificing and capable of commanding and binding people together. These imaginary men will come from the struggle.
Today Compañero Mulele is still there, doing underground work the details of which we have no knowledge. There may also be people operating in the eastern zone where the groundwork of the guerrilla army was first laid in the revolt against oppression, with experience with firearms and an intimate conviction of the possibilities which they afford. But this is a people without faith in its leaders, and without a party to lead it. The fundamental task at the present moment is therefore the development of a party to lead the revolution at the national level, with slogans linked to the people and with cadres it respects—a task which itself requires a capable, heroic and far-sighted leadership team. The link with the workers will be achieved later on. This is not to say that we deny the so-called worker-peasant alliance, which will actually emerge early on in an alliance of the highly backward peasantry with the ideology of the proletariat. Later, the industrial workers—who, under present conditions in the Congo, are privileged in their exploitation—will close ranks with the guerrilla movement as a result of the catalyzing effect of armed activity. Armed propaganda, in the Vietnamese sense, should be a fundamental task in the development of this whole process.
It is necessary to note again that the people’s war, a guerrilla war, is a mass struggle. We cannot accept the counterposition that is sometimes made between mass struggle and guerrilla warfare (ie, a select nuclei of armed combatants). This idea is equally false when espoused by dogmatic followers of a general strategy based on the predominance of the working class, and when guerrilla warfare is put forward as a mere instrument of struggle by the most dedicated groups to seize power from the exploiters. The main role of guerrilla warfare is to educate the masses in the possibility of victory and showing them, at the same time, the possibility of a new future and the necessity of change to achieve that future in the process of the armed struggle of the entire people.5
Inevitably it will be a prolonged war. But what is important is not the ensuing process once the war has taken root in rural areas and spread to new areas, thereby causing fresh enemy defeats; what concerns us is to know how it can develop today. For although we are currently experiencing a moment of set-back and defeat, the basic conditions for armed struggle exist in this part of the Congo: a peasantry that has rebelled, a peasantry that has been defeated, abused and harassed but has tasted revolt; it has had an experience of armed struggle, it has weapons and it has lived through war.
Today the Congolese are divided into autonomous groups with local leaders, without a vision of a unified country, or even a vision of the Congo as a nation. For them, the nation is the surrounding tribes and this is why it is so important to organize the best combatants into a nucleus (even a single nucleus, made of steel), because the guerrilla force should not be increased by one man unless he makes a qualitative contribution. On this basis, a beginning can be made with military leaders present in the territory where the guerilla campaign is to be conducted. It will then grow by educating the people in the revolutionary struggle, passing through the
different stages of history at breakneck speed. From the current primitivism (which in some cases in close to primitive communism), to slavery or to feudalism, it is necessary to move to the most advanced concepts. The people must gradually become armed, essentially through its own resources. It becomes educated through its own efforts. Let every weapon be a reward to the guerrilla combatant; let him receive it only when he carries out all the necessary tasks required for the maintenance of the people’s army; let the weapon be a confirmation of his state of grace as a people’s fighter. To accomplish this huge and patient task we will clearly have to begin by sweeping aside the present cadres; we should simply disregard them, and begin with a nucleus as small as necessary, as large as possible. In this way new leadership cadres will emerge, tempered through sacrifice and combat as they undergo death’s rigorous selection on the battlefield.
Given these conditions, it is essential that a far-sighted leader emerge, a self-sacrificing and prestigious leader who, operating inside the country, is an actor in the impetuous development of the conditions for revolution. This great process of struggle will have to create the soldier, the cadre and the leader simultaneously because, strictly speaking, none exist today. The struggle will have to move from the countryside to the villages to the towns, first of all in small groups that do not require a rigid defense of territory. These groups will have to improve their technique of rapid concentration and dispersal and undergo a methodical apprenticeship in modern military technique and guerrilla warfare, constantly sowing the revolutionary seed through their example. This is the road to victory. The more rapidly capable and self-sacrificing leaders emerge who can in turn lead capable and self-sacrificing middle-level cadres, guiding the development of the people’s army based on a rebellious peasantry, the sooner will victory be achieved.
The scale of the problems is enormous. We need to turn our attention to revolutionary theory and practice, to make a serious study of the methods, to find the most appropriate ways of linking the peasantry to the people’s army and turning all this into a single force. A long but qualitatively irreversible stage of protracted warfare will then begin, through which other layers will be won over in remote regions and the proletariat of the industrial areas of the Congo will itself be incorporated. It is not possible to say how long this will take—only that it can be done. We are strongly assisted by the present conditions of humanity, the development of socialist ideas, and the cruelty of an enemy who always offers a negative countervision to the hopes placed in the people’s army. After some years, victory will come.
I believe that Africa is important for imperialism, especially US imperialism, as a reserve. When the people’s war develops in all its magnitude in the regions of Latin America, it will become difficult for it to keep exploiting on the same scale the great natural wealth and markets that are the basis of the power of imperialism. But if Africa meanwhile calmly develops its system of neocolonialism, with no great commotion, investments could be transferred there—this has already begun—as a way of ensuring the survival of imperialism. For that vast and immensely rich continent has hardly been tapped.
Within the framework of a global struggle, the strategy for Africa is to prevent the reserve bases of imperialism from remaining quiescent, and that is why each people must drive forward to the maximum its struggle for genuine liberation, as part of its duty within the great struggle of the peoples of the world. And our obligation is to give consistent support to the movements that offer hope of a real and serious mobilization for victory.6
What will be our participation in all this? Perhaps we will send a nucleus of cadres chosen from among those who already have some experience in the Congo and have not undergone the collapse that I have described; perhaps we should send weapons, if the allies permit it; perhaps we should give financial aid and help in training cadres. But we must change one of the concepts that guided our revolutionary strategy to date. We have spoken of unconditional aid, and that is a mistake. Offering aid means taking a position—and that position is taken on the basis of certain analyses of the trustworthiness and effectiveness of a revolutionary movement in the struggle against imperialism, in the struggle for the liberation of a country. In order to be sure of such analyses, we have to know the movements in question better, and to do this we have to intervene more inside them. Aid should be conditional; if not we run the risk of the aid turning into the exact opposite of what we intend, becoming money that allows the lords of the revolution to enjoy princely holidays, and the Freedom Fighters to sacrifice and sell out their people and hold back the development of the revolution. If that happens, we turn ourselves into allies of imperialism. Nothing is cheaper for imperialism than to drop a few thousand dollars on the table at a conference of liberation movements in Africa. (I have no doubt that, if it does not already do this, it will in the future.) The distribution of the money then causes more conflicts, divisions and defeats than an army would inflict on the battlefield.
We must draw our conclusions from these real objective facts and condition our aid on the revolutionary conduct of the movements and their leaders. To replace colonialism with neocolonialism, or one group of neocolonialists with another group that does not look so bad, is not a correct revolutionary strategy.
Finally, if I were asked whether I think there is any figure in the Congo who could become a national leader, I would not be able to answer in the affirmative—leaving aside Mulele, whom I don’t know. The only man who has genuine qualities of a mass leader is, in my view, Kabila. The purest of revolutionaries cannot lead a revolution unless he has certain qualities of a leader, but a man who has qualities of a leader cannot, simply for that reason, carry a revolution forward. It is essential to have revolutionary seriousness, an ideology that can be a guide to action, a spirit of sacrifice that accompanies one’s actions. To date, Kabila has shown that he possesses none of these qualities. He is young and might change, but I will be so bold as to state here (in a text that probably will see the light of day only after many years have passed), that I have very great doubts about his ability to overcome his defects in the environment in which he operates. The other well-known Congolese leaders will all be swept away by events. New ones are probably today somewhere inside the country starting to write the real history of the liberation of the Congo.
January 1966
1. This evaluation corresponds to Che Guevara’s concept of the two dimensions of revolutionary struggle—military and political—and not just military, as is sometimes argued. Similarly, his observations about the role of the political commissar and others assigned to those roles are consistent with the value Che placed on the ethical and exemplary behavior required of the members of the revolutionary vanguard. See Che’s essay, “Socialism and Man in Cuba” in Che Guevara Reader (Ocean Press).
2. Che was an avid reader throughout his life, including during his time in the Congo and as a guerrilla in Bolivia. He read Cuban and universal literature, as well as texts on history and politics, both general and specific to those two countries in particular. Che considered the conscious, critical study of philosophy (including but not restricted to Marxist writings) was an indispensable part of the education both of the vanguard and the people in general, but urged an avoidance of the traps of dogmatism, adaptation and philosophical toadyism as he expressed in a letter to Armando Hart, at the time organization secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, dated December 4, 1965.
His profound and systematic study of philosophy was based on a reading program organized historically and thematically, from the classics to the giants of dialectical materialism to modern-day philosophers. It included the classics of economic thought, Marx and Marxist thought, the subject of socialist transition, and also heterodox and capitalist thinkers and polemics. In this regard see the letter mentioning this study plan in Self-Portrait, by Ernesto Che Guevara, (Ocean Press, pp. 212-214).
3. An analysis of the various contradictions, in their fundame
ntal forms, that characterized this historical stage can be found in Che’s speeches in Geneva on March 25, 1964, and at the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 11, 1964. These contradictions, which Che believed should be viewed both in political and economic terms, were between the socialist countries and capitalist countries, between different capitalist countries, and the contradiction between the camp of the exploited countries and the exploiting countries. In this last case, as he had said at the Second Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian Solidarity in Algeria, this meant both the struggle against imperialism in its colonial and neocolonial forms, as well as the struggle against the backwardness and poverty that result from its domination since “both are stages of the same road that lead to the creation of a new society that is both rich and just,” which would be a socialist society.
4. Latin America was always central to Che’s revolutionary thought and actions from his first trip on a motorbike through the continent as a medical student. For a comprehensive presentation of Che’s analysis of Latin America, see The Awakening of Latin America, (Ocean Press).