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Armed Struggle; both a Strategy and a Tactic
Written by: Massoud Ahmad-Zadeh
Table
of Contents
Introduction by The Iranian Peoples 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
The Examination of Debrays Revolution in The
Revolution?
Party and
Guerrilla: Political Work and Military Work
Introduction by The Iranian Peoples Fadaee Guerrillas
More than four months have passed
since the Peoples 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
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 peoples 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 Shahs 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 Peoples
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 shahs executioners!
long live the unity of all revolutionary
forces and all the peoples of
Khordad, 1350 (June, 1971)
1
Circumstances of the Genesis and Growth of the New
Communist Movement
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 detat 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 regimes
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 detat 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 peoples 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 peoples 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
Examination of the Present Socio-economic Conditions
and the Question of the State of the Revolution
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 masters 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 governments 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 peasants 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 imperialisms domination in the town and
country. The White Revolution took place at a time when the puppet regime was
faced with the peoples 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 powers 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 Khans coup detat.
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 peoples 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 peoples force to suppress
feudalism,* basically buried what had already turned into a
corpse. In effect, Reza Khans coup detat was
incomplete without the White Revolution.*
A comparison of the regimes 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 bureaucracys
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 governments 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 Mehrs* 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 regimes 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 Khans coup detat
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 contradictionthe 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 peoples sovereignty and the
downfall of imperialist domination.
3
On the Question of the Stage of Revolution
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 Debrays
Revolution in the Revolution? Without a deep understanding of Debrays thesis and the Cuban Revolution and, again, without
a clear view of the objective conditions of our peoples struggle, we rejected Debrays 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? Didnt 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 students 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 circles 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 peoples
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 regimes 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 regimes 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 a current be
set into motion by which the masses can become conscious of themselves, their
interests, and their formidable power and be drawn into the struggle? By
persistent suppression, by the backwardness of the (peoples) leadership, by
the inability of the vanguard to fulfil its role, and finally by the hellish
propaganda of a regime which relies on the force of the bayonet, a colossal
barrier of suppressive power has been erected between the people and their
intellectuals, among the people themselves and between the necessity of the
mass struggle and the struggle itself. How can this barrier be broken through
and the roaring torrent of mass struggle be unleashed? The only way is armed
action.
The necessity for the conscious
role and active practice of the revolutionary vanguard has not been weakened
but strengthened precisely due to the increasing significance of the conscious
counter-revolutionary forces. 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? Is not the historical task of the revolutionary vanguard to
make use of conscious revolutionary practice and establish links with the
masses to tap the historical power of the masses and to bring that power to
bear upon the decisive battlefield of the whole struggle? Will this not be a
decisive factor in the whole struggle? The more complicated the conditions, the
more powerful the suppressive forces of the enemy and the more urgently the
question of the revolution is posed, 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 Lenins 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 peoples 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 the reaction, the
reactionary army must be smashed. To smash the reactionary army, there must exist a peoples army. The only way to smash the reactionary
army and to build the peoples 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. On
the other hand, mobilization of the masses is the condition for the victory of
armed struggle both militarily and politically, yet, mobilization of the masses
is not possible without the 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 countrys
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 armys 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 peoples true
vanguard politico-military organization and the peoples 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.8
Now we are ready to examine Regis Debrays 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
The Examination of Debrays Revolution in the
Revolution?
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 Debrays 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 Debrays 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 partiesThere 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 Debrays 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 organizations
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 Debrays 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 Debrays
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
Silvas 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. Doesnt 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, Debrays illogical and
excessive attention to the Cuban revolutions 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
peoples 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 Bastistas
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 todays 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?10
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
Party
and Guerrilla: Political Work and Military Work
We used to reject Debrays views on the relationship between the party and the
guerrilla, and between political work and military work. On the one hand, we
were confronting Maos and Giaps 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 Debrays 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 Debrays 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 peoples 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
peoples 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?11
In a situation where one should be
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 todays 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 proletariats 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 peoples 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-sens
bourgeois revolutionwas 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 imperialismThe 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 prematureThe 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
frontsInasmuch 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 its
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 partiesInsurrectional 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 peoples 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 Silvas assertion shows that he has
not correctly understood Debrays 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 Debrays book. According to the view of many people, one of
Regis Derbrays major errors is the incorrect
understanding of this relation. According to them, Regis Debray
gives priority to military over political work. Debrays
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 Debrays 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 existenceIn order to convince the masses,
it is necessary to address themin brief, to carry on political work, mass
work. Hence, the first nucleus of fighters will be divided into small
propaganda patrolsCells, public or underground, will be organized in the
villageThe 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 peoples 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 unnoticedThey [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 ruralenjoy 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 enemys strength is first and
foremost his bluster. In order to destroy the idea of
unassailability-that age-old accumulation of fear and humility vis--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 unnoticedThe armed unit and peoples 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 peoples 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 massesWe 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 itThe 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 peoples 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
moreLittle 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 peoples
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 peoