Armed
Struggle; both a Strategy and a Tactic
Written
by: Massoud Ahmad-Zadeh
Table of Contents
Introduction by The Iranian People’s
Fadaee Guerrillas
Circumstances of the Genesis and Growth of the New Communist
Movement
Examination of the Present Socio-economic Conditions and the
Question of the State of the Revolution
On the Question of the Stage of Revolution 18
The Examination of Debray’s “Revolution
in The Revolution?”
Party and Guerrilla: Political Work and Military Work
More
than four months have passed since the People’s Fadaee Guerrillas began armed
struggle. Several things have happened since that time; perhaps it is still
early to analyze their results. Nevertheless, they can be presented in an
overall manner.
Why
did the guerrilla struggle begin in Siahkal? And why
did it suffer defeat?
After
making an analysis of the conditions in
An
armed guerrilla nucleus was organized and set out for the northern forests
under the command of our martyred comrade All-akbar Safal Farahani.*
For about five months, this group continuously traversed the northern forests
from east of Mazandaran to west of Gilan.** It made
scientific studies of the geographical and socio-economic situation in those
regions. By taking long treks in both summer and winter, they adapted
themselves to the harsh living conditions in the forests and mountains. As far
as we know, such a reconnaissance of an area, both in duration and in the
extent of area visited, is unprecedented and has no equivalent in any similar
guerrilla experience in the world.
What
did we expect from the creation of this nucleus? How did we envisage its
survival?
As
explained in the essay that follows, the aim of armed struggle at the outset is
not to strike at the enemy, militarily, but the strike at him politically. The
aim is to show to the revolutionaries and to the people the path of struggle,
to make them conscious of their own power and to show that the enemy is
vulnerable. It is also to demonstrate that struggle is possible, to expose the
enemy, and to make the people conscious. The creation of the guerrilla nucleus
in the mountains followed these aims. Considering the propagating role played
by the urban guerrilla for the mountain guerrilla, the action of this nucleus
not only would have repercussions throughout the region, but would also be
echoed throughout the country, and thus it would play a decisive propaganda and
political role in the growth of the Iranian revolutionary movement. It would
give new hope to all those struggling and to all the people, concretely showing
the path of struggle, and while gradually establishing a foothold in the
countryside and drawing the rural masses towards itself, it would become
prepared to also play a military role in the revolutionary movement.
From
a political viewpoint, it would be impossible for the enemy to isolate such a
struggle. Considering the very close relation between the city and the
countryside in the North, the struggle of this guerrilla nucleus would have
wide repercussions in the northern cities and thence would spread throughout
the whole country. In the North, because it is not like Kurdistan or
Why,
then, did the guerrilla nucleus fail?
We
do not know exactly what happened. It appears that two factors caused its
defeat: disregard for constant mobility and disregard for absolute distrust. It
should be mentioned that our comrades in the mountains had learned respect for
constant mobility and absolute distrust not only in theory but also in
practice. So why did they commit such a mistake?
The
only reason we have been able to find is that they could not imagine that the
enemy would react so strongly and would mobilize in such strength to destroy
the guerrilla nucleus. We know that our heroic comrades were encircled in the Siahkal region and that the enemy concentrated the greater
part of its forces in the surrounding areas. Nevertheless, it would have very
easy for our fighting comrades to have been tens of miles away in a few days.
If such mobility had continued, the enemy would have been compelled to
militarize several thousand men in the Siahkal region
and its surroundings, it would have been compelled to mobilize several
thousands of men in the whole of the North and carry out strict controls over
all means of communication. This would have been very difficult and would have
taken much time. During that time the guerrillas could have strengthened their
foothold, increased their firepower, and elevated their military potential.
From this it may be concluded that the defeat of this nucleus was a mishap that
could perfectly well have been avoided. But, revolutionary struggle involves
certain risks at all times; such mishaps are neither abnormal nor inevitable.
In any case, it is from experiences such as these that revolutionaries should
learn lessons; and it is defeats such as these, which form the stages on the ascent
leading to victory. We have seen the enthusiasm and the hope which the Siahkal movement, in spite of its brief existence and its
defeat, has aroused among the revolutionaries and the people, although this was
even before the launching of urban guerrilla activity. The armed struggle of
the urban Fadaee has produced some remarkable results as well. Under the
influence of that struggle, and in order to respond to its call, the student
revolutionaries in the universities rose heroically and unleashed the most
massive demonstrations of recent years and with the most fiery and
revolutionary slogans possible in those circumstances. Due to the influence of
this same armed struggle, the military workers of the Jahan-Cheet
factories courageously struggled to win their demands and responded to
counter-revolutionary violence with revolutionary violence (even though they
were unarmed). They thereby added dozens of names to the lists of martyrs of
the Iranian revolution. Today, the people are asking themselves new questions.
They wonder what the guerrillas are fighting for, and for whom. How is such a
spirit of self-sacrifice and unselfishness possible? They realise that such
sacrifice is possible and that with even a small force it is possible to rise
up against a heavily armed enemy. The revolutionary movement has begun to lay
down the basis for a tradition of armed struggle. It is in the stage of
crawling and taking its first steps through the setting up of groups. Its armed
activities cannot fail to show the road to be followed. Through a series of
successes and defeats, and successes again, it shows the people the possibility
of struggle and protracted nature. This is how the people will gradually
understand that the struggle is long and difficult and that its development and
success depends on their support. This is also how the people and their
vanguards will gradually rise up. We certainly do not expect the direct support
of the people immediately; they cannot be expected to rise up all at once. At
the present time, it is genuinely revolutionary vanguard groups who represent
the people. Conscious of the correctness of the armed struggle, influenced by
it and with the moral support of the people, these groups take up arms and
extend the struggle, thereby increasing the possibilities of material support
from the people. That is why the defeat of one-armed group does not have a
decisive effect on the outcome of the struggle. If we accept that the struggle
is a protracted one and if we accept as well that it begins through
organization in groups, does it matter if one of the groups disappears? What is
important is that the gun that falls from the hand of a militant will be
grasped by other militants. If one group fails, the important thing is that the
more advanced group or groups survive to witness the results of their action,
to exploit its effects, and to transform the moral support which this action
has created into material support through organisational work. This may be
accomplished by other groups; groups which wish to fulfil their revolutionary
responsibilities. We began our struggle with these convictions we believe in
our people and in their vanguards. We give our blood in affirmation of this
belief. Deep within ourselves we feel the need for the people’s support;
without this support we know our destruction and the destruction of our path is
definite. We dedicate our lives to this belief. During the phase when the
foundations and traditions of the armed struggle are being established, such
great sacrifices are inevitable. The sacrifices which we have accepted, our
martyrs who have bravely resisted against the enemy until death, our imprisoned
comrades who are resisting heroically the medieval tortures of the Shah’s
executioners, will all surely bring to flower the tree of the Iranian
revolution, the uprising of the sons and daughters of the people. It is then
that sooner or later the People’s war will begin. Under the present conditions,
the vanguard can be none other than a Fadaee. Let the capitulationists
jeer. The duty of every revolutionary circle and group is to begin the armed
struggle and to strike against the enemy with every means at their disposal and
in every possible way. Experience has shown that there is no other path except
that of the armed struggle; and experience has shown that the people will
support this struggle.
Long
live the armed struggle, the only path to freedom!
Long
live the immortal memory of all our martyrs who heroically fought the enemy
until death!
Salute
to all political prisoners who bravely resist the barbaric tortures of the
shah’s executioners!
long live the unity of all
revolutionary forces and all the peoples of
Khordad, 1350
(June, 1971)
1
In
the recent decade, our country has witnessed a new phase in the revolutionary
struggle of our people. Although the puppet regime has resorted to all means to
subdue this struggle, from intimidation to allurement to imprisonment, torture
and murder, it has constantly encountered an ever more obstinate wave of
struggle. In place of any one fallen combatant, tens of others have risen, and
in the process the combatants have gained more experience in the struggle. Most
striking in the present struggle of the people is the unprecedented growth of
the communist movement in
In
the present phase, this movement is basically characterised by the simple
gathering of forces, its spontaneous growth and its isolation from the masses.1
To comprehend why, we must look retrospectively. The imperialist coup d’etat of the 28 of Mordad
(August 19, 1953)** broke up
all the national and anti-imperialist political organisations. The only force
which would have been able to learn from this defeat and on the basis of which
analysis adopt a new line relevant to the new circumstances and to take into
its hands the leadership of the anti-imperialist forces that were actually
ready for struggle was a proletarian party. Unfortunately, however, our people
lacked such an organization. The leadership of the Tudeh
Party, a mere caricature of a Marxist-Leninist party, was only capable of
throwing its devoted militant cadres under the blades of the executioner before
fleeing.*** Thus, the
organized struggle basically came to a halt and whatever did take place was
conducted by the remnants of the shattered organizations within the framework
of the same old methods. This resulted, above all, in the further suppression
of those who were struggling.
Despite
this situation, at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, the
development of the contradictions and recurrent crises brought about a rapid
and spontaneous organization of national forces, which principally gathered
around the National Front and its affiliated organizations. But, in the general
framework of defunct slogans and limited by paralyzing methods, these struggles
were also unable to accomplish anything in the face of an enemy that
understands only force and exists on the strength of the bayonet. Of course,
one result of this situation was increasing awareness of the regime.
Demonstrations and strikes were successively defeated, and although these
experiences and the regime’s actions gradually led to the changing of slogans
(particularly reflected in the uprising of the 15th of Khordad June 5), the methods of struggle and the
organizational framework remained same.*
Through this process, the organizations became extinct. The awesome
image of the bayonet again established its domination everywhere. But, the new
circumstances differed from those of the period after the coup d’etat in one fundamental respect: no one could any longer trust
the pervious slogans, the old methods of struggle nor
the outmoded forms of organisation. The Tudeh Party,
which had not been able to exemplify a communist party even for a moment during
its existence, now had all its organizations demolished, its devoted cadres
subdued, and its traitorous leaders on the run. This party was not even capable
of providing a theoretical or frame of reference for the later phases of the
struggle. Thus, in a situation of terror and repression; in a situation where
our people’s struggle had met with defeat; and in a situation where
revolutionary intellectuals essentially lacked any theoretical or background
experience, the task had to be undertaken afresh. The new communist movement
got on its feet and the simple gathering of forces was initiated. The objective
was not to muster force in order to strike again, but to analyze the conditions
in order to find a new path for struggle. Throughout the years before this, the
treacheries and errors of the Tudeh Party had
completely destroyed its reputation, and no revolutionary intellectual was
willing to co-operate with it. Under these circumstances, the bourgeois and
petty bourgeois organisations, were able to attract
these revolutionary intellectuals. This situation finally led to the
penetration of the ideologies and tactics of the left petty bourgeoisie into
these organizations, however, their related ideologies also lost their
credibility.
If
during these periods the boundaries between Marxism-Leninism on the one hand
and revisionism and opportunism on the other had not yet crystallised on an
international scale, the distrust of the Tudeh party
might initially have led to the distrust of communism also. It became clear,
however, that the place of genuine Marxism-Leninism was indeed vacant and that
it must be occupied. Hence, revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, as the theory of
revolution, became the sole gathering point for the most persistent
revolutionaries. Thus, there appeared an extensive and striking acceptance of
Marxism-Leninism by the revolutionary intellectuals, and acceptance which, was
now moulded with the name a thoughts of Comrade Mao. In the process of the
exchange and publication of communist works, particularly the works of Mao,
communist circles and groups came into existence. Under the influence of
revolutionary experiences and peoples’ wars, the (theoretical) tendency toward
mass armed struggle increased day by day. Meanwhile, the Cuban experience also
attracted attention. There appeared those who wanted to engage in armed
struggle by forms not completely known to us.* Before they
began, however, they were arrested and thus were unable to provide the movement
with any positive or negative experiences. Therefore, despite the claims of a
few, the defeat of the groups who wanted to engage in armed struggle did not by
any means indicate the inappropriateness of armed struggle because these
defeats stemmed from a series of organizational errors and from the failure to
consider the rules of secrecy. When the simple gathering of forces commenced,
any form of contact between the peoples’ intellectuals and the masses had been
cut off in practice, and there was no serious link among the intellectuals
themselves, including the proletarian intellectuals. Now, after the inner
development of the communist groups, they accept that their further growth is
dependent upon serious contact with the masses, real participation in their
daily lives and also the building of a bond among the communist groups as a
first step towards their unity. While the subjective elements for real progress
have been developing, the prospect for the unity of groups and real contact
with the masses seems dim. Any attempt on the part of the groups to establish
contacts with other communist groups and to participate in the people’s daily
lives and political struggle (which, of course, is certainly not extensive)
exposes them to the danger of police attacks.
Our
group, too, has gone through this same process. Our group was also formed with
the immediate goal of studying Marxism-Leninism and analyzing the
socio-economic conditions of our country. In its development, the group reached
a junction: must the establishment of the proletarian party or the formation of
an armed nucleus in the countryside to initiate guerrilla warfare be pursued?
We believe that the revolutionary honesty required confronting this question
seriously. Unless we had honestly believed that the initiation of guerrilla war
would lead to defeat, rejection of this path would have been tantamount to the
absence of revolutionary courage and to the fear of action. Our group,
nevertheless, did reject this path. In my opinion, however, the rejection was
fundamentally based on a series of theoretical formulas which, we understood to
be universal and unalterable, and it stemmed less from a serious theoretical
and practical analysis of reality.2 Moreover,
our theoretical approach to the present conditions, our estimation of the
purported changes* carried out
by the regime, the rile of agrarian reform etc, did
not lead us to turn away from that choice but rather confirmed it. Although we
believed that armed struggle was inevitable, still we thought that the purported
changes gave the role of the town and the proletariat more importance and that
the countryside could no longer, as in the past, serve as a base for the
revolution. This view channelled our thoughts toward forming the proletariat
party.
But,
the purported changes were also being evaluated from two other directions. The Tudeh Party wanted to justify its inactivity and its
reformist line by professing that in any case “positive” changes had taken
place; that by whatever means, the feudal mode of production had been dissolved
to a great extent; that the transition to capitalism had begun; that new
contradictions and class divisions had appeared in society; that the
proletariat had started its development and so on. They reasoned that the assistance
of the so-called socialist camp to the puppet regime and, in their opinion, to
the people of
The
“Revolutionary Organization”** which had
split from the Tudeh Party precisely because of its
opportunism, revisionism and its connectionist line and in order to preserve
the perspective of armed struggle, along with many other revolutionary
communists took the diametrically opposite view of the “purported changes.” In
their view, any acknowledgement of change and development was an indication of
besmirching the necessity of armed struggle, of evading the decisive struggle,
and marked the onset of concessionism. For this
reason, they believed that feudalism was still intact and that the objective
conditions for armed struggle existed. But this conviction, even though it
contained an element of revolutionary authenticity and respect for the
revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism, was at variance with reality. To
deal with the present realities requires a different viewpoint. The
“Revolutionary Organization,” due to its confinement within the framework of a
series of theoretical of formulas, has not been able to correctly deal with the
paradox of the “acknowledgement of change or armed revolution” and therefore
denies change (just as our reliance on theoretical formulas had caused our
relatively correct evaluation of the claimed transformation to be applied in an
illogical manner to be a specific conception of the Party and its formation).
But
what is the correct approach? Can it not be said that some changes have taken
place, that feudalism has essentially disappeared, but that armed struggle has
not lost its necessity? That the moment of the decisive struggle has not been postponed?
Has the disappearance of the contradiction and the
appearance of a new one made a change in the principle contradiction of our
society? Or, has it intensified the same contradiction?
2
Since
the Land Reform constitutes the basis of the so-called “White Revolution”, we
will stress this phenomenon. In this brief examination, we will show that the
objective of the Land Reform has been the expansion of the economic, political
and cultural domination of bureaucratic comprador capitalism in the rural
areas. Its goal was not that of remedying any of the numerous ailments of the
peasantry (so as to eliminate the grounds for revolutionary potential in the
rural areas by directing peasant support toward the regime). Rather, due to its
nature, the regime can only suppress the grounds for revolution in the
countryside through ever-increasing economic, political and cultural oppression
and suppression, though the branching of its influence into the rural areas and
through the expansion of the dominance of the corrupt bureaucracy.
The
alleged goal of the Land Reform was to give the land to the peasantry. Let us
examine how this was executed:
1.
Land was to go only to those peasants who were working on the master’s land as
tenants or sharecroppers. In this way, all land on which any wage earners
worked or which was under mechanised cultivation was exempt from
redistribution. As a result, vast lands, including the extensive holdings of
princes, princesses, big-shot bureaucrats, and the entourage of the bureaucracy
were not redistributed, and thus a considerable segment of the peasantry
remained landless. We must remember that in the midst of and prior to the
height of the Land Reform, many landowners evicted the sharecroppers and
allegedly engaged their land specifically in mechanized cultivation. By so
doing, or on this pretext, their land also remained immune from redistribution, Several others had extensive sections of
their land exempt from redistribution by granting their land to their
off-spring and relatives.
2.
In many areas where land was redistributed, land did not fall into the
possession of all the peasants because all the peasants did not have
share-cropping or tenant contracts or, in other words, were not peasants but
were working on the land as wage earners. It seems that according to the
government’s own statistics (which undoubtedly cannot be considered reliable)
more than 40% of the Iranian peasantry has been deprived of land forever. In
any event, some land was redistributed. Some landlords sold their land, and
others rented it to the peasants. Naturally, as far as possible, the best lands
remained in the hands of the landlord and the worst lands were left for the
peasants.
3.
Finally, in some cases feudalism was preserved. Therefore, we now witness the
following dominant forms in land relations. To a great extent capitalism has
come into existence. Even though this form of production existed before the
Land Reform, its development was accelerated by the Land Reform. Exploitation
is carried out in its most savage form, and the agricultural labourer has
indeed no financial security whatsoever. He is given or denied work according
to the whims of the landlord who still remains a master. Some
large landowners, particularly those of the entourage of the regime and the
royal court, including the princes, in no way refrain from encroaching upon and
appropriating the lands of the small landowners. We have been witnesses
to numerous clashes between the large and small landowners. Whenever these two
forms of ownership stand side by side, an intense contradiction appears. It is
those large landowners who are able to drill deep walls when confronted by
water shortage by means of their capital or through their relations with
finance capital and the use of loans. The small landowner is obliged to rent
their tractors and purchase their water; the large landowners sell him water
and rent tractors to him on their own terms.
Small
landownership as a form of production has, in the main, come into existence as
a result of the Land Reform, although it had existed in some areas previously.
Its main enemy is governmental bureaucracy and comprador capital subjecting the
peasants to oppression and exploitation in various ways through the Ministry of
Land Reform, the cooperatives, the various banks and recently the joint-stock
agricultural companies. Every year at harvest time, the Land Reform agents
appear to collect the payment on or rent of the land that has been sold or
rented to the peasants. Day by day the oppressed peasants, usually unable to
remit the demanded amount, assume a heavier burden of debts and loans with
tremendous interest rates. Wherever the peasants have shown courage and
refrained from the remittance of their payments, they have been immediately
faced with the bayonets of the gendarmes, the repossession of the land by the
Ministry of Land Reform and other suppressive measures. The formation of the
joint-stock agricultural companies, which the peasants rightly resist and whose
essence they feel with their flesh and blood, must in effect be termed a
conspiracy for the deprivation of ownership by the small landowner, the
inevitable consequence of the Land Reform. The cooperatives, by dispensing
loans, selling seeds and manure, and by pre-purchasing the produce of the
peasants, do not spare the peasant’s last pennies. Finally, one must consider
the areas where the feudal system has remained intact.3
The
objective of the so-called “White Revolution” was to expand imperialism’s
domination in the town and country. The “White Revolution” took place at a time
when the puppet regime was faced with the people’s anti-imperialist movement,
precisely when the urban masses had risen against it. How could it be that the
regime consciously set out to abolish its main class basis (i.e. Feudalism)?
Must it be concluded that the elimination of feudalism is merely a lie? Or must
it be said that feudalism was not the mainstay of the regime? If feudalism was
not the mainstay of the regime, then which economic power was reflected by the
political power of the state? And which power’s interest was primarily
promoted?
In
actuality, this power is world imperialism. The bases for the political
dominance of feudalism were weakened by the Constitutional Revolution, and
feudalism fundamentally forfeited its political rule to imperialism through
Reza Khan’s coup d’etat. The economic interests of
the feudals could only be safeguarded by a central
power supported and guided by imperialism. This central power, while
suppressing the people’s anti-imperialist movement, prepared the ground for the
expanding influence of imperialism. Feudalism was, in reality transformed to
dependent feudalism and wherever it rejected this dependence, it was subjected
to the aggression of the central power. With the expanding domination of the
central power and influence of imperialism, feudalism was more and more removed
from its positions of power. As soon as the feudal economy stood in
contradiction to imperialist interests, the regime, facing no serious
difficulty and without needing the people’s force to suppress feudalism,*
basically buried what had already turned into a corpse. In effect, Reza Khan’s
coup d’etat was incomplete without the “White
Revolution”.*
A
comparison of the regime’s land reform with a classic bourgeois land reform
depicts well the disparities of the two and their different consequences.
In
the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx
evaluates bourgeois land reform and its role as follows: “After the first
revolution had transformed the peasants from semi- villains into freeholders,
Napoleon confirmed and regulated the conditions on which they could exploit
undisturbed the soil of France which had only just fallen to their lot and
stake their youthful passion for property. But what is now causing the ruin of
the French peasant is his smallholding itself, the division of the land, the
form of property which Napoleon consolidated in
While
in
While
in the past, the comprador bureaucracy supported feudal exploitation and the
peasant recognized it in the form of suppressive force of the corrupt and
oppressive bureaucracy’s gendarmes, now, the peasant sees himself directly
entrapped in the bloody grip of bureaucy and the
comprador bourgeoisie. In
In
In
any case, the peasant in the past saw a separation between feudal oppression on
the one hand and the bureaucracy and the gendarme on the other, despite having
repeatedly experienced their collaboration and unity. This time, he sees the
two in the same cloak, that of the government’s agents, the governmental and
semi-governmental banks, the Ministry of Land Reform, the gendarmes and more
recently the forest and natural resources rangers. As such, the peasant rightly
regards his calamity as stemming not from his smallholding, but from the
oppressive rule of governmental bureaucracy and its suppressive tools. The
determined resistance of the peasant against the formation of the joint-stock
agricultural companies illustrates this point.
The
peasant is realizing now that the principle cause behind his past calamity is
the government, the same government whose support of feudal oppression and
suppression he had witnessed repeatedly. The more aware peasants recognized the
“Land Reform” to be “politics” from the very beginning and experienced these
“politics” quickly. Those peasants who dared to learn the motive of the regime
and who resolved independently to chase the landlord off the land without “Aria
Mehr’s”* fatherly
support, did not, of course, encounter the landlord who chose to flee, but were
blocked by the gendarmes’ bayonets and suppressed.
Therefore,
the so-called “White Revolution” not only did not solve any of the numerous
problems of the great majority of the country folk, but in large measure
incorporated the contradiction between the peasant and the feudal lord into
that between the peasant and the bureaucracy and the suppressive governmental
apparatus. Thus, by intensifying this
Contradiction
and rendering it more conspicuous, it aided the peasant in recognizing the real
enemy and its true nature. The severe contradiction between a major segment of
the peasantry and the forest and pasture rangers (rangers created for the
protection of the forests and pastures that have been “nationalized” to lay the
grounds for the entrance of comprador capital in order to fill the pockets of a
handful of parasites), a contradiction which has repeatedly led to armed
clashes, illustrates the deep contradiction between the peasantry and the governmental
apparatus, which is dependent on imperialism.
But
what is the course of events in the town? While the bourgeois revolution had
resulted in the severing of the feudal shackles binding the urban masses hand
and foot, in the abolishment of heavy feudal obligations, and in free
competition of industry, here, the “White Revolution” coincided exactly with
the suppression of the urban masses and the consolidation of a central power
that had for years kept them in chains. It was carried out precisely to consolidate
imperialist rule and the interests of imperialist monopolies** to
increasingly suppress national industry, the national bourgeoisie, and the
petty bourgeois artisan and shopkeepers; and finally, to further intensify the
exploitation of the proletariat.
For
years, the town was experiencing the oppression, suppression, exploitation and
poverty emanating from imperialist domination. The keeper of this domination
was the same force that was instituting the “White Revolution”. While in
bourgeois revolution, it was necessary for the newly liberated masses to
experience the new conditions for decades in order to understand their nature
and feel the new bonds and new suppressive rule over them, here, the urban
masses had understood all this beforehand; the events of 1963, particularly the
uprising of the 15th of Khordad [June 5]
were responses to the pretensions of the regime. If afterwards, the waves of
struggle ebbed, it was not due to an acceptance of the regime’s lies, but to
the violent suppression of the struggle. How was it possible to believe in the
so-called “White Revolution” in the face of increasing poverty, continuous
bankruptcy, the intensification of exploitation by the violent domination of
foreign capital and the fattening of a handful of comprador capitalists and
big-shot bureaucrats at the expense of the bankruptcy of the commercial and
industrial bourgeoisie and the brutal exploitation of the workers? Thus, while
two generations sufficed until “the interests of the peasants, therefore, are
no longer, as under Napoleon, in accord with but in opposition to the interests
of the bourgeoisie, to capital,” and “hence, the peasants find their natural
ally and leader in the urban proletariat whose task is the overthrow of the
bourgeois order:” here in Iran, from a historical standpoint, the peasants like
the past semi-serfs in a semi-feudal, semi-colonel country find their natural
ally and leader in the urban proletariat. In fact, as a result of the expansion
of comprador capital into the rural areas, a closer relationship between the
peasantry and the proletariat has developed. In the town, too, the brutal rule
of comprador capital more than ever has caused the contradiction between the
proletariat and the national bourgeoisie and specifically the petit
bourgeoisie, to be overshadowed by the contradiction between them and comprador
bureaucratic capitalism and imperialist domination. This process has developed
through the confinement of any capitalist mode of production to that of
comprador capitalism and through the bankruptcy and gradual elimination of the
national bourgeoisie caused by the imperialist monopolies.
Why
do such fundamental differences exist? Actually, the explanation of any change
and transformation in society would be futile and nonsensical without
considering the principal contradiction of the existing system, namely, that
between the people and imperialist rule. The problem of imperialist domination
must be regarded not as an extraneous factor that plays some role, but rather
organically as the basis for any analysis and elucidation.
Reliance
on force and anti-revolutionary violence has always been an integral part of
imperialist domination. Imperialism initiated its invasion of the East through
dependence on its political and military force, which stems from its worldwide
economic power. Depending on the fore-mentioned anti-revolutionary violence, it
disrupted the natural development as compared to that of Western societies. As
we know, the bourgeoisie, subsequent to its gradual take-over of the positions
of economic power, engages itself in the take-over of the positions of economic
power, engages itself in the take-over of the positions of political power so
that it may consolidate its economic power. But here, in the East, imperialist
economic domination was possible only through political and military aggression
and any continuation of economic domination has been inevitably shaped by
anti-revolutionary violence. Hence, in Reza Khan’s coup d’etat
we observed the establishment of a central power without it reflecting a
bourgeois economic power. (The central power and the measures taken by it
confused some people into thinking that Reza Khan's rule represented the
national bourgeoisie.) Thus, on the one hand, we encounter a bourgeois
political superstructure with the cutting off of the influence and power of the
local feudals; on the other hand, we witness the
continuation of feudal exploitation. At this time we witness the power of
capitalist monopolies before the development of capitalism has yet begun. The
feudal mode of production is changed without any corresponding change in the
political rule. Feudalism is eliminated without giving the peasantry the
opportunity to feel free for a moment. Feudalism is eliminated while the
national bourgeoisie, more than ever, is also suppressed. In fact, with the
establishment of imperialist rule, all the internal contradictions of our
society were overshadowed by one contradiction—the contradiction that spreads
the world over, the contradiction between the people and imperialism. In the
last half century, our country has witnessed the expansion of this
contradiction: the daily augmentation of imperialist domination. Any form of
transformation must resolve this contradiction. The resolution of this
contradiction means the establishment of the people’s sovereignty and the
downfall of imperialist domination.
3
In
solving the question of the stage of the revolution, attention must be paid to
these particulars. With the establishment and expansion of imperialist
domination, there is first the division of political power between feudalism
and imperialism followed by the transformation of feudalism into dependant
feudalism and, finally, the destruction of feudalism. Under these conditions,
the national bourgeoisie, not yet developed and weakened by the pressure of
foreign capital, loses the possibility of organizing as a class and in the end
gradually dies out. Hence, the national bourgeoisie cannot compose an
independent political force. The struggle against imperialist
domination (i.e. international capital) contains some elements of the struggle
for a socialist revolution within this anti-imperialist struggle and develop
in the course of the struggle. The national bourgeoisie is hesitant and unable
to mobilize the masses because by its nature it is incapable of persistence in
such a struggle and because of the historical conditions of its existence and
its ties with foreign capital. Also, the peasantry, because of its material
conditions in production, can never form an independent political force. Thus
it must either place itself under the leadership of the proletariat or entrust
itself to the bourgeoisie. The only force remaining is the proletariat.
Although the proletariat is quantitatively weak, it is very strong
qualitatively and in its potential for being organized. The proletariat, as the
most persistent enemy of imperialism and feudal domination and relying on the
international theory of Marxism-Leninism, can and must assume the leadership of
the anti-imperialist movement. It is in this regard that the fundamental
differences between the new bourgeois-democratic revolution and the classic
bourgeois revolution unfold. Although the immediate goal of the new
bourgeois-democratic revolution is the end of imperialist domination and the
destruction of feudalism and not the abolition of bourgeois private property,
in the process of its development, the embryo of the socialist revolution is
implanted in its womb and nurtured there very rapidly by the anti-imperialist
character of the struggle, the mobilization of the masses, the proletarian
leadership of the struggle, and the fact that any duration of capitalist
relations gradually bring about close ties with imperialism followed by the
domination of imperialism. In this manner, only a few years after the victory
of the Chinese revolution, the proletarian leadership was transformed into the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and the socialist revolution commenced in
practice. As summed up by Chairman Mao, the Chinese experience serves as an
example.*
But now that feudalism has been eliminated in our country, has the Iranian
Revolution left its bourgeois-democratic stage and entered into the socialist
phase? In my opinion, posing the question in this manner is incorrect. Regis Debray expresses a significant point in this regard: “The
nub of the problem lies not in the initial programme of the revolution but in
its ability to resolve in practice the problem of state power before
bourgeois-democratic state, and not after. In
In
reality, during the last half century of the revolutionary struggle our people
have faced a state power that has assumed a growing bourgeois character in the
process of increasing imperialist domination. As a result, the political
dependency of feudalism has always been dependent upon their anti-imperialist
struggle. Thus, the more feudalism as a mode of production has retreated and
therefore the more the state has become bourgeois in form and character, the
more significant the socialist elements of the revolution have become. The
struggle against the domination of world capital has further turned to the
struggle against capital itself, and the necessity of proletarian leadership
has become more evident. Since the Land Reform has not benefited the peasantry,
such slogans as “the land should be given free to those who work on it” and
“abolish all state tributes” remain the fundamental slogans of the revolution for
the peasantry. On the one hand, considering the limited foundation and the
increasing limitations of imperialist rule and, consequently, its ever
increasing reliance on anti-revolutionary violence as the principle means of
preserving its domination; and on the other hand, keeping in mind the broad
mass base of the revolution and the fact that the condition for the victory of
the revolution is the victory of protracted armed struggle, revolution actually
commences with the most mass oriented and generalized slogans and programs. In
the course of this protracted armed struggle, which proletarianizes
the masses objectively and subjectively, the revolution will succeed and
continue through the most radical and revolutionary measure. The (protracted)
armed struggle is the environment within which the socialist elements of a
bourgeois-democratic revolution develop rapidly. This is the lesson that the
Chinese Revolution has given, that the Vietman
Revolution shows, and finally that the Cuban experience, despite its shortness,
has proven.4
4
As
we have said, in the course of its development and in its analysis of the
experience of the Cuban people, our group confronted the following question: is
not the path of the revolution the formation of the guerrilla nucleus and the
initiation of armed struggle? Can the revolution be tackled without the party?
We became familiar with the Cuban experience essentially through Regis Debray’s “Revolution in the Revolution?” Without a deep
understanding of Debray’s thesis and the Cuban
Revolution and, again, without a clear view of the objective conditions of our
people’s struggle, we rejected Debray’s thesis and
the Cuban way. Why did we permit ourselves to reject them without having on
hand a comprehensive analysis of the conditions of our country and without
really knowing the inner elements of the Cuban way? In my opinion, what caused
this was a theoretical error stemming from a superficial acceptance of a series
of theoretical formulas based on past revolutionary experiences. This point
will later be shown.
In
this way, we accepted that our goal and that of the other communist groups must
be the creation of the Marxist-Leninist party. Immediately, the question was
posed: what should be done to create such a party? Two fundamental duties then
confronted us. We and the other groups would have to educate the cadres for the
future party amongst the masses. That is to say, by working amongst the masses
and participating in their life of struggle, particularly
that of the proletariat, we had to prepare them for the acceptance of
such a party.
At
this point, the initial differences of our circumstances with those of past
revolutionary experiences (
Why
is the insurrection the work of the masses? Didn’t the Cuban experience show
that a small armed motor force can initiate the insurrection and gradually lead
the masses to insurrection?5 Here, of
course, the concept of insurrection does not connote an armed urban uprising
(characterized by the sudden and massive armed movement of the masses together
with a leadership) but the protracted armed struggle to which the masses are
gradually drawn.
These
problems were posed at a time when the group understood that it had to direct
its attention outside of itself, to reality, the masses and other communist
groups. On the one hand, however, we had to contend with police attacks and
searches that were being carried out against communist groups, and, on the
other hand, the problem of contact with the masses seemed so difficult and
seemingly beyond our means. How could we establish contact with the proletarian
masses? Should we not reach the workers where they have organized themselves as
a class in the organs (ranging from small proletarian circles to unions,
syndicates, etc…) that have come into existence in the course of the
spontaneous struggle?6 It is
through the course of this spontaneous struggle and class organization that, on
the one hand, circles of workers come into existence which have a wider horizon
and contemplate a broader and more protracted struggle; circles of working
masses, circles in contact with the revolutionary intellectuals who are the
source of political consciousness. On the other hand, in the course of its
development, this spontaneous struggle more and more approaches a political
struggle. Parallel to this course, the progressive workers’ circles develop and
expand, becoming more receptive to political propaganda and political
organization.
Socialist
consciousness, too, is introduced to the workers through the intellectual
circles’ contact with the workers’ circles and with the masses. In this
context, a comparison between the development of the Russian intellectual
circles during the early years of the twentieth century and the present
intellectual circles of our society can bring out the differences in conditions
between the two. Lenin portrays a typical circle in
“A
student’s circle establishes contacts with workers and sets to work; without
any connection with the old members of the movement; without any connection
with study circles in other districts, or even in other parts of the same city
(or in other educational institutions); without any organization of the various
divisions of revolutionary work; without any systematic plan of activity
covering any length of time. The circle gradually expands its propaganda and
agitation. By its activities it wins the sympathies of fairly large sections of
workers and a certain section of the educated strata which provide it with
money and from among whom the committee (League of Struggle) grows its sphere
of activity quite spontaneously; the very people who a year or a few months
previously spoke at the students’ circle gatherings and discussed the question,
“Where do we go from here?”, who established and maintained contacts with the
workers and wrote and published leaflets, now establish contacts with other
groups of revolutionaries, procure literature, set to work to publish a local
newspaper, talk of organizing a demonstration, and finally, turn to open
warfare…”*
But
what are the conditions we face? It is best to consider the development of an
intellectual circle in
On
the basis of the study and exchange of communist publications, a few
individuals come together. At first, the study constitutes the basis of the
circle’s endeavours, subsequently a certain amount of
objective study of society is pursued. In general, the group has no extensive
contacts with the workers nor does it attract the attention of even a small
section of the working class. In practical terms, they have no role or active
relation with the people’s spontaneous movements, which are themselves sporadic
and limited. Publishing local journals, organizing demonstrations, and
particularly waging open warfare must not even be mentioned; it is during this
limited development that many of these circles become targets of police blows
under police-dominated conditions and are shattered.
What
is the cause of this disparity of conditions? In the case of
In
this light, the question that confronted the revolutionaries was this: Should
they head the mass movement or not? Should a movement that is fundamentally
economically and politically short-sighted be transformed into a well-rounded
political movement? These intellectual-proletarian circles as a single unit had
to form an organization of united professional revolutionaries and by way of
leadership of all forms of struggle with a political context,
push the movement forward. An organization of professional revolutionaries that
could guarantee “continuity,” eliminate fragmentary and dispersed work, devise
a prolonged and steadfast program for an all-encompassing, far-reaching
struggle and guide the masses in this struggle had to be established.
In
effect, masses of workers had been drawn into the struggle, had to some extent
acquired class organization and had also produced their own organs of struggle.
Alongside these organs, proletarian circles that were extensively in contact
with the masses of workers and which enjoyed the possibility of vast
circulation and propaganda had been created. Now the question was this: Should
this spontaneous struggle be transformed into a struggle which would be
political in every aspect or not? It is precisely the method of approaching
this question that distinguished the revolutionaries from the economists, the
advocates of piecemeal efforts, and the followers of the spontaneous movement.
According to Lenin, the economists reasoned that:
“The
working masses themselves have not yet advanced the broad and militant
political tasks which the revolutionaries are attempting to “impose” on them;
that they must continue to struggle for immediate political demands, to
conduct “the economic struggle against the employers and the
government.”…Others, far removed from any theory of “gradualness,” said that it
is possible and necessary to “bring about a political revolution,” but this
does not require building a strong organization of revolutionaries to train the
proletariat in steadfast and stubborn struggle, all we need do is to snatch up
our old friend, the “accessible” cudgel. To drop metaphor, it means that we
must organize a general strike, or that we must simulate the “spiritless”
progress of the working-class movement by means by means of “excitative terror.” Both these trends, the opportunist and
the “revolutionaries,” bow to the prevailing amateurism; neither believes that
it can be eliminated, neither understands our primary and imperative practical
task to establish an organization of revolutionaries capable of lending
energy, stability, and continuity to the political struggle.”*
But
here in
Yet,
is it absolutely true that always and under all conditions spontaneous
movements reflect the abundance of the objective conditions for revolution, and
that spontaneous movements indicate the imminence of the revolutionary phrase?
Can the opposite be also true? That is, should we deduce that the lack of broad and spontaneous movements indicate a lack of
objective conditions for the revolution, and that the revolutionary phrase has
not yet arrived? In my opinion, no. Under the present
conditions in
And
what is our road? Today, sitting in wait for the extensive spontaneous mass
movement to then guide it, without having engaged in revolutionary action,
without attempting to thoroughly furnish the subjective conditions through
revolutionary action itself, is tantamount to following the spontaneous
movement in circumstances such as those in
Lenin
responds: “All those who talk about “overrating the importance of ideology”,
about exaggerating the role of conscious element, etc., imagine that the labour
movement pure and simple can elaborate, and will elaborate an independent
ideology for itself, if only the workers “wrest their fate from the hands of
their leaders.
Thus,
the author comes quite close to the question of the material forces”
(organizers of strikes and demonstrations) and to the “paths” of the struggle,
but, nevertheless, is still in a state of consternation, because he “worships”
the mass movement, i.e. he regards it as something that relieves us of the
necessity of conducting revolutionary activity and not as something that should
encourage us and stimulate our revolutionary activity. It is impossible for a
strike to remain a secret to those participating in it and to those immediately
associated with it, but it may (and in the majority of cases does) remain a
“secret” to the masses of the Russian workers, because the government takes
care to cut all the communications with the strikers from spreading. Here
indeed is where a special “struggle against the political police” is required,
a struggle that can never be conducted actively by such large masses as take
part in strikes. This struggle must be organized, according to “all the rules
of the art,” by the people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary
activity. The fact that the masses are spontaneously being drawn into the
movement does not make the organization of this struggle less necessary. On the
contrary, it makes it more necessary…”.*
Where
the conditions are such that the regime’s police terror aims at and has
succeeded in severing the links between the people and their intellectuals;
where no links exist among the strikers; where terror and repression have held
back the masses from any appreciable movement; where this same terror and
permanent repression have consistently caused the masses to assume negative
attitudes towards struggle and to avoid any political idea which in their
opinion does not offer any salvation; and where the regime attempts to
suffocate any mass movements in embryo – is a “special struggle” against the
political police necessary? Can the masses perform this task? Can the masses be
expected to perceive the straw nature of the regime or to learn it through
their own experiences? How can the masses who do not ask why should we struggle
but can we struggle, and how can we resist the face of the regime’s awesome
power, possibly become conscious of their historical power when repression has
led certain “revolutionary” intellectuals to explain the ferocity of this
“paper tiger” by the objective conditions being immature and the contradictions
insufficiently developed, while at the same time not seeing that it is
precisely the repressive force of the anti-people army which is the main factor
for the survival of imperialist domination? How can the struggle which finds
its course in history and whose victory and historical conditions guarantee;
the struggle whose roots are in the material conditions masses’ existence; the
struggle which is reflected at the same time in the conscious action of the
revolutionary vanguard and the sporadic and dispersed movements of the masses;
and finally the struggle which under heavy dictatorial and persistently
repressive conditions has taken on an explosive character at times bringing a
large part of the masses out on the streets and other times dying out as a
transient flame; how can the reality of this struggle be demonstrated to the
masses in a concrete way? How can we crack the colossal barrier of suppressive
power; a colossal barrier created by the constant repression, by the lagging of
the people‘s leadership, by the inability of the vanguard to fulfill its role, and finally by the hellish propaganda
waged by a regime that relies on the force of the bayonet; a barrier separating
the people from their intellectuals, separating the masses from themselves and
separating the necessity of mass struggle from the existence of mass struggle
itself? How can we crack this barrier and mobilize the sonorous surge of
people’s struggle? The only way is armed action.
