Che Guevara
from “Socialism
and man in Cuba”
[…]
Love of
living humanity
At the risk
of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by
great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary
lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that
he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make
painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize
this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and
indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the
level where ordinary people put their love into practice.
The leaders
of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to
say “daddy”; their wives, too, must be part of the general sacrifice of their
lives in order to take the revolution to its destiny. The circle of their
friends is limited strictly to the circle of comrades in the revolution. There
is no life outside of it.
In these
circumstances one must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense
of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism,
or an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of
living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples,
as a moving force.
The
revolutionary, the ideological motor force of the revolution within the party,
is consumed by this uninterrupted activity that comes to an end only with
death, unless the construction of socialism is accomplished on a world scale.
If one's revolutionary zeal is blunted when the most urgent tasks have been
accomplished on a local scale and one forgets about proletarian
internationalism, the revolution one leads will cease to be a driving force and
sink into a comfortable drowsiness that imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy,
will utilize to gain ground. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is
also a revolutionary necessity. This is the way we educate our people.
[…]
No comments:
Post a Comment