American prowess.
THE AMERICAN CP "“REHABILITATES"
(The following letter, printed in the January 6 issue of the National Guardian, an independent radical weekly published in New York, is indicative ofa rather widespread feeling among young people in the United States of a militant cast of mind who have come to know the policies of the Communist party from firsthand experience. The author, Jim Kennedy of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is identified as an organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society, who, until last spring was a youth spokesman for the Conmmunist party. ]
* * x
Last spring, May to be exact -the Communist press was strikingly silent about Che's letter to the Tricontinental. At the same time the CP press was waxing strong with defense of the Venezuelan Party, under attack from Cuba because it had collaborated with the Leoni dictatorship and had abandoned the guerrillas. But while the "Marxist" press, as they fancy themselves, was silent, CP leaders were not so. At that time I was managing the CP-controlled bookstore in Chicago. I had obtained from a JOIN organizer a number of posters of Che for sale in the store. I had also purchased reprints of Che's article for sale. A few days after displaying the posters, Jack Kling, state secretary of the CP in Illinois -- and in Gus Hall's words "the Party's principal political officer" there ~- came in and demanded their removal. Said Comrade Kling of Che's picture: “Our store has no
CHE GUEVARA
business displaying or selling that ultra-
leftist's picture." During the same time,
at a public discussion held by the Party
on Latin America -- in which the strategy
of armed struggle was attacked -- Kling,
echoing the views of men like Hall, termed
both Che and Fidel as "left adventurers
and ultra-leftists."
Now that seems all forgotten. With
Che's pen stilled, the time is ripe for
his "rehabilitation." Those who placed
themselves in league with the worst sell-
outs in Latin America can now try to make
Latin America's first citizen theirs.
Those whose studied silence on the confer-
ence for the Organization of Latin Ameri-
can Solidarity spoke ideological volumes
now feel they can celebrate Che -- or at
least his removal, his demise.
Well, they are wrong. Che was a
communist -- he didn't just appropriate
to himself that label as some "parties"
are wont to. He, the consummate revolu-
tionary, cannot so easily be laid to rest.
He is not silent...
He will never be the property of
those who play the coalition game with
the party of U.S. imperialism. He belongs
only to those who will fight for man's
liberation. No amount of praise, tongue
in cheek, by the reformists can make him
safe; no laying claim to his name by
those who six months ago burst into anger
at the thought of him can castrate his
memory, his example, his call to revolu-
tionary struggle.
THE