The
necessity for the conscious role and active practice of the revolutionary
vanguard has not been weakened but rather strengthened precisely due to the
increasing role of the counter-revolution in the equation. At the present time
it is only through the most acute form of revolutionary action, that is,
through armed struggle, and the shaking of the colossal barrier that the
vanguard can show the masses the struggle which finds its course in history. It
must be shown that “the struggle has really started, and its progress requires
the support and active participation of the masses” (paraphrasing Regis Debray). It must be shown in practice that
anti-revolutionary violence can be conquered and that stability and security
are a force. It is in the course of this action that the masses’ historical
stamina, accumulated and dormant behind the colossal barrier of suppressive
power, is gradually released. And it is in this same course that the masses
gradually and in the heart of the armed struggle become conscious of
themselves, their historical mission, and their undefeatable strength. It is at
this point that some raise their voices against us, crying: “These impatient,
adventurous, leftist youths do not have the patience to wait until the masses
are ready for armed struggle, until the proletarian vanguard organization (of
course, along a society political line) prepares the masses for armed struggle.
They do not have the patience to wait until “the exploited and oppressed masses
realize that they will not be able to continue their existence as before, and
demand its change” and “the exploiters are unable to live and rule, as in the
past,” (Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder) to then take
up the armed struggle; they have mistaken the struggle against the political
police and the militia for political work, political struggle and persistent
political activity.”
Although
the forms of these accusations differ, their essence is the same as that of the
charges made against Lenin by the Russian opportunists. They said that there
was no need for the organization of professional revolutionaries and that,
“By
theoretical reasoning (not by the growth of party tasks, which grow together
with the party”) Iskra solved the problem of the
immediate transition of the struggle against absolutism. In all probability it
senses the difficulty of such a task for the workers under the present state of
affairs, but lacking the patience to wait until the workers will have gathered
sufficient forces for this struggle.”
And
Lenin responds:
“Yes,
we have indeed lost all “patience”, “waiting” for the blessed time, long
promised us by diverse “conciliators”, when the Economists will have stopped
charging the workers with their own backwardness and justifying their own lack
of energy with allegations that the workers lack strength.”*
The
truth is that if the struggle against despotism, at that time, was
fundamentally political, now the struggle against despotism is basically
political-military. If in Russia the true vanguard would come to the fore as a
result of a series of economic, political and ideological struggles, now in
Iran, solely a political-military struggle is able to create the true vanguard.
Let us explain further. What is the main task of the vanguard? It is not the
historical task of the revolutionary vanguard to make use of conscious
revolutionary practice in order to establish links with the masses so as to tap
into the historic power of the masses and to bring that power, which is the
determining factor, onto the actual and decisive battlefield of the struggle? The
more complicated the conditions, the more powerful the suppressive forces of
the enemy, the more urgently the question of the revolution is posed, and
naturally the more difficult will be this “tapping.” It is true that when the
masses become conscious, on the basis of their material conditions, they are
transformed into a tremendous material force, the only force capable of
transforming society. But the problem has always been to know how to convey
this consciousness to the masses; through what organizations, and by what
means. And in addition, through what forms of organization and what methods of
struggle can the revolutionary force of organization be guided in the correct
direction so as to bring about the victory of the revolution, the downfall of
reaction and the conquest of political power.
With
the increasing alertness of reaction, the growing reliance upon suppression as
the main instrument for rule, and along with the passage of revolution from the
West to the East, the role of the conscious vanguard and that of the militant
organization of vanguard revolutionaries have acquired a greater significance
every day. In the era of Marx and Engels, the vanguard organization consisting
of professional revolutionaries never had the importance it attained in Lenin’s
era.
If
in
Furthermore,
the principle that if the call for the uprising and the proposal of a
particular slogan, e.g., “The rule of the soviets” was put forth a little too
soon or too late, it would cause the defeat of insurrection was also proven.
Whereas, under the conditions of Russia, the historical vigour of the masses
took form through a series of fundamental economic and political struggles
gradually passing from potential to actuality and erupting into armed uprising,
in China, the revolutionary consciousness was being conveyed to them in the
midst of a prolonged armed struggle and as a result, it lacked that explosive
character.
In
this way, the armed urban insurrection is transformed into a prolonged armed
struggle and the revolutionary vigour of the masses gradually enters the
decisive forefront. Thus, the people’s army also becomes the “armed propaganda”
force. Actually, when the main base of the revolution is in the countryside; when
the rural masses subjected to imperialist and semi-feudal domination, and whose
material living conditions automatically disunite them (according to Marx, they
do not even constitute a class), and thus, when the rural masses lack any
possibility for organizing organs for classical economic-political struggle
(trade unions and syndicates), one sees that the only form of action that can
organize the peasantry is armed struggle, and the only organization capable of
giving it organization and unity is a political-military one.
To
defeat the reaction, the broad rural masses must be drawn to the struggle. To
defeat Reaction, the reactionary army must be smashed. To smash the reactionary
army, a people’s army must exist. The only way to smash the reactionary army
and to build the people’s army is prolonged guerrilla struggle; a guerrilla war
is necessary not only in terms of military strategy for smashing the powerful
army, but also in terms of political strategy for mobilizing the masses. The
political and military factors are fused together in an inevitable and organic
way. On the one hand, the mobilization
of the masses is the condition for the victory of armed struggle both
militarily and politically. Yet, on the
other hand, mobilization of the masses is not possible without armed struggle.
This is the lesson taught by not only the Cuban revolutionary war but also
those of
Perhaps,
objections will be raised claiming that it was the Communist Party which
initiated the Chinese revolutionary war and this party initiated the Long March
only after years of fundamental political struggle and after resorting to urban
armed uprisings and gaining experience. Thus, we too only have the right to
turn to armed struggle after such a period. But, if in
“In
the period (1920-1927) Sun Yatsen was leading the Koumintang Party. The Communist Party, with its own
independent organization, functioned within the Koumintang
Party. We, the communists, had imposed some conditions on our participation in
the Koumintang organization: 1. Unity with
Sun
Yatsen accepted the conditions, and on that basis,
co-operation was initiated between us. In 1924, our party decided to introduce
its members into the Koumintang. But, at that time,
the Chinese Communist Party, despite its considerable influence among the
workers and peasants, had no more than a hundred members. The participation of
the communist members and combatants in Koumintang
enabled the Communist Party to work better among the workers and peasants. In
this way, the Party directly worked among the workers, the peasants and the
students, and strengthened the unity of the workers. The Party succeeded,
through co-operation with the Koumintang, to extend
its activities among the country’s intellectuals, including the northern area
and united the students not only in the South but also in the North.
We
assisted Sun Yatsen in composing the revolutionary
military forces. We created the “Vampova” military
school to train the army’s leadership cadres i.e., the revolutionary officers.
Comrade Mao Tse-Tung became a member of Koumintang Central Committee.” (Lessons From the History of The Communist Party of
What
can be seen here is not only the democratic conditions of that period, but also
the direct participation of the Communist Party in state power created vast
possibilities for free activity not only among the workers and the students,
but also the peasants. This party was able to infiltrate even the army and
train communist military cadres. These conditions made it possible for the
process of worker-peasant unity to begin, not in the course of an armed
struggle, but by means of free political and organization activities, and to commence
the revolutionary war with an army. The point that the Communist Party, having
only a few hundred members, enjoyed a wide influence among the workers, the
students and even the peasants, displays how the Chinese Communist Party was
able, to some extent, under a favourable set of conditions, to rapidly
transform itself through unarmed experiences into a real vanguard force.
Should
we now sit and wait for such a favourable state of affairs so that we can then
become the real vanguards and prepare the conditions for armed struggle? The
real vanguard must itself come to the fore in the course of armed struggle and politco-military action. Should we wait until the Communist
Party is formed, and then initiate the revolutionary war on a large scale, for
example with an army? The answer is that the politico-military nucleus itself
can, by initiating guerrilla warfare and in the process of its development,
create the party, the people’s true vanguard politico-military organization and
the people’s army.
To
depict the differences between the democratic or semi-democratic conditions
where purely political activities are possible, and those of a vast and
intensely violent dictatorship where the urban masses and at their head the
proletariat, and foremost the peasantry lack any possibility for any form of
organization, we must turn to the situation in
If
in
In
If
in
Here,
today, the declaration of war is the war itself; the two are inseparable. The
moral significance of war depends on its material progress and its material
progress depends on its moral significance. The more numerous the blows dealt
to the enemy, the more it disintegrated; the more political force grows, the
more its moral significance and its appeal to the masses will increase. And
this causes the material strengthening of the politico-military force.9
Now
we are ready to examine Regis Debray’s “Revolution
Within The Revolution?” and absorb the lessons of
the Cuban Revolution in depth. In this examination, we will find further explanations
and more objective evidence in approval and clarification of the above
mentioned ideas.
5
As
we said, under the influence of a series of pre-judgements, we failed at a deep
understanding of the fundamental concepts that Debray
had presented in “Revolution in The Revolution?”
as the inner elements of the Cuban experience. In fact, we rejected in practice
these new concepts without understanding them.
We
did not say that the path shown by Debray was
incompatible with
It
appeared that Debray’s thesis denies the role of the
Marxist-Leninist party as the only force capable of giving an all-embracing
leadership to the revolution. It appeared that Debray’s
thesis underestimates the importance of the theory of Marxism-Leninism, i.e.
revolutionary theory as the guide to practice. It appeared that Debray had ignored the leading role of political matters
over military ones and had even assigned priority to military matters over
political matters. Debray quotes Castro: “Who will
make the revolution in
Debray then asserts:
“Fidel
Castro simply says there is no revolution without a vanguard and that this
vanguard is not necessarily the Marxist-Leninist party. Those who want
revolution have the right and the duty to create a vanguard independently of
these parties…There is, then, no metaphysical equation in which vanguard =
Marxist-Leninist party. There are merely dialectical conjunctions between a
given function-that of the vanguard in history-and a given form of
organization-that of the Marxist-Leninist party. This combination arises out of
prior history and depends on it. Parties exist here on earth and are subject to
the rigours of terrestrial dialectics. If they were born, they can die and be
reborn in other forms.” (Debray, pp. 98-99)
These
assertions were celebrated by the liberal and the so-called anti-dogmatic
intellectuals since they understood in their own minds the refutation of the
authoritative and vanguard role of any Marxist-Leninist party. They want to
enjoy the title of revolutionary and leader, however, their liberalism does not
permit them to relinquish their ideological unscrupulousness and pseudo-Marxist
eclecticism. They can accept neither Marxist-Leninism as the only scientific
world outlook-the ideology that can guide a permanent revolution-nor the
discipline needed to work in a Marxist-Leninist organization. They thus abuse
Fidel and Regis Debray’s assertions although it is
evident throughout the book that the issue is not the denial of the leading
role of the proletariat and his ideology. The Marxist-Leninist party, here, is
viewed as a special form of organization. According to Debray,
if a party does not profoundly and radically change its peacetime organization
and does not forge a new organization appropriate to the responsibilities of a
real vanguard, then the Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries have the right to
launch the revolution apart from this Marxist-Leninist party as a special form
of organization in order to bring into existence a new organization which can
fulfil the responsibilities of a true vanguard-a truly Marxist-Leninist
vanguard-and in practice become worthy of the name which the supposed
Marxist-Leninist parties have usurped.
In
fact, here we have a distinction between the form of the party and its content.
The content of the party is the task of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard in
history, a proletarian organization’s task in history; its form consists of
those organizations that are required to accomplish this historical task.
Whereas the content always remains the same, these organizational forms are
subject to the rigours of terrestrial dialectics. Thus the party can die and be
reborn in a new form. This is why we are faced with the “reconstruction of the
party” (Debray, p. 102), “
the rebirth of the party in a new form,” etc. Debray
himself rebuffs those petty-bourgeois intellectuals who want to abuse these
assertions in order to justify their liberalism. He resolutely says:
“Let
us speak clearly. The time has passed for believing that it suffices to be ‘in
the party’ to be a revolutionary. But the time has also come for putting an end
to the acrimonious, obsessive and sterile attitudes constituting two sides of
the same coin, basically identical. The Manichaeism of the Party (no revolution
outside the Party) finds its reflection in anti-party Manichaeism (no
revolution with the Party); both crave complacency. In Latin American today a
revolutionary is not defined by his formal relationship with the Party, whether
he is for or against it. The value of a revolutionary, like that of a party,
depends on his activity.” (Debray, p. 104,
footnote)
When
action and particularly armed action is posed, these very same ivory tower
intellectuals step back and in order to justify their ivory tower idleness and
indeed in order to justify their own existence, say that revolution needs
theory and that it needs a comprehensive analysis of the
socio-economic-political conditions. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that
exactly because of their “lack” of relations with this very armed action, these parties have now fallen from their vanguard
position. They ignore the fact that the old organization of the
Marxist-Leninist party has lost its proportionality to a new historical task,
that now a new Marxist-Leninist organization and a more rigorous discipline
than that of the previous organization are required and that every person's
relationship to the revolution will be determined by his relationship to this
new organization.
But
before we consider Debray’s principal idea, namely,
the relation between the party and the guerrillas and political military work,
it is appropriate to clarify the relationship between theory and practice from Debray’s point of view.
In
“The Errors of the Foco Theory,” Clea
Silva contends that Debray is attempting to destroy
the basic principle that “without revolutionary theory there is no
revolutionary movement” when he says “The best teacher of Marxism-Leninism is the
enemy, in face-to-face confrontation. Study and apprenticeship are necessary
but not decisive.”
In
my opinion Clea Silva’s deduction is not correct.
However, let us see what is meant by theory. Silva himself replies: “There is
revolutionary struggle only when we know how, against whom, and at which moment
we must struggle.” (Silva, p. 23) Does Regis Debray
consider these to be secondary, unimportant, or unnecessary problems? I think
this is not the case. Doesn’t Debray
attempt to advance a theory and a series of strategic achievements based on the
experience of the Cuban revolution? Is his book not basically an attempt to
answer how and by what means the enemy should be fought? Debray
does not present a comprehensive analysis of the Latin American socio-economic
conditions in his book. Does this indicate that he considers this problem
unimportant and unnecessary? Why then does he consider, for example, the lack
of socio-economic analysis on the part of the Latin American communist parties
as a shortcoming? However, Debray’s illogical and
excessive attention to the Cuban revolution’s particular forms and
particularities, indeed, to the exceptional aspects of the Cuban experience,
and his attempt to generalize them throughout the Latin American cause a series
of errors that should be mentioned.
Even
if the Cuban revolutionaries applied strategic principles unconsciously, should
we too start without awareness of the strategy, without a relatively clear
understanding of the general lines of action which lay ahead of us? If we want
to initiate a people’s war, should we not have a clear understanding of the
strategy of the peoples’ wars doing “as much harm as good” (emphasizing the
dialectical relation of theory and action) with such superficial and empiricist
treatment that therefore one should not study them or “one may well consider it
a stroke of good luck that Fidel had not read the military writings of Mao Tse-tung before disembarking on the coast of Orient.” If
the Cuban path is to be retraced step by step, which is unthinkable, and if we
wish to generalize every exceptional case, one should mention that the Cuban
revolutionaries themselves did not intend to undertake a protracted war at the
beginning, whereas for us the protractedness of war
is an established fact. (They wanted to overthrow Bastista’s
government by performing a series of combative shock operations concomitant
with urban insurrections. In the course of action this plan ended in failure
and a new path was adopted.)
In
fact, since revolution in all societies occurs under a series of general laws,
and even peoples’ wars encompass a series of general laws, all the past
revolutionary experiences provide lessons, which should be learned and for this
reason “do much good.” But if one considers that in the final analysis
revolutionary action enables one to discover the specific objective conditions
of each country and to correct and elaborate the revolutionary theory, then
undoubtedly mechanical generalizations “do harm”. Only with clear general lines
and a general strategy of action is it possible to establish an organic
relationship between experience and tactical principles; to draw lessons from
them; to correct and elaborate the tactical errors in relation to the general
strategy and thus even to correct and elaborate the general strategy itself and
determine with precision its pertinent special forms of action.
Debray says: “The armed
revolutionary struggle encounters specific conditions on each continent, in
each country, but these are neither ‘natural’ nor obvious. So true is this that
in each case years of sacrifice are necessary in order to discover and acquire
an awareness of them.” (Debray, p. 20)
Is it possible to understand the specific conditions without reference to the
general conditions? And are not the revolutionary experiences useful for
understanding the very same general experiences? The assertion that “In Latin
America a few years of experience in armed struggle of all kinds have done more
to reveal the particularity of objective conditions than preceding decades of
borrowed political theory”, (Debray, p.
23-24) by no means lessens the importance of revolutionary theory; rather,
it merely implies that borrowed political theory cannot become the proper
guideline for revolutionary action. But only in connection with theory and the
general conditions and the analysis of the specific conditions can this
experience be the mainspring of a new theory and a new guideline for action. In
brief, it is action that finally determines the validity or invalidity of our
theory. Nonetheless, we are compelled to initiate our action by summing up
previous theories and experiences.
There
are those who contemplate a relatively long period-a period whose basic
characteristic is theoretical education and ideological struggle-for grasping
the theory of revolution and an all-embracing knowledge of the objective
conditions. They say that we need theoreticians similar to Lenin. Of course,
they do not mean the Lenin who was reared in the process of a prolonged and
active struggle, but rather someone who has a vast encyclopaedic theoretical
knowledge. Before we close this discussion, it is appropriate to mention one
point regarding their argument:
In
the history of the revolutionary experience and the international communist
movement of the current century, we encounter essentially three types of
struggle: ideological, economic, and political. If we consider the historical
succession of these experiences, we clearly observe how the role of the
theoretical and economic struggle has progressively diminished and how
political struggle has increasingly dominated the whole of the revolutionary
struggle. In order to comprehend the lessening of the importance of theory in
contrast to practical political struggle, it is sufficient to glance at the
documents of the communist movement: “Capital”,” Anti-Duhring”,”
What is to be Done?”,” On New Democracy”, etc. In brief, in today’s
international communist movement, which is proceeding mainly in the subjugated
countries, we seldom come across theoretical works on the level with “Capital”,”
Anti-Duhring”, or “Materialism” and “Empirio-Criticism”. Does this fact not
indicate that the international communist movement, which in general is engaged
in direct revolutionary action, neither has the opportunity nor the need to
work on pure theory? Does this not imply that we increasingly need
practitioners rather than theoreticians?11
The
situation with regard to the economic struggle is the same. If we consider the
process of revolutionary struggle in each country where it has gained
importance, we will note that the economic struggle is more and more losing its
significance. This situation itself is also the consequence of the ever
increasing dominance of politics over economics, the consequence of the
dominance of the class enemy maintained by the most suppressive means of
repression and terror, the consequence of the imperialist global
domination. In short, it is the consequence of imperialist global
domination passing through its period of decadence. In fact, the development of
the process of revolution on the global scale on the one hand, has more than
ever put on the order of the day the problem of how to seize political power,
the acute problems of how to make revolution and in what way the revolution can
crush imperialist domination, and in short, direct revolutionary action. On the
one hand, the very same process of revolution on the global scale is a type of
theoretical preparation for the present revolution. Now the content of
revolution is clearer than ever, while what remains to be clarified, and what
will be clarified only through direct revolutionary action, is the specific
forms this content assumes under specific conditions. The difficulty of the
task rests not in preparing the program of revolution, determining the
objectives of the revolution, or discerning the forces of revolution and
counter-revolution, but rather in determining the ways and means to be applied
in order to carry the revolution to victory.
6
We
used to reject Debray’s views on the relationship
between the party and the guerrilla, and between political work and military
work. On the one hand, we were confronting Mao’s and Giap’s
stress on the guiding role of the communist party in popular armed struggle. On
the other hand, Debray was telling us that the
vanguard is not necessarily Marxist-Leninist.
But we showed in the previous lines that this is not so, and saw that the issue
is not over the denial of the role of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard. Rather, it
is over those forms of organization and revolutionary action that a vanguard
must employ in order to fulfil the tasks of the vanguard and transform itself
into the genuine vanguard of the people. But what is this new organization and
new action? And why have these new forms of organization and action become
necessary? Before anything else, one should note that Debray’s
thesis basically rests on the fact that the instrument of survival of imperialist domination is mainly the violent and
repressive military apparatus; his thesis also rests on the fact that the
methods of maintaining this dominance have rendered all forms of reformist
struggle not only insignificant but also impossible. Debray
believes that the development of the revolutionary movement has reached such a
stage that the main link of the present revolutionary struggles in Latin America
is the problem of seizing political power and crushing the backbone of
imperialist domination, i.e. the army. Thus he says:
“In
Thus,
one who does not truly envisage this problem, and evades its solution, even
though accepting armed struggle in words, is not
revolutionary. It is at this point Debray’s fundamental
thesis is put forth, a thesis that should receive our attention now more than
ever. What is the path of revolution? Is it the political party that should
initiate armed struggle; or is it armed struggle itself which in its process of
development and growth, in its process of increasing popularization, creates an
organ capable of giving comprehensive leadership to the revolutionary struggle
of the masses? Is it the Party that should prepare the subjective conditions to
come into existence during armed struggle? Should efforts be directed towards
creating or strengthening the party or towards the practical preparation for
armed struggle? Debray says “These questions have
been met with a standard response in the history of Marxism and in history as
such: A response so immutable that the mere asking of it will seem a heresy
to many. That answer is that the Party must be strengthened first, for it is
the creator and the directing nucleus of the people’s army. Only the party of
the working class can create a true army of the people-as the guarantor of a
scientifically based political line-and win power in the interest of the
workers.” (Debray, p. 95)
This
is the response of those who accept the necessity of armed struggle in a
certain phase and as a particular means. Of course, the words of reformists who
question the necessity of armed struggle no longer have any weight, nor is it
an urgent necessity to respond to them. But on what grounds does the argument
of those who believe in the antecedence of the party to armed struggle and of
political work to military work stand?
Debray
presents their argument in two parts:
“Theoretical Orthodoxy: It is not a matter of destroying an army but of
seizing state power in order to transform the social structure. Bourgeois state
power has its own superstructure (political, judicial, constitutional, etc.)
which is not to be confused with its repressive apparatus.
It
is the representatives of the exploited classes and their vanguard, the working
class, to carry on this political fight up to and including its armed
form, revolutionary civil war. Now then, a class is represented by a political
party, not by a military apparatus. The proletariat is represented by that
party, which expresses its class ideology, Marxism-Leninism. Only the
leadership of this party can scientifically defend its class interests.
To
the extent that it is a matter of intervening in the total social structure, it
is necessary to have scientific knowledge of society in all its complexity, at
all its levels (political, ideological, economic, etc.) and in its development.
This is the condition for carrying out a massive struggle at all levels; and
the military struggle, only one level among others, has meaning only within the
context of comprehensive intervention at all levels by the popular forces
against bourgeois society. Only the workers’ party, on the basis of a
scientific understanding of the social structure and of existing conditions,
can decide the slogans, the goals, and the alliances required at a given
moment. In brief, the party determines the political content and the goal to be
pursued, and the people’s army is merely an instrument of
implementation.” (Debray, pp. 95-96)
As
we indicated, we encounter these statements precisely at a time when the
difficulty of the matter is not theoretical but practical, and the burning
issue at hand is not the understanding of the society but rather its change,
and in brief when the hub of the matter lies in finding those forms of action
and organization with which one must carry out the revolution. Does this not
indicate a fundamental fallacy in the perception between form and content, in
perceiving that the party-as a special form of organization- is itself an
instrument? Precisely at a time when the repressive army is the chief factor in
maintaining imperialist domination, is it not a kind of political retreat to
say that the principle problem is not to destroy the army but to conquer the
state power?12
In
a situation where one must precisely determine what form of action and
organization ought to be selected, is not evading the definition of the
principal form of action a type of reformism? It is, of course, true that “the
main issue is the conquest of state power,” but in today’s conditions the
principal and necessary requirement for the conquest of state power is the
confrontation with and the annihilation of the army and repressive power of the
dominated state. The point is not that armed struggle is one form of many
various forms of struggle which under special conditions and with special
preparedness becomes necessary. Rather, the point is that armed struggle is
that form of struggle which constitutes the groundwork of an all encompassing
struggle, and only on such a basis do other various forms of struggle become
necessary and useful. The point is that the organ-or if we wish to call it the
party-of the proletariat’s class struggle, an organ which is truly a vanguard
of the people, an organ which is truly able to guide the manifold struggle of
the masses, can come into existence only through armed struggle.
Debray says: “There is, then, no
metaphysical equation in which vanguard = Marxist-Leninist Party,” (Debray, p. 98) Here, the dispute is not over
the denial of the content of the vanguard Marxist-Leninist party, rather it is
over a specific form of action and organization. Thus, the equation
Marxist-Leninist party = vanguard, where form and appearance are shown on one
side and content on the other, is necessarily a concrete and historical
equation and not an immutable and everlasting one. It is only within specific
historical conditions that for a given content, specific forms are imperative.
Therefore, “…there are merely dialectical conjunctions between a given
function-that of the vanguard in history-and a given form of organization-that
of the Marxist-Leninist party. These conjunctions arise out of prior history
and depend on it. Parties exist here on earth and are subject to the rigours of
terrestrial dialectics.” (Debray. Pp. 98-99)
At
this point Debray sets out to refute historical
orthodoxy, an historical orthodoxy, which justifies
theoretical orthodoxy with reliance on the experiences of the peoples’ wars and
the vanguard role of the political party. Despite its reliance on the
experiences of the peoples’ wars, this orthodoxy as a whole results in a
separation between political and military work. At the beginning, this
separation is temporal; that is, it is believed that only a vanguard party can
guide armed struggle and the people’s war, and that this vanguard party will be
formed not through armed struggle itself, but rather through other forms of
struggle which are mostly political, economic or ideological. Actually, the
reliance of this orthodoxy on a series of purely formal phenomena in the
experiences of the peoples’ wars not only creates a real separation between the
peoples’ wars and revolutionary practice, between political work and military
work, but also causes erroneous inferences from the lessons of the peoples’
wars themselves. Neither peaceful struggle nor a purely political and economic
struggle, but special conditions permitted the communist parties of
Debray asks: “In what form can the
historic vanguard appear?” He replies: “What is depends on what was, what will
be on what is. The question of parties, as what they are today, is a question
of history. To answer it, we must look to the past.” (Debray,
p. 99) At this point, Debray refers to the
conditions of birth and growth of the parties of
“A
party is marked by its conditions of birth, development, the class or alliance
of classes that it represents, and the social milieu in which it has developed.
Let us take the same counterexamples in order to discover what historic
conditions permit the application of the traditional formula for party
guerrilla relationships:
1)
The Chinese and Vietnamese parties were involved from the beginning with the
problem of establishing revolutionary power. This link was not theoretical but practical
and manifested itself very early in the form of a detrimental and tragic
experience. The Chinese Party was born in 1921, when Sun Yat-sen’s
bourgeois revolution…was growing stronger. From its inception it received
direct aid from the Soviet mission, including the military advisers led by Joffe and later by Borodin. The latter, on his arrival,
organized the training of Chinese Communist officers at the
“The
Vietnamese Party came into being in 1930, immediately organized peasant
insurrections in the hinterland which were quickly repressed, and two years
later defined its line, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, in its first
program of action: ‘The only path to liberation is that of armed mass
struggle.’ ‘Our party,’ wrote Giap, ‘came into being when the Vietnamese revolutionary
movement was at its peak. From the beginning it led the peasants, encouraged
them to rise up and establish soviet power. Thus, at an early stage, it became
aware of the problems of revolutionary power and armed struggle.’ In brief,
these parties transformed themselves, within a few years of their funding, into
vanguard parties, each one with its political line, elaborated independently of
international social forces, and each profoundly linked to its people.
2)
In the course of their subsequent development, international contradictions
were to place these parties-like the Bolshevik Party some years earlier-at the
head of popular resistance to foreign imperialism…The class struggle took the
form of a patriotic war, and the establishment of socialism corresponded to the
restoration of national independence: the two are linked. These parties,
spearheading the war of the people against the foreigners, consolidated
themselves as the standard-bearers of the fatherland.
(3)
The circumstances of this same war of liberation led certain parties originally
composed of students and the best of the workers elite to withdraw to the
countryside to carry on a guerrilla war against the occupying forces. They then
merged with the agricultural workers and small farmers; the Red Army and the
Liberation Forces (Vietminh) were transformed into peasant armies under the
leadership of the party of the working class. They achieved in practice
the alliance of the majority class and the vanguard class: the worker-peasant
alliance. The Communist Party, in this case, was the result and the generative
force of this alliance. So were its leaders, not artificially appointed by a
congress or co-opted in the traditional fashion, but tested, molded, and tempered by this terrible struggle which they
led to victory…
Without
going into detail, historic circumstances have not permitted Latin American
Communist Parties, for the most part, to take root or develop the same way. The
conditions of their founding, their growth and their link with the exploited
classes are obviously different. Each one may have its own history but they are
alike in the opportunity they have not had, existing as they do in countries
winning power in the way the Chinese and Vietnamese parties have; they have not
had the opportunity, existing as they do in countries possessing formal
political independence, of leading a war of national liberation; and they have
therefore not been able to achieve the worker-peasant alliance-an interrelated
aggregation of limitations arising from shared historical condition.
The
natural result of this history is a certain structure of directive bodies and
of the parties themselves, adapted to the circumstances in which they were born
and grew. But, by definition, historic situations are not immutable. The Cuban
Revolution and the process it has set in motion throughout
What
is the task of Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries? If we put aside the
revisionist and reformist parties, parties, which essentially deny the
necessity of armed struggle, few paths will be set forth for discussion. If a
party has accepted the necessity of armed struggle as the decisive path, then
it must profoundly and fundamentally transform its peacetime organization. No
longer is there any room for armed action to be treated as a branch of party
activity, or for the guerrilla forces to be subordinated to a political force
detached from military and war problems.
If
an action is basically political-military, and if the fighting cadres are
composed of the political cadres of the past, this should fundamentally affect
the structure of leadership and organization. However, the important thing is
that the guerrilla force not be in the direction reformist goals and not as a
branch of party activity, but rather as a political-military action
constituting the basis and pivot of the struggle. But what path is open to
revolutionary forces facing a party with a reformist leadership? Should they
expand their efforts building a party (as a special form of organization and
action) that in the course of non-armed struggle transforms itself into a
vanguard, isolates the revisionist and reformist parties, and then prepares the
conditions for armed struggle? Or, should these very same tasks be fulfilled
during armed struggle? Debray shows how adoption of a
series of, in fact, reformist tactics and incorrect comprehension of the new
conditions; conditions which make any kind of peaceful or merely political or
ideological struggle futile; conditions under which political parties have no
deep ties with the masses, mar revolutionary strategy and cast the matter of
armed struggle to the abyss of oblivion.
“Hence
the oft-repeated classic involution: a new revolutionary organization appears
on the scene. It aspires to legal existence and then to participation in
‘normal’ political life for a certain time, in order to consolidate and make a
name for itself and thus prepare the conditions for armed struggle. But, low
and behold, it is gradually absorbed, swallowed up by the routine of this
public life, which becomes the stage for its normal activities…
The
prospects of insurrectional struggle diminish, delayed first for a few months
then for years. Time passes, with its vicissitudes, and there is an increasing
tendency to view the opening of hostilities as a somewhat sacrilegious
temptation, a kind of adventurism, perennially ‘premature’…The militants must
understand that to enter into armed struggle at any given moment would be to
destroy the sacred unity of the organization, to sabotage its legality, to
provoke repression against its leaders. In short, the political organization
has become an end in itself. It will not pass over to armed struggle because it
must first wait until it establishes itself solidly as the party of the
vanguard, even though in reality it cannot expect recognition of its vanguard
status except through armed struggle. This vicious circle has plagued the
revolutionary struggle for years.
Consequently,
it is useless to create antibodies in the heart of existing political
organizations: the opportunist infection, far from being halted, will be
aggravated, exacerbated.” (Debray, pp. 120-121)
Under
conditions where, says Debray, “without armed
struggle there is no well-defined vanguard,” the time has passed for us to
recognize the revolutionaries by their verbal affiliations with the revolution
and Marxism-Leninism.
“…It
is necessary to avoid the diversion of efforts and resources toward ‘pure’
political or ‘pure’ ideological fronts…Inasmuch as the revolutionary movement
can only be activated by an insurrectional outlook, efforts must be
concentrated on political-military organization. Revolutionary politics, if
they are not to be blocked, must be diverted from politics as such.
Political resources must be thrown into an organization which is simultaneously
political and military, transcending all existing polemics.”*
(Debray, p. 124)
Hence:
“Antibodies
must be created at the base, at the level of the masses by offering them a real
alternative within their reach. Only then will the existing political
leadership be changed. In most Latin American counties, it is only when armed
struggle has begun or is about to begin that the process of removing the
revolution from its ghetto, from the level of academic talk-fests, from a cast
of permanent globe-trotters, can get under way. In philosophical language, a
certain problematique has vanished since the
Cuban Revolution, that is to say, a certain way of posing questions which
governs the meaning of all possible answers. And it’s not the answer that must
be changed, but the questions themselves. These ‘Marxist-Leninist’ fractions or
parties operate within the problematique which is
imposed by the bourgeoisie; instead of transforming it, they have contributed
to its further entrenchment. They are bogged down by false problems and are
accomplices of the opportunistic problematique,
quarrels over precedence or office holding in leftist organizations, electoral
fronts, trade union manoeuvres and blackmail against their own members. This is
what is called quite simply politicking. In order to escape it, there must be
change of terrain, in every sense of the word.”(Debray,
pp. 121-122)
Therefore,
under the present circumstances, “The principle stress must be laid on the
development of guerrilla warfare and not on the strengthening of existing
parties or the creation of new parties…Insurrectional activity is today the
number one political activity.” (Debray, p.
116)
“Under
certain conditions, political and the military are not separate, but form one
organic whole, consisting of the people’s army, whose nucleus is the guerrilla
army. The vanguard can exist in the form of the guerrilla force itself. The
guerrilla force is the party in embryo. “ (Debray, p. 106)
What
can be learned from this experience? What lessons does it teach us? Before we
conclude, it is desirable to consider some of the criticisms addressed to this
thesis.
Clea Silva: “The theory that
armed force is the embryo of the party is based on the assumption that all
conditions are ripe and that there is no time to organize on a party basis. In
contrast to this, Lenin said that it is never too late to organize.” (Silva,
p. 20) Debray does not say that all conditions are
ripe, rather, he says that the necessary conditions to initiate armed struggle
exist, and that the sufficient conditions for expansion and popularization of
the armed struggle will develop in the course of action. Secondly, here the
question is not whether to organize, rather, it is the
question of the creation of an organization appropriate to the historical task
of the vanguard. Clea Silva’s assertion shows that he
has not correctly understood Debray’s views. For
example, he says: “If we observe the countries of
“For
reasons of both emergency and principle the armed revolutionary front is a
must. Wherever the fighting has followed an ascending line, wherever the
popular forces have responded to the emergency, they have moved into the
magnetic field of unity. Elsewhere they are scattered and weak. Events would
seem to indicate the need to focus all efforts on the practical organization of
armed struggle with a view of achieving unity on the basis of Marxist-Leninist
principles.” (Debray, p.126)
The
same misconception of the problem of organization is also seen in the case of
the Cuban comrades Simon Torres and Julio Aronde. In
It
is sufficient to consider his examination of “armed self-defense”
and “armed propaganda” to discover that from the beginning he has revolutionary
war in mind. In fact, the Cuban revolution, from the point of view of its inner
elements, could only show the beginning of a revolutionary popular war because
the unique and exceptional circumstances under which the revolution took place
allowed the revolution to achieve final victory before secure revolutionary
bases were completely formed and became a starting point for a new phase,
before the masses become involved in the war on a large scale and before the
popular army was created. Whereas now the increasing vigilance of the
repressive forces, direct imperialist intervention and other factors deny this
easily won victory to the armed struggle. It does not appear that Debray considers the Cuban experience the complete path
that every armed struggle should travel. Therefore, it cannot be said that he,
from the phase of “emergence of foco to the
achievement of the final victory, considers the military action as the only form
of political work.” As soon as the guerrilla force is established and can
create revolutionary support bases, or liberate some zones, all kinds of
possibilities for political education of the masses, training of cadres, and
political propaganda, etc., are conceivable. To cite Debray,
one can then deliver a hundred speeches, and they will be heard too. The
relation between political and military work constitutes one of the fundamental
points of Debray’s book. According to the view of
many people, one of Regis Derbray’s major errors is
the incorrect understanding of this relation. According to them, Regis Debray gives priority to military over political work. Debray’s understanding of this relation becomes
sufficiently clear in this statement: “Any line that claims to be revolutionary
must give a concrete answer to the question: How to overthrow the power of the
capitalist state? In other words, how to break its backbone, the army…?” (Debray, p. 24). To Debray, since the revolutionary
movement has reached a state where armed warfare constitutes its main link,
some political concepts find expression in military matters. For example, Lenin
confronted the advocates of economism and spontaneous
movements and even Trotskyism (“What Is To Be Done?”
and “One Step Forward Two Steps Backward”) over a professional,
organized and disciplined revolutionary organization. Debray
shows that on another level, this can find expression in the confrontation
between the advocates of an armed vanguard and the advocates of armed self-defense. He says: “Just as economism
denies the vanguard role of the party, self-defense
denies the role of the armed unit, which is organically separate from the
civilian population. Just as reformism aims to constitute a mass party without
selection of its militants or disciplined organization, self-defense aspires to integrate everyone into the armed
struggle, to create a mass guerrilla force…” (Debray,
p. 29)
In
order for the relation between military and political matters to be
illuminated, it is fitting to examine Debray’s views
regarding armed propaganda. His view on armed propaganda and how it must take
place after or during direct military action against the enemy and not before, is based on a series of concrete considerations,
which one cannot interpret as disparaging political work. The fact that Debray regards armed propaganda as an imported political
concept is due to the fact that one must not confuse the political nature of
the movement or the inherently political work with a series of political and/or
political-military tactics. Debray says that armed
propaganda is based on this: “The guerrilla struggle has political motives and
goals. It must have the support of the masses or disappear; before enlisting
them directly, it must convince them that there are valid reasons for its
existence…In order to convince the masses, it is necessary to address them…in
brief, to carry on political work, ‘mass work’. Hence, the first nucleus of
fighters will be divided into small propaganda patrols…Cells, public or
underground, will be organized in the village…The program of this Revolution
will be reiterated again and again. It is only at the end of this stage, having
achieved active support by the masses, a solid rearguard, regular provisioning,
a broad intelligence network, rapid mail service, and a recruiting center, that the guerrillas can pass over to direct action
against the enemy.” (Debray, p. 47)
It
is correct that guerrilla warfare has political motives and goals. It is
correct that the winning of the support of the masses constitutes the crucial
problem of war; and it is correct that for this purpose inherently political
work must be performed. But as to how this work is to be done (as to whether
military action should necessarily follow political propaganda, must speeches
necessarily be delivered from the outset, and prior to armed action should a
series of public and underground communication networks and cells be organized)
are matters which precisely depend on the conditions. And if we establish an
uninterrupted connection between these tactics and inherently political work,
we will have confused the goal with the means and the form with the content.
The danger arises that the impossibility of adopting a particular tactic might
be construed to mean that no grounds for action exist. Debray
says that if in
1.
Because of the high density of the peasant population and because the enemy is
an occupier, the revolutionary propagandists can easily mingle with the people
“like fish in water”. (cf. Debray, p. 50)
2.
“The propagandists are linked either with the bases of revolutionary support
with a people’s army capable of backing them up or protecting them in their
activities. Most important, they attest to the tangible and visible reality of
military victories. Village meetings and assemblies have a pragmatic and
serious content-no empty, programmatic lectures, no ‘fine words’ of the kind
the peasants so justly fear, but appeals to join up or give support to existing
combat units…” (Debray, p. 50) But what is
the Latin American situation?
“(1)
The guerrilla focos,
when they first begin their activity, are located in regions of highly
dispersed and relatively spare populations. Nobody, no new arrival, goes
unnoticed…They [peasants] know very well that fine words cannot be eaten and
will not protect them from bombardment. The poor peasant believes, first of
all, in anyone who has certain power, beginning with the power to do what one
says. The system of oppression is subtle; it has existed from time immemorial;
fixed, entrenched and solid. The army the guardia
rural…enjoy a prestige all the greater of being subconscious. This prestige
constitutes the principle form of oppression: it immobilizes the discontented,
silences them and leads them to swallow affronts at the mere sight of a
uniform. The neo-colonial ideal is still to show force in order not to have to
use it, but to show it, is in effect to use it.
