What if, during the latter months of the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara had taken a fatal bullet wound, and did not live to see the Batista regime fall (as it did otl)? How does this affect the shape of Cuban politics and foreign relations over the crucial next few years?

Does this affect the dynamic between the surviving leaders of the July 26 movement (Fidel and Raul Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Juan Almeida Bosque)? Now that Raul is the only vocal Leninist of said four, does that affect Fidel’s decision making? Or between them and other actors in the Revolution, like Juan Artime and Jose Quevado, or William Morgan and the DRE? Who would Castro send to the UN, if not Guevara, and would that have any implications?
 

kernals12

Banned
What if, during the latter months of the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara had taken a fatal bullet wound, and did not live to see the Batista regime fall (as it did otl)? How does this affect the shape of Cuban politics and foreign relations over the crucial next few years?

Does this affect the dynamic between the surviving leaders of the July 26 movement (Fidel and Raul Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Juan Almeida Bosque)? Now that Raul is the only vocal Leninist of said four, does that affect Fidel’s decision making? Or between them and other actors in the Revolution, like Juan Artime and Jose Quevado, or William Morgan and the DRE? Who would Castro send to the UN, if not Guevara, and would that have any implications?
Well, no more of those awful T-Shirts.
 
Without Guevara there might be a more Soviet-style economic policy with less reliance on "moral incentives."
Could you elaborate on this? From what I've been able to gather, Guevara's role in Cuba's economic policy, as President of the National Bank of Cuba and Minister of Industry, was heading the industry nationalizations and land redistribution policies.
 
More players in the Revolution, who opposed its shift toward communism - Manuel Urrita Lleo (and the people making up his Jan 1959 cabinet more generally); Carlos Franqui (and the newspaper, radio, and "public information" staff more generally, including literary figures like Guillermo Cabrera Infante); and Huber Matos.
Guevara was the architect of Cuba's relations with Moscow. So we probably butterfly away the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Hell, if Havana isn't shifting into Soviet orbit so quickly as OTL, TTL probably won't see the Bay of Pigs invasion either. What I'm really wondering is, could the first fews years of the new Cuba have something like a functional relationship with the US?
 
More players in the Revolution, who opposed its shift toward communism - Manuel Urrita Lleo (and the people making up his Jan 1959 cabinet more generally); Carlos Franqui (and the newspaper, radio, and "public information" staff more generally, including literary figures like Guillermo Cabrera Infante); and Huber Matos.

Hell, if Havana isn't shifting into Soviet orbit so quickly as OTL, TTL probably won't see the Bay of Pigs invasion either. What I'm really wondering is, could the first fews years of the new Cuba have something like a functional relationship with the US?

Even out of the Soviet Orbit, nationalizing all US held properties and holdings in 1960 will still poison any chance for normal relations
 
Even out of the Soviet Orbit, nationalizing all US held properties and holdings in 1960 will still poison any chance for normal relations
Would at least some of said nationalization be affected by removing Che? For example, could negotiations have produced some level of compensation for American land owners?

Another example, iirc, is the decision to nationalize Cuba’s oil refinement industry, which otl was made in response to American oil companies refusing to process Soviet oil imports that the new Cuban government had secured in exchange for Cuban sugar; so if Fidel isn’t pursuing closer Soviet relations as quickly, due to Guevara not pushing him, said oil for sugar barter might not come about, thus not forcing the issue.
 
Could you elaborate on this? From what I've been able to gather, Guevara's role in Cuba's economic policy, as President of the National Bank of Cuba and Minister of Industry, was heading the industry nationalizations and land redistribution policies.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but Guevara is generally associated with the ideas that (1) the Soviet kolkhoz was insufficiently socialist:


"The Kolkhoz was a form of collective farm established in the late 1920s in the Soviet
Union, in which members of the farm, kolkhoznics were paid a share of the farm’s
product and profit according to the number of workdays they had invested.
Kolkhoznics were entitled to hold an acre of private land and some animals, the
product of which they owned privately.

"Guevara has two principal points of contention in relation to the Manual's
formulation about the Kolkhoz. First, he insisted that the Kolkhoz system is:
‘characteristic of the USSR, not of socialism’,23 complaining that the Manual:
‘regularly confuses the notion of socialism with what occurs in the USSR.’24 Second,
he argued that cooperatives are not a socialist form of ownership and that they
impose a superstructure with capitalist property relations and economic levers..."

and (2) that moral incentives should gradually replace material ones under socialism, voluntary labor serving an "educational" as well as economic function:

"Guevara recognised that the underdevelopment of the productive forces and the fact
that the Cuban consciousness had been conditioned by capitalism meant that there
was an objective need for the application of material incentives. But he insisted that
they should not be used as the primary instrument of motivation, because they would
become an economic category in their own right and impose on the social relations
of production. Direct material incentives and consciousness are contradictory terms,
he asserted...

