Che Guevara
In Guevara's private writings from this time (since released), he displays his growing criticism of the Soviet political economy, believing that the Soviets had "forgotten Marx". This led Guevara to denounce a range of Soviet practices including what he saw as their attempt to "air-brush the inherent violence of class struggle integral to the transition from capitalism to socialism", their "dangerous" policy of peaceful co-existence with the United States, their failure to push for a "change in consciousness" towards the idea of work, and their attempt to "liberalize" the socialist economy. Guevara wanted the complete elimination of money, interest, commodity production, the market economy, and "mercantile relationships": all conditions that the Soviets argued would only disappear when world communism was achieved. Disagreeing with this incrementalist approach, Guevara criticized the "Soviet Manual of Political Economy", correctly predicting that if USSR did not abolish the law of value (as Guevara desired), it would eventually return to capitalism.
Legacy of Che Guevara
The legacy of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967) is constantly evolving in the collective imagination. As a ubiquitous symbol of counterculture worldwide, Guevara is one of the most recognizable and influential revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. However, during his life, and even more since his death, Che has elicited controversy and wildly divergent opinions as to who he was and what he represented. Mostly revered and occasionally reviled, he is passionately characterized along the entire continuum as everything from a heroic defender of the poor, to a cold-hearted executioner. Admired, sanctified, romanticized and derided, his crystallized status as either a brilliant intellectual or a violent ideologue is usually dependent on where one falls along the left and right of the political spectrum. The debate around his legacy is further complicated by the fact that Guevara exists simultaneously as several different entities, both literal man and global emblem, leading to disputes between what people contend he did and what he now represents.