Social responsibility in a job? Think of Che

Seconds before the Bolivian army executed him on October 9, 1967, Ernesto "Che" Guevara turned to the sergeant who had volunteered for the job: "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man," he reportedly said.

Nick Woomer Back to the Woom

For Guevera, only "a man" was going to die - not Che Guevara, hero of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, patron saint of leftist guerrillas worldwide or the man Jean-Paul Sartre would proclaim "the most complete human being of our age."

Guevara communicated that same self-effacing ideal in the letter he left for his five young children, to be read upon his death: "Your father has been a man who acted according to his beliefs and certainly has been faithful to his convictions ... Remember that the Revolution is what is important and that each one of us, on our own, is worthless. Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary..." This type of detached utilitarian thinking guided Guevara's actions throughout his adult life and he expected everyone else to be similarly motivated.

Speaking before a group of Santiago University students, Guevara discussed their role in the government's plan to industrialize Cuba. If that interfered with the career ambitions of a few privileged students then, well, tough. "Who has the right to say that only ten lawyers should graduate per year and that 100 industrial chemists should graduate? (Some would say that) that is dictatorship, and all right: It is dictatorship."

During a similar talk at Havana University, Guevara called upon students to choose vocations in the context of the Revolution's needs rather than according to their personal desires. Cuba needed its best and brightest to be engineers, not journalists; and the University's departments would be expanded or contracted in light of those needs. "...One has to constantly think on behalf of the masses and not on behalf of individuals ... It's criminal to think of individuals because the needs of the individual become completely weakened in the face of the needs of the human conglomeration."

Like many of the last century's communist leaders, Guevara was unapologetic about the types of policies mandated by the "dictatorship of the proletariat." But whereas so many Soviet officials merely paid lip service to egalitarianism and personal self-sacrifice, Guevara wasn't a hypocrite.

As Jon Lee Anderson records in his authoritative biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, even as a high-ranking minister in the Revolutionary government, Guevara insisted on living on his miniscule army salary. Inspired by a program he saw in Maoist China, Guevara developed and worked in "volunteer labor" brigades on Sunday mornings, doing anything from working on assembly lines to laying bricks for new schools. This was on top of the inhumanly long hours he worked six days a week as the president of the Cuban National Bank. When Guevara discovered his family was living on a special food supplement, he had it eliminated. If one of the kids got sick, his wife Aleida wasn't allowed to take his car - the gas in it was the people's and it wasn't supposed to be used for personal purposes.

Thirty-three years after Guevara's death, the world remains in desperate need of people who "think on behalf of the masses and not on behalf of individuals." A lot of students talk about choosing a socially redeemable career, but this idealism is too-often smothered by the lure of a salary only a corporation can provide.

The anniversary of Guevara's death is the perfect opportunity to do a little honest reflection on how deep our obligations to the rest of humanity run and how we're going to fulfill them. The challenge Guevara extended to Cuba's university students also extends to the people getting ready to meet American Express Chairman/CEO Harvey Golub today or the representatives from Merrill Lynch tomorrow.

Can that duty to the rest of humanity be fulfilled by making small, periodic donations to a charity of your choice and/or giving some canned food away at Thanksgiving? Guevara didn't think so and I think most sensible people will agree - meeting that obligation entails serious personal sacrifices. It means forgoing vocational masturbation and asking yourself what the world needs (teachers, good public defenders, social workers...), not what's going to make you happiest.

In Cuba's schools, the kids pledge "Seremos como el Che" - "We will be like Che." Make the world a better place and do the same thing.

- Nick Woomer, bless his heart,

can be reached via e-mail at nwoomer@umich.edu.