Mahatma Gandhi and Che Guevara: these two historical figures are often pulled out as representing two strands of political thought about revolutionary change. In simple terms it’s often broken down into violent versus non violent struggle to achieve liberté, égalité, and fraternité. In terms of picking a winner, research shows that non-violent revolutions are twice as effective as violent revolutions, and also lead to a much greater degree of democratic freedom.

To a certain extent, there are a lot of similarities between Gandhi and Guevara. They were both middle class, male professionals. They both had utopian ideals. They both fought for a more just society. But of course their methods were completely different. Guevara believed in armed revolution. He was very influenced by what was happening in Latin America at that time: from the involvement of US multinational corporations in the overthrow of democratic governments to the brutal exploitation of agricultural workers on plantations. Gandhi had a very different view. He also saw appalling poverty and racism when he was practising in South Africa and he witnessed the poverty and injustice under British colonial rule in India. But he had a very different view about how to bring about social change. He saw non-violent direct action not as a passive tool, but the very opposite. He would say it is much more courageous, much more difficult, much more challenging, to be non-violent than it is to be violent.