In
other words, the physical force of the police and army is considered to be
unassailable, and unassailability cannot be challenged by words but by showing
that a soldier and a policeman are no more bulletproof than anyone else. The guerrillero, on the other hand, must use his
strength in order to show it, since he has little to show but his determination
and his ability to make use of his limited resources. He must make a show of
strength and at the same time demonstrate that the enemy’s strength is first
and foremost his bluster. In order to destroy the idea of
unassailability-that age-old accumulation of fear and humility vis-à-vis… the
policeman, the guardia rural-there is nothing
better than combat. Then, as Fidel tells us, unassailability vanishes as
rapidly as respect engendered by habit turns into ridicule…
(2)
The occupation and control of the rural areas by reaction or directly by
imperialism, their vigilance today greatly increased, should rid a given group
of armed propagandists all hope of remaining unnoticed…The armed unit and
people’s vanguard are not dealing with a foreign expeditionary force, with
limited manpower, but with a well-established system of local domination. They
themselves are the foreigners, lacking status, who at the beginning can offer
the populace nothing but bloodshed and pain….” (Debray,
pp. 51-52)
“(3) Lastly, the absence of organized regular or
semi-regular forces. Armed propaganda, at least if it is
geared to combat, seeks precisely to organize regular units or to expand
existing units by means of ‘political recruiting.’ Thus, villages are ‘stormed’
to assemble the populace and hold propaganda meetings. But in reality how have
the inhabitants of these villages been helped to rid themselves of their class
enemies? In the course of these operations, few arms have been acquired. Even
if young peasants are spurred by enthusiasm to join the guerrilleros,
with what will they be armed?
Many
comrades have concluded from these experiences that an ambush of a column of
reinforcements or some other blow levelled at the enemy in the vicinity would
have aroused more enthusiasm in a given village, attracted new recruits, given
a more profound moral and political lesson to the villagers, and – most
important of all-would have procured the arms so essential to a new guerrilla
unit.” (Debray, p. 53)
“Does
this mean that armed propaganda or agitational
activities should be rejected? No. To judge from certain successful
experiences, a guerrilla unit leaves something-or at least someone-behind it,
in the course of its advance, behind its own lines if such exist, for the
purpose of organizing what is to become a base of solid support. But in this
case the physical security of the populace is assured by regular forces,
capable of repulsing the enemy. The base thus begins to organize itself as the
embryo of the people’s state. The work of agitation and propaganda-the effort
to explain the new organization to the populace and to bring about the transfer
of zonal administration to mass organization-becomes
fundamental, and future combats depend on it. Propaganda then attests to the
liberating nature of combat and instills this message
in the minds of the masses…We can see that no present Latin American guerrilla
movements have reached the stage where these activities are on the order of the
day.
In
other words, armed propaganda follows military action but does not precede
it…The main point is that under present conditions the most important form of
propaganda is successful military action.” (Debray,
pp. 55-56)
We
observe that the dispute is not over the political motives and goals of the
movement, or whether or not to do mass work; rather the question is this: through
what forms of action and organization can one address the masses and draw them
to the struggle? One should carefully note that depending upon different
conditions, inherently political work can assume a purely political form, can
be political-military work, or can even be purely military work.
7
What
should we do? What path lies ahead of the Iranian communist movement? How can
the communist movement transform itself into the genuine vanguard of the
anti-imperialist struggle of our people? How can it pull itself out of the
swamp of the intellectual milieu in which it is fundamentally trapped and
establish a profound link with the masses?
In
both theory and practice, the communist movement must and can give an objective
answer to this question. In what manner can we smash the tyrannical imperialist
dominance, which depends mainly on its armed repressive forces? How can we
unmask the myth of the “island of stability and security”? How can we show to
the masses the path of revolution, the path to the seizure of power for the
exploited and oppressed, and the path to victory; how can we draw them to the
battlefield? In our opinion, the communist movement can find this path. If it
wants to transform itself into the genuine vanguard and not tag along behind
the masses, it must in practice show this path to the masses. If armed struggle
is the people’s only path to salvation, and in our
opinion the communist movement has accepted this path, then procrastination is
meaningless. Contemporary revolutionary experience and our own experience shows us the general path, the general strategy of
revolution. These experiences have shown that neither with peaceful work, nor
with merely political work, nor with clandestine work can we transform
ourselves into the vanguard of the people and prepare the conditions for the
so-called mass armed struggle. Under the present conditions, any political
struggle must necessarily be organized on the basis of armed struggle.
Furthermore, only the armed small motor can set the big motor of the masses
into motion. The subjective conditions of the revolution shall fully take form
in the course of armed action. The genuine vanguard, the vanguard that has a
profound bond with the masses and is capable of extensively arousing and
guiding the masses, can come into existence only through the course of armed
action within the process of political-military work. Yes, at the beginning,
the bloodshed and affliction that the operations of the armed vanguard causes the
masses, the terror that the regime stirs up, may produce a passive attitude
among the masses who have close contact with the guerrilla operations. But as
soon as the armed vanguard is established and can strike both political and
military blows as well as material and moral blows against the enemy, the path
of the struggle gradually becomes clear for the masses, and they depend on
their support. To cite Debray, winning the support of
the masses is not very easy but as soon as it is won and wherever it is won, it
causes astonishment.
Che
Guevara states the experience of the peasants’ encounter with the guerrilla as
follows: “After our regrouping and the first clashes accompanied by the
repressive actions of the Batista army, there began terror and dread among the
peasants and they showed coldness toward our forces. The fundamental problem
was this: if they would see us, they would have to denounce us. If the army
would learn of our presence through other sources, then their lives would be
endangered for revolutionary justice acted swiftly.
In
spite of a terrorized or at least a neutralized and insecure peasantry choosing
to avoid this serious dilemma by leaving the Sierra, our army was entrenching
itself more and more…Little by little, as the peasants came to recognize the
invincibility of the guerrillas and the long duration of the struggle, they
began responding more logically, joining our army as fighters.” (Che
Guevara, p. 197)
Because
of the long history of repression and suppression dominating the life of our
masses and because of the successive defeats of the movements of our people,
our masses, not only in the countryside but also in the city, have increasingly
tended to view their existing situation as unalterable. Here, that “age-old
accumulation of fear and humility” (Debray, p. 52)
has seriously converted the faith of our masses into “nothing can be done to
confront this force”. Deeply rooted religious beliefs, submission to existing
conditions, and reliance on a superior force, which initially grew out of human
weakness before the forces of nature, have all been strengthened because of the
people’s weakness before the ruling social forces. These rooted beliefs cannot
be changed by speeches, and the existing repressive force cannot be challenged
by words. The masses cannot be drawn into the struggle merely by political
propaganda; they cannot be convinced of their invincibility and of their
decreed victory in this manner. Only armed action can inflict a breach in the
impasse faced by the masses; the feasibility of the destruction of the
repressive power must be shown in practice. To convince the masses of its
power, the armed vanguard must show its strength. Does all this mean that the
masses are no longer capable of any perceptible spontaneous movement? No, this
is not the case. At the point when their patience reaches its limits, the
masses too are set in motion, confrontations occur; furthermore, due to the
conditions of terror and suffocation, these confrontations are accompanied more
and more by armed confrontations. But because of the very same conditions,
these movements do not find the opportunity to expand and are suppressed. When
no possibility of any kind of continuity in purely political peaceful work exists,
when any kind of bond between the vanguard and the masses does not exist, the
main effect on these movements will be further suppression of the people. The
only line of continual work that can acquire some strength from these movements
together in a larger context is continual political-military work.
Now,
the question is what methods of armed action are practical under the present
conditions? One thing is certain: the condition for the victory of the
revolution is the destruction of the counter-revolutionary armed forces, and
this task requires a people’s army. But how is a people’s army created?
Under
the present conditions of society, the people’s army is fundamentally
engendered through guerrilla struggle in the countryside, and this fact
necessitates the formation of guerrilla foco.
(When broad mass movements are absent, particularly in the countryside,
immediate arming of the masses is not the number one objective. Here, the
purpose of guerrilla foco is only to initiate
at the outset armed action on the countryside by armed bands usually made up of
the revolutionary vanguard.) But what preparations and conditions guarantee the
growing survival of the guerrilla foco or
focos? Can an armed group alone, in its course
of development, become the motive of a mass movement with the initiation of
operations in a suitable region? The experiences of guerrilla warfare in Latin
America show that a guerrilla foco, when
politically isolated and militarily encircled without any profound link with
the urban movement, without effective support in the city, and without the
ability to broadly attract the minds of the masses, cannot last long and sooner
or later will be liquidated by the special forces of the enemy. Therefore, some
of the Latin American revolutionaries talk about the establishment of armed
struggle in the city. Even the Cuban experience contains certain lessons on
this subject. However, Debray, by ignoring and
belittling those methods and organizations of struggle which under all
circumstances are necessary for the survival and continuity of the decisive
struggle, does not lay the necessary stress on this aspect of the Cuban
experience; this is one of his errors. It is correct that in
It
is possible that some of those who, to quote Lenin, advocate “close organic
contact with the proletarian struggle” will tell us, “you want to create a mass
organization, while the objective of we, the Marxist-Leninists, should be the
creation of a proletarian organization whose ranks are filled mostly from the
proletariat.” The very same people were asking Lenin “If we undertake the
organization of a nation-wide exposure of the government, in what way will the class character of our movement then be expressed?”
They
in fact want to justify their inability to be pioneers in the struggle, their
fear and despicable attitudes, and their lack of political courage. Lenin
replied:
“We
Social-Democrats will organize these nation-wide exposures; all questions
raised by the agitation will be explained in the consistent Social-Democratic
spirit, without any concessions to deliberate or not deliberate the distortions
of Marxism. The all-round political agitation will be conducted by a party that
unites into one inseparable whole, the assault on the government in the name of
the entire people. The revolutionary training of the proletariat,
and the safeguarding of their political independence, the guidance of the
economic struggle of the working class, and the utilization of all its
spontaneous conflicts with its exploiters will rouse and bring into our camp
increasing numbers of the proletariat.”
And
this is our answer: The first condition for the proletarian and revolutionary
leadership in this movement is the pioneering of the Marxist-Leninist. It is we
who will become the precursor of this struggle; it is we who will have started
armed struggle. Under the present conditions, aren’t revolutionary armed action
and its objectives, based on a Marxist-Leninist line, the greatest
manifestation of communist practice and the most revolutionary method of
anti-imperialist struggle? If the prerequisite for drawing the masses,
including the proletariat, into the struggle is armed struggle itself, should
this armed struggle have only the proletariat as its goal or should it rely on
all the masses? Shouldn’t revolutionary action and propaganda start from their
most popular form? If the vanguard party comes into existence in the course of
the struggle, what is wrong with also creating formal links with the
proletariat in the process of armed movement? Is it not in armed struggle
itself in which the working class will assume its proper role in the
anti-imperialist struggle? The Cuban experience has a very instructive lesson
in this regard to which Simon Torres and Julio Arone
allude:
“From
the time Fidel went to
…Is
it necessary to add that the armed unit, superimposed on the other forms of
organization and leadership and also in the position an organizational
‘centre,’ fulfilled a double function: first, to maintain the cohesion and
functioning of one front of classes; and second, within that front,
strategically to guarantee the primacy of the most revolutionary classes?” (Torres
and Arone, pp. 54-55)
“…The
broad base of the Movement corresponded to the narrow social base of the
Batista government under the conditions of profound crisis within the
traditional political parties which permitted a regrouping of forces in a new
way; and its central armed nucleus corresponded to the form in which it was
necessary to liquidate the bourgeios-latifundista-imperialist
domination. Batista’s March 10 coup had closed all avenues to a reformist
way...” (Torres and Arone, p. 59)
If
armed struggle can mobilize the masses and produce the overthrow of the ruling
power, then it is the duty of the Marxist-Leninist to become, with whatever
organizations, methods, and slogans necessary, the harbinger of such a
struggle. We should learn from experience. We have to ask ourselves why the
communist parties of the
Today
the peril exists that through inactivity the Marxist-Leninists will surrender
the leadership of the people’s anti-imperialist struggle into the hands of the
petit-bourgeoisie. The communist movement, if it is to assume the leadership of
the anti-imperialist struggle of the people, if it is to transform itself into
the real vanguard of the masses, must dare, must give both in theory and
practice, a concrete answer to the question of how to replace the imperialistic
ruling power and transfer power to the exploited. If the vanguard role of the
Marxist-Leninist in this protracted armed struggle falls to secure the
revolutionary proletarian leadership in this struggle, nothing else can.
The
Now
we should conclude:
The
experiences of the peoples of
Before
anything else, one should note the fundamental point that the armed struggle in
Thus
this fundamental principle is obtained: all revolutionary groups that have
recognized their revolutionary tasks must, by their military work, strike blows
against the enemy, disperse the forces of the enemy, expose the enemy, and
educate the masses in any way they can. The method each group adopts to this end is determined with respect to a series of
technical and tactical facts. For instance, a group settled in
If
we wish to conclude, we can propose the following general line for the
revolutionary groups of
* Farahani was an engineer and librarian in the Institute of Technology of
the
**
On several occasions, the thickly forested regions bordering the shores of the
Caspian Sea have been the seat of popular movements and guerrilla struggles in
* The central government, supported by imperialist powers, had long
oppressed the peoples of
** See “Land Reform” by the Organization of Iranian People’s Fadaee
Guerrillas, translated by
* Parviz
Nik-khah, a member of a group with Marxist
tendencies, was accused of complicity in an assassination attempt on the Shah
in 1965. Nik-kah was sentenced to life imprisonment,
but several years later he appeared on national television and cowardly
renounced his previous opposition to the regime. Since then he has become an
important advisor to SAVAK and a propagandist for the
Shah’s regime and against Marxism. Siavosh Parsa-nejad was once active in the student movement in
Europe and had returned to
** The CIA engineered coup d’etat against the
anti-imperialist premier Dr. Mossadegh which returned
the current Shah to power.
*** The Tudeh Party was founded after the Allied
Forces exiled the dictator Reza Shah in 1941. With a reformist line and petit
bourgeois leadership, the Tudeh Party mobilised a
significant number of intellectuals and other sections of the petit bourgeoisie
as well as many workers since a workers’ revolutionary organization was
lacking. Eventually, the party claimed to be a workers’ party. It participated
in the reactionary government of Prime Minister Ghavam
in 1946. After the attempted assassination of the Shah in 1949, the Tudeh Party was declared illegal and its leaders were
arrested along with other opposition leaders. Later they escaped to
*
The socio-economic crisis in
* Ahmadzedah
probably refers here to Jazani’s group. Although at
the time this Ahmadzedah knew little of this group,
later Ahmadzedah’s group joined with the remnants of Jazani’s group to form the Organization of Iranian People’s
Fadaee Guerrillas (OIPGF).
** The “Revolutionary Organization was formed by cadres
of the Tudeh Party in the mid-sixties. Though
supporting armed struggle, the Revolutionary Organization initially had no
specific line. Later it took a Maoist line with the idea of copying the Chinese
Revolution in
* Feudalism must not be
mistaken for the feudals or the big feudal elements
who were the functionaries of state rule. As a whole, the existence and the
interests of these individuals have gradually become dependent not on the
maintenance of a feudal economy, but on the durability of imperialist
domination.
* The regime boasts
that the Constitutional Revolution was incomplete without the “White
Revolution”.
* “Aria-Mehr” or “Light of the Arians” is one of
the titles the Shah has given himself.
** As frequently stated by Iranian revolutionaries, the main goal of the
“White Revolution” was to intensify the penetration of capital into
* It would be better to
quote Chairman Mao’s own words, but due to their inaccessibility, this was
impossible.
* V. Lenin, “What Is To Be Done,” Selected Works, Progress Pub., 1970.
pp. 198-199.
* Ibid. pp 201-202.
* Ibid, p. 208.
* Ibid, p. 191
* Ibid, p. 190.
** Ibid, p. 190.
* We do not have information about the pro-Chinese groups in
* Coups d’etat led by the petty-bourgeoisie
such as Nasser’s in Egypt, Ghasser’s in Iraq and the Ba’athist coup in Syria.
1 What is being spoken of here is the stage of the birth of the communist
movement. Presently, the communist movement has developed to the level where it
determines specific directions for action; it transforms the simple gathering
of forces into an organized one and spontaneous growth into conscious growth.
It has now reached the level where it is engaged in the path-finding for the
establishment of contact with the masses and their struggles.
2
To prevent any possible misunderstanding here, it is necessary to make a point.
The discarding of general Marxist-Leninist principles is not intended here. The
issue at stake is rather the mechanical perception of these principles and the
failure to correctly relate them to specific conditions. For instance, the
general principle, “The victory of the revolution is impossible without a
revolutionary party,” in no way means that the revolution cannot start without
the party, or even that the revolutionaries cannot conquer power; for, "the
victory of the revolution” must be understood within a wide historical context
because the victory of the revolution is clarified not only by the conquest of
state power, but also by its maintenance and by the continuation of the
revolution. The examples of
In our approach to Debray, other factors such
as the errors, deviations and obscurities of his writing played a role. Yet, it
is a good idea to deal more with the dilemma (the party or the armed struggle
without the party) and to elaborate on it. Previously, the dilemma seemed
natural, for our understanding of the party and its necessity was superficial
and we did not distinguish between its content and its form. But now, the
dilemma no longer exists for us. How do we deal with this apparent dilemma
today? We declare that we must not wait for the party; rather, we must engage
in armed struggle. It will be asked, then, what are you going to do with the
party? We answer that the party comes up as a specific, not general, issue in
the process of struggle. For what reason do we want the independent party of
the proletariat? To guarantee proletarian hegemony, to continue the revolution
to the socialist stage and…we are certain that in order to continue the
revolution to hegemony…the unity of the proletarian groups and organizations in
a united party is necessary, but the question is not specifically and
concretely facing us now. With the knowledge that the question will come up, we
will, at the proper time and in the process of the people uniting around these
organizations, establish the independent party of the proletariat. But in the
meantime, let the armed struggle commence. The union of the groups and
organizations is also at issue from the standpoint of the more massive
political-military organization of the struggle. Again, we will solve this
problem in the process of action. Hence, the establishment of the proletarian
party is not a specific end to which the armed struggle serves as a means, but
an indicator of a new phase in the course of the struggle. It is a phase during
which the guarantee of proletarian hegemony will be posed as a concrete and
pressing question. In the past, we accepted the necessity of armed struggle in
general, and the formation of the party as a specific question was under
consideration. Today, we accept the necessity of the formation of the party in
general, and armed struggle, as a specific question, is under consideration.
3 In the discussion of the relations of productions dominant in the rural
areas of
4 It is necessary to mention a few points about a semi-feudal,
semi-colonial society and the stage of the revolution. In our opinion, the
assertion that imperialist rule, from an extensive historical point of view, is
in basic contradiction with feudalist rule does not require verification.
According to Marx, world capitalism will disintegrate the existing relations
(to different degrees wherever it steps and will endeavour to bring the society
under its domination within its universal system. In our opinion, the
coexistence of imperialism with feudalism is a temporary and tactical one.
Whether one wishes it or not the feudalist system will gradually be dissolved
in the belly of the world capitalist system. Imperialist domination, in its
colonial form, initiates a violent suppression of the traditional relationships
in society. In its semi-colonial form, there is conciliation and concession
between imperialist rule and that of feudalism. And in its neo-colonial form,
the society under consideration will enter the complete imperialist system as
an organic part. Imperialist domination passes through a spiral development
wherein the neo-colonial society is a repetition of the colonial society at a more
developed level.
Concerning the stage of the revolution, we can thus say that there are
three kinds of national democratic revolutions: the democratic revolution of a
colonial society, the democratic revolution of a semi-feudal, semi-colonial
society, and the democratic revolution of the neo-colonial society. The
democratic revolution is a national one because it opposes imperialist rule and
embraces the people as a whole. Each one of these stages of revolution is one
step closer to the socialist revolution. But, aside from the question of the
stage of the revolution as an economic issue, there is also a political issue,
which is related to the practical process of the revolution. The question of
where and how the revolution will continue and enter the socialist phase
depends precisely on the question of whether the proletariat and its vanguard
have been able to assume the leadership of the struggle and have united the
peasantry and the left petty bourgeoisie under their leadership.
5 We never intended to deny the generality of the principle that
“insurrection is the work of the masses.” Yet, this principle must be
interpreted from a dialectal viewpoint; for example, the specific forms and
formulas expounded by Lenin concerning the uprising should not be considered as
universal. In Lenin’s view, the vanguard cannot call for the uprising unless it
actually has behind it the majority of its class and the people. In other
words, a true vanguard, which has become the real vanguard in the process of
the struggle has the right to call for the uprising,
whereas, in the Cuban situation, the vanguard could not have come into being
unless it had itself initiated the uprising. Under these circumstances, “the uprising
is the work of the masses” means the increasing advance of the uprising
completely depends on the increasing support of the masses. Lenin’s era could
not have a “conception of the initiation of the uprising” because it did not
have a conception of the protracted guerrilla war. At that time, the
insurrection constituted a short process in time that would begin with the
participation of the broad masses. But now, we regard the insurrection as a
people’s war that is set in motion by the small “motor” of the armed vanguard.
6 The intention is not to deny the possibility of establishing contacts
with the workers. We ourselves have enjoyed the co-operation of a considerable
number of our proletarian comrades. The point is that the possibility of
contacting the workers, in its classical form and in its real meaning, does not
exist. It is possible to work amongst the workers. One can get recruits from
them, of course with ample difficulties and low outcome, but one cannot conduct
mass work amongst the workers. One cannot attempt propaganda and circulation.
7,8
Wherever there is oppression, there is also resistance. But,
what kind of resistance? A restricted and dispersed
one. So, it is better to speak of the stagnancy of the resistance and
the spontaneous movement and its lack of development.
When we say that the workers are, inevitably, preoccupied with their
bread and butter, all we mean is that the intolerable daily work and the more
intolerable family troubles do not even allow the workers the time to think
about the issues, in conditions where the work atmosphere lacks any actual
combative movement.
9 A further explanation about the formation of the party: Stalin, in “The
Brief History…” says that the party of the proletariat consists of a
combination of the proletarian movement and socialist theory. But, let us view
our circumstances. In our view, speaking about a real proletarian movement in
When the question of going to the countryside was posed in
Here, a very significant point is made. Under the present conditions,
the groups prior to party organization, conduct
a struggle that relies on the whole people and expresses their general demands.
In this struggle any revolutionary group, communist or otherwise, can
participate. Hence, from the standpoint of a more effective and broader
organization of the struggle and the unity of the revolutionary forces, the
unity of all these groups within the context of an anti-imperialist united
front becomes inevitable in the process of the struggle. In this light, the
unity of all groups and revolutionary and anti-imperialist organizations that
accept the armed struggle-line, in the town or in the countryside, becomes more
necessary and more immediate than the unity of the proletarian forces within
the framework of the proletarian party. The formation of the united front is
placed on the order of the day for the revolutionaries prior to the
establishment of the proletarian party. If the proletariat acquires
organization and consciousness within the womb of mass
armed struggle, then the proletarian party is conceived and grows within the
womb of the anti-imperialist united front. It will then find a distinct form
only when the principle of securing proletarian hegemony and the continuation
of the revolution is, specifically and urgently, placed on the order of the
day.
“The communist,” the organ of some Marxist-Leninist Iranians abroad,
correctly explains that the formation of the party is a prolonged process,
similar to that of the people’s army, and that it is not necessary to have an
all-encompassing party to commence the armed struggle. But what alternative
does it offer? It offers the establishment of a militant nucleus in the
countryside, drawing the peasants to the armed struggle, and the establishment
of revolutionary bases with the tidal expansion of these bases.
We do not permit ourselves to express a word of definite opinion about
the establishment of revolutionary bases and their tidal expansion because it
is not at all certain what circumstances will develop after the armed struggle.
What faces us is the matter of creating a militant nuclei
in the countryside and of drawing the peasants to insurrection. As it has been
thoroughly explained in the essay itself, it is neither possible to create a
nucleus in the countryside by means other than armed struggle, nor is it
possible to draw the peasants to insurrection through political work. Even if
such an insurrection occurs, there is still a need for the armed vanguard to
counter the enemy, who is armed head to toe with twentieth century military
hardware. In any event, the need for the armed vanguard is inevitable.
10
We re-emphasise that the issue is not the denial of the generality of the
principles of Marxism-Leninist. Rather, at issue is
our shallow and dogmatic understanding of these principles on the one hand and
our faulty understanding of Debray’s theses on the
other.
11
For a clearer expression of the subject matter, one should say that if a
century ago, persons such as Marx with his vast knowledge were needed to
respond to the theoretical needs of the communist movement, and if responding
to the theoretical needs required vast and prolonged theoretical work, today it
is not so. The content of the revolution has become clear and a general
guideline for practice has been obtained. In addition, the compilation of the
special theory of revolution is linked more to
revolutionary practice than to theoretical work. However, the need for a
general and special theory of revolution certainly has not been lessened.
12
Lenin says: “The economists by relying on general truths about the
subordination of politics to economics concealed their ignorance of the
immediate political task.”
Seizure of political power is a definite goal and its necessity is a
universal fact. The question is that in seizing political power, what is the
decisive factor. Now, if instead of responding to this need and determining the
concrete path of action and the main method of struggle, we come forth to say
that the goal is the seizure of political power and not the destruction of the
army, that one should comprehensively intervene on all levels, that one should
use all forms of struggle, etc., then we will have uttered generalities behind
which lie hidden our incapability, our lack of courage, and our political
ignorance.
13
In order not to justify Debray, it seems necessary to
point out his errors. Edgar Rodrigues, in his article
“The Venezuela Experience and the Crisis of Revolutionary Movement in Latin
America,” numerates Debray’s errors: belittling
the work of organizing, and suggesting a spontaneous viewpoint; over-valuation
of the catalysing aspect of armed struggle, and belittling the preliminary and
preparatory matters of the struggle. In our view all of these may have resulted
from generalising the secondary aspects of the Cuban revolution over the whole
of Latin American reality. Such errors are also apparent with regard to the
relationships between city and country, the party and the guerrilla, and theory
and practice. Thus Debray commits the same mistake
that he subjects to criticism, that is, being dogmatic.
For example, Debray himself
shows different orientations with regard to the relationships between party and
guerrilla or city and country are in fact the outcome of an essential
difference. This difference originates from viewing armed struggle “as another
branch of party activity,” but not as the decisive branch of
activity, nor as the fundamental framework of activity where only in
relation to and within this framework do other forms of struggle gain
importance. Nonetheless, he forgets this point and becomes dogmatic with regard
to the relationships between city and countryside; he builds and polishes a
series of metaphysical concepts such as the countryside is equivalent to the
proletariat and the city is equivalent to the bourgeoisie. The city-dwelling
leadership is incapable of understanding the significance of the problems and
difficulties of guerrilla war not because the leadership lives in the city, but
rather because of an essential belief that belittles guerrilla war as the
decisive path.
The point that should be noted, however, is that we have examined Debray’s book in relationship to our own conditions and
needs and have dealt only on those aspects of the book which are fundamental
and crucial to us. Regardless of a series of concrete differences between the
conditions of our country and Latin America, the revolutionary movement in
Latin America is basically more advanced than in