A Reply to Che Guevara

by Paul Rackemann: reflections on Che Guevara's pamphlet on the development of cadres, reprinted by the Sons of Kokoda, and distributed by the Australia First Party.

     One must remember that military men are in some respects different from men of peace, and the relationships within a Communist organisation are in some respects different from the relationships between free members of a voluntary organisation in a society that is not actually in the throes of armed conflict.
     Comrade Guevara appears to be looking down on his revolutionary group from above. He also assumes responsibility for an entire aspect of society that we can leave alone, i.e. economic production.
     As long as we allow the existence of a stable money system and do not interfere unnecessarily in the affairs of commercial firms, we can confidently expect them to provide for the economic wants of our community. That is one enormous group of cadres we shall not have to train.
     He blathers on about "errors" which are only to be expected when a bunch of soldiers, ignorant of the principles of economics, and equally ignorant of the particular technical knowledge of every industry which can only be known by those actively engaged in it, blithely take command and start issuing orders. He is also, of course, worried about the inevitable development of a class of officers or officials who, having acquired power and some degree of expertise, begin to settle into their positions and make themselves comfortable.
     From what I can recall, Trotsky blathered on about these sorts of "errors" as well.
     Che's romantic ideas about the development of cadres, in special schools mind you, fall down because he and his professors are all working from mistaken assumptions. He shows a childlike belief in the great modern god, Education, which will fail like all the other gods, because it focusses on doctrine and tries to fight reality.
     We as nationalists are not fighting the better aspect of human nature. We are certainly fighting the craven compulsion to conform to the corrupt doctrines of a treacherous ruling elite. We are not fighting the economic instincts of man, which lead to self-interested economic efforts and the existence of a range of large and small economic units specialising in various parts of the productive process. We may be fighting the political power of large economic units, which seek to create a homogenous, non-white market which they can exploit. We are certainly fighting the enormous industry of deception, which calls itself education and the media, and which ties large numbers of rather silly and dishonest people to a depraved doctrine, which they must pass on to get their wages.
     We may need to "develop cadres," as Che says, but we don't need to do it in the way he envisages. We mostly need to develop people with an immunity to the corrupt doctrines of the Establishment, an ability to think without being frightened by the programming so thoroughly inculcated by the scum in authority. We don't need to create superhumans, as Che thinks he does: we simply need to create free minds. Minds that are free will not willingly co-operate in their own destruction by the relatives of man.