The 30th anniversary of Guevara's death has attracted much attention from enemies and friends of the course Che advocated and for which he gave his life. We urge our readers to join in building and taking part in events in the United States and elsewhere (see front-page article) that will mark this working-class anniversary, expose new generations to Che's proletarian and internationalist example, and can broaden opposition to Washington's unrelenting economic war on the Cuban people.

Imperialist forces have attempted over the last year to perpetrate bourgeois myths of who Che was and what he stood for, to divide him from Cuban president Fidel Castro and the rest of the communist leadership in Cuba, and to use the occasion of the anniversary to attack the Cuban revolution. Articles in the bourgeois press, books, and movies produced in the imperialist countries consciously falsify what Che did and why. One of the most sophisticated is John Lee Anderson's Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. The book presents one of the most damning charges that could be made against a revolutionary leadership: it implies that the decision to launch the Bolivia campaign lacked serious political grounds, that is was an adventure.

Other more crude smears have been reissued in new garb, such as the decades-old accusations that Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders wanted Che out of Cuba because of political differences, and that they rejected steps to rescue him and his comrades from death in Bolivia.

Socialist workers, young socialists, and other class- struggle fighters have an obligation and an opportunity to answer this capitalist propaganda offensive politically. Revolutionists have a wealthy arsenal in several languages to use in response.

Pathfinder's editions of Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism rank among the top- notch tools. The article "Che Guevara and Marxist continuity" in New International no. 8 is an invaluable weapon in this battle of ideas and should be used along with that title. Che's Bolivian Diary, Pombo: A Man of Che's `Guerrillá by Harry Villegas, and Joseph Hansen's The Leninist Strategy of Party Building - all published by Pathfinder - provide the revolutionary movement's record and course of conduct at that time and lessons for today.

Thousands of young people on campuses, in factories, and farms can be won today to emulating the example Guevara set within the United States and other imperialist countries. Selling books and pamphlets such as those mentioned above and organizing classes to study and discuss them collectively is part of accomplishing this goal. They go hand-in-hand with building and participating in teach-ins, seminars, and other activities marking the 30th anniversary of Che's fall in combat this month.

We urge all our readers to join these efforts.  
 
 
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