Do you happen to have links to the Guevara articles in Spanish? I’m pushing the limits of my new books budget
Dam, I know that feeling.
The Spanish version of article I quoted is here:
Guevara (1965): El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba.
The links below may be very useful. Its easily the best resource for original Marxist material on the internet.
Marxist Internet Archive (Spainish):
Marxists Internet Archive - Sección en Español
Available works of Che Guevara (Spainish):
Che Guevara: Escritos
It's one of my two main criticisms of communism. Personally, I think it's why communism ends up being associated with some rather horrible tyrant types.
Kudos to you for giving me the honest answer. I always prefer an honest "I'm not sure how it's supposed to work" to a contrived attempt to make it look like you do know.
I think part of the problem here is perceptual. There's a rather elegant passage in The Wealth of Nations where Smith explains how capitalism arose from monarchies in spite of the aristocracy trying to prevent it. I happen to agree that capitalism doesn't have to be forced upon anyone...it occurs naturally, hence the designation "free market".
It certainly explains their views of the topic...I however, disagree. I think on a very fundamental level, capitalism is an expression of individual interests. It's certainly not an expression of collective interests...but I don't know how one defines those without treading into some dangerous ethical territory.
Thanks. Its a question with far-reaching consequences and I'm not really sure which side I'm on ultimately. Its worth mentioning that the very definition of "freedom" is different in Marxist literature than will be found amongst "Classical Liberal" texts.
So using Google search, Liberty is defined as:
"the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's behaviour or political views."
The Marxist definition of freedom is different because of the background philosophy to it. I'll quote it in context so you get an idea of why it's different. Marxists believe that
everything is governed by laws of cause and effect or necessity, and so it is only by gaining knowledge of those laws that we can harness them and use them in such a way that serves our interests.
"Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence of natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental life of men themselves- two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought and not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with real knowledge of the subject ...
Freedom therefore consists of the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on the knowledge of natural necessity." (Quote from Fredrick Engels, Anti-Duhring)
The idea of defining Freedom as Control obviously raises some hair-raising questions as if freedom means control over other people effectively as slaves, making them instruments to serve anothers interests. Freedom, or rather "freedom of action" basically means Power (using Google again):
"the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way."
So its not very re-assuring when this is applied to legal and constitutional arrangements. There is no consistent position on Marxists on whether "Liberty" actually has a place in a Communist system. For example, "Freedom of Speech" under Communism means something different because it assumes a) the validity of Marxist conception of nature and society that everything is governed by casual laws and b) that those laws must be harnessed in the interests of the Communist Party representing the ruling class in the worker's state. i.e. you can only say what the communist party agrees with based on the assumption it is the source of scientific knowledge for "correctly" managing society. Speech which is regarded as distorting Marxist "Scientific" knowledge is therefore regarded as harmful and restricted.
So if the basic philosophy behind Marxism is wrong, its not hard to see how economic and political liberalism could therefore have advantages if you don't want to have a society where you are going to be compelled to do what the Party tells you to. Its a leap in the dark from what we are used to however you look at it.