Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy and the Lessons of His Struggle

9 October 1967 — 2026 · 59 years remembered

“Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man.”

Final words attributed to Che Guevara in some accounts; the precise wording varies between sources. Source

Fifty-nine years after Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia on 9 October 1967, at just 39 years of age, his image and struggle continue to inspire new generations.

Flags, banners, portraits and slogans bearing Che’s image are still widely displayed, including at demonstrations and protests. While for some his image is merely a fashion statement, many others use it as a means of expressing protest or making a political declaration. For them, Che Guevara is a symbol of struggle and internationalism, representing the aspiration to build a better world and society based on socialist ideas.

Today, in many countries, politicians and state institutions are seen as corrupt, unrepresentative of the people’s interests, untrustworthy and concerned only with themselves. In contrast, Che is regarded by many young people as a principled fighter and revolutionary.

Alongside examining Che’s experiences and his struggle against oppression, we must also draw lessons from his political weaknesses. This is important for a new generation of young people and workers confronting injustice, war and the crisis of capitalism.

Che joins the struggle

As a medical student in Argentina, Che could undoubtedly have pursued a comfortable life. Instead, he became a committed revolutionary, prepared to break from his middle-class background and join the oppressed and the poor in their struggle against imperialism and capitalism.

His travels across Latin America in the early 1950s brought him face to face with poverty and appalling social conditions. His 1952 journey with Alberto Granado was recorded in The Motorcycle Diaries. Further travels in 1953–1954, including his experiences in Guatemala, continued to shape his political outlook. What he witnessed strengthened his determination to fight injustice and the capitalist class.

During his travels, Che encountered socialist activists in Peru and impoverished mineworkers in Chile. His experiences in Guatemala had a particularly profound influence on his political development. There, he witnessed the reforming government of Jacobo Árbenz being overthrown in the CIA-backed coup of 1954. It was also in Guatemala that Che encountered Cuban political exiles fighting against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Joining the 26 July Movement in Cuba

Drawing on his experiences in Guatemala and discussions about the situation in Cuba, Che began developing his early ideas about how to build a revolutionary struggle.

From the beginning, Che rejected the approach of certain left-wing parties that sought alliances and compromises with capitalist forces in Latin America. However, he was unable to formulate a clear alternative to the opportunist policies pursued by these parties.

Eventually, while living in Mexico, he joined the 26 July Movement, led by Fidel Castro, which was fighting to overthrow the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. For Che, it offered the potential to develop a radical struggle and represented the most militant arena of resistance.

At that stage, however, the 26 July Movement was a broad coalition whose principal objective was to overthrow Batista and establish a Western-style democracy. It did not yet possess a clear programme to overthrow capitalism. Within the movement, Che represented a more radical socialist tendency and became a leader who commanded considerable support among its members.

On 2 December 1956, a group of 82 guerrilla fighters, including Che and Castro, landed in Cuba aboard the Granma. This marked the beginning of a guerrilla war that would continue for two years.

Initially, the guerrillas gained sympathy and support among poor peasants in the rural areas. As the movement expanded, people in the cities, who were equally dissatisfied with Batista’s US-backed regime, also extended their support to Castro.

Batista fled on 1 January 1959. The advance of the revolutionary fighters into the cities was greeted by masses of people filled with hope. Until then, Cuba had served as a playground for imperialist interests, with gambling and luxury prostitution catering to wealthy visitors, particularly from the United States.

The Cuban Revolution

The revolution was driven to advance further by the continuing confrontation with and opposition from the United States. In its first few years, the new government ended the domination of landlords and nationalised major capitalist interests, including US-owned companies.

This process resulted from several factors: the sustained pressure of workers and peasants demanding fundamental change, the economic embargo imposed by the United States, and assistance from the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.

The Soviet Union operated a planned economy, offering a model distinct from the capitalist market, although under bureaucratic rule. The introduction of a planned economy in Cuba represented a significant step forward and had a profound impact on popular movements throughout Latin America and across the world.

Che played an important role in this process. From the beginning, he supported the revolution taking a socialist direction. He also emphasised that the revolution could not remain confined within Cuba’s national borders. For Che, the struggle for liberation had to be international.

The working class and socialism

Although Che was determined to build an international socialist revolution, his greatest political weakness was his insufficient understanding of how such a revolution could be achieved. He was drawn towards guerrilla warfare as the principal method of winning a socialist revolution, rather than basing the struggle on the leadership of the mass working class.

Even in countries where the working class constitutes a minority of the population, its collective character and the consciousness developed through the social conditions of factories and workplaces prepare workers to confront the challenges of leading a socialist revolution. This was an essential lesson of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The capitalist classes in neocolonial countries are tied to both the landlords and imperialism. They are unable to develop the economy in a comprehensive and balanced way or establish stable democracy. Where the tasks of the democratic revolution remain unfinished, they fall to the working class, supported by poor peasants and other oppressed layers. These tasks must be linked to socialist revolution and its international extension.

In Cuba, the brutality of the Batista regime and the political vacuum made guerrilla struggle appear to offer a way forward. Yet the general strike and the participation of workers in the cities at the end of the struggle also helped secure the revolution’s victory. Workers’ pressure helped push Cuba beyond the limits of the free-market system and towards a planned economy.

Drawing on the Cuban experience, Che attempted to repeat the method of guerrilla warfare, first in Africa and later in Latin America. Conditions in those countries were very different. In some, the working class occupied a much stronger position and possessed its own traditions of struggle and revolutionary experience. The lack of a rounded understanding of the working class’s role remained Che’s greatest political weakness.

The benefits of a planned economy

The Cuban Revolution demonstrated the potential of a planned economy to transform people’s lives. The expansion of education, the literacy campaign of 1961 and the provision of free healthcare were among its major social achievements.

The literacy campaign mobilised people on a mass scale and left an international legacy. It showed what could be achieved when society’s resources and collective effort were directed towards human needs.

These achievements must be defended. But they cannot be taken for granted. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the US embargo, bureaucratic mismanagement and the expansion of market measures have placed enormous pressures on Cuba’s economy and its people’s living conditions.

The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) defends the gains of the revolution while criticising bureaucratic rule. A planned economy needs democratic workers’ control and management, alongside international socialist cooperation, to develop and meet society’s needs.

What kind of regime emerged?

The government led by Castro and Che after the revolution was initially enormously popular and enjoyed widespread mass support. However, the revolutionary process did not establish a system of democratic workers’ and peasants’ power. The elements of workers’ control that emerged in some factories did not develop into democratic management by the working class itself.

Instead, a bureaucratic ruling apparatus developed, increasingly restricting the independent voice of the working class. In Cuba, Che began to encounter the obstacles that bureaucracy imposed on the further development of the revolution. He opposed the special privileges and material benefits enjoyed by government representatives and officials.

When Che visited the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, he was repulsed by the luxurious lifestyles of the ruling bureaucracies and their attitudes towards the mass of the working class. He also became increasingly disillusioned with the growth of similar tendencies in Cuba. Yet his condemnation of bureaucracy did not develop into a clear political alternative capable of overcoming it.

His revolutionary experience led him to examine increasingly far-reaching questions. One of Che’s most admirable political qualities was his willingness to discuss and explore different ideas and perspectives. He had begun reading some of Trotsky’s writings and those of other Marxists, but his premature death cut short the development of his thinking.

A legacy that lives on

Che’s political weaknesses had tragic consequences for his struggle. Their lessons remain important for new generations of workers and young people entering the fight against oppression, war and capitalism.

Nevertheless, his enduring legacy—his uncompromising opposition to oppression, his willingness to make enormous personal sacrifices and his revolutionary integrity—continues to inspire. The best tribute is to learn from his strengths and mistakes while building the organisations and mass strength of the working class.

By carrying his determination and internationalism into today’s struggles, new generations can continue the fight for the goal to which he devoted his life: an international socialist revolution.

Courage. Integrity. Internationalism.