"Guevara repeatedly argued that voluntary labour
had a pedagogical function which could be converted into: ‘a useful instrument to
accelerate along the path toward communism.’65 Participation in voluntary labour
reflected a rising consciousness acquired at work, a commitment to the socialist
transition project, the demonstration of a communist attitude that would carry the
masses along by its example.66 To forge this communist attitude, labour power had to
be expended without financial compensation. The incentive was moral, recognition
of an individual’s merit as a worker. A new society could not be built without
sacrifice. In addition, it was organised as a mechanism for closing the traditional gap
between manual workers and administrators or intellectuals, combating bureaucratic
estrangement from production, and heightening class awareness. Guevara told
MININD directors that: ‘more than 80% of us here come from the petit-bourgeoisie,
a class with distinct ideological scars which cannot be got rid of just because the
system changes. It takes constant ideological work to correct this.’67 That ideological
work was achieved through voluntary labour, particularly manual labour. Miguel
Duque Estrada de Ramos, Director of MININD’s Office of Special Issues, confirmed
that: ‘at that moment those of us from the petit-bourgeoisie were a majority and
voluntary labour helped us develop a social consciousness.’ Bureaucrats worked as
equals with factory or agricultural workers and directors got to know their
subordinates and could experience the problems of production first hand..."

http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2311/1/U615258.pdf

Again, I don't want to oversimplify: Guevara's ideas obviously could not have been adopted unless Fidel Castro himself found them attractive. Also, Guevara recognized that material incentives were still necessary for now, and his opponents conceded that eventually moral incentives should take a much greater role. But differences of emphasis and pace are not insignificant.
 
@David T ... wow. Seeing Helen Yaffe lay out (even just some of) the basic principles of Guevarism like that really made a number of things click for me; much thanks.
Also, Guevara recognized that material incentives were still necessary for now, and his opponents conceded that eventually moral incentives should take a much greater role. But differences of emphasis and pace are not insignificant.
It seems (to my less than expert mind) that it wasn't just a disagreement about pace, of material vs "moral" incentives, in the pursuit of a common and clearly defined end, but a disagreement about priorities of the ends themselves. It seems to me that Guevarism, like a number of totalitarian and authoritarian ideologies,* ultimately valued "elevated" social consciousness above material well-being** or personal freedom**. It's effectively saying that it is better to be part of an economically stagnant society with a clear, overriding sense of purpose and community, than it is to be socially alienated and adrift in a disharmonious nation, even if it comes with financial security, an assortment of steadily growing choices in consumer luxuries, and the general space to live your life as you see fit.

Anyway, I realize that's getting pretty political and hinting at my own ideological biases, but it does get to an interesting part of how we might answer the OP -- mainly, that if Guevara is not part of post-revolution Cuba's political scene, than the new leaders will be far less likely to fall into this kind of ideological pattern, meaning that they're more likely to focus on the "guns and butter" issues of fulfilling their economic promises to the Cuban people (land reform, etc) and securing their island's place on the world stage, and less on restructuring Cuba's class and social systems; and that, in turn, makes them more focused on reconciliation between themselves, between rich and the poor, and between the US and Cuba, and less likely to move toward making Cuba a one-party Communist state.

Again, I realize this is coming off a pretty amateur analysis, and from a decidedly non-marxist perspective at that, so it's possible I'm very wrong and being very naive here; but that was my impression coming off of the Yaffe synopsis.

*Nazi emphasis on "spiritual prosperity" and Mao's Cultural Revolution come to mind, though of course they are very different
**vague concepts with a lot of disagreement on how to define them, yes, but I'm saying these kinds of ideologies ultimately de-valued these concepts even within their own paradigm of how to define them

CONSOLIDATE: It strikes me at present, to (likely over-)simplify, that had Che died shortly before the Cuban Revolution was triumphant, that socialist reforms would be more pragmatically implemented, FP of antagonize by the US and forging the USSR would be less likely, and the establishment of a single-party communist government in Cuba stands a very good chance of being averted. Does this sound like a fair analysis, or do you guys think I’m being too optimistic?
 
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kernals12

Banned
It strikes me at present, to (likely over-)simplify, that had Che died shortly before the Cuban Revolution was triumphant, that socialist reforms would be more pragmatically implemented, FP of antagonize by the US and forging the USSR would be less likely, and the establishment of a single-party communist government in Cuba stands a very good chance of being averted. Does this sound like a fair analysis, or do you guys think I’m being too optimistic?
I think you're being too optimistic. Is the assumption here that Castro gets swept aside?
 
It strikes me at present, to (likely over-)simplify, that had Che died shortly before the Cuban Revolution was triumphant, that socialist reforms would be more pragmatically implemented, FP of antagonize by the US and forging the USSR would be less likely, and the establishment of a single-party communist government in Cuba stands a very good chance of being averted. Does this sound like a fair analysis, or do you guys think I’m being too optimistic?

Too optimistic. The new regime is going to have to consolidate power by cracking down on civil liberties. If they allow counterrevolutionary movements to openly demonstrate in the streets or in the press they'll be creating a golden opportunity for the US to back a counter-coup to topple their government.

Remember, this is only four years after the US knocked over the democratically elected government of Guatemala, a fact that wouldn't be lost on Castro and his comrades.
 
Is the assumption here that Castro gets swept aside?
FTR no, I’m not assuming Fidel Castro gets cast aside; rather, my assumption is that either he was not actually a secret Marxist-Leninist all along, or that he was not so committed to the ideology that he would head a shift toward communism as strong as otl with essentially only Raul openly pushing for such a move in the revolution’s leadership.

Seeing as I am not well versed on the subject, I fully admit that this assumption may be wrong.
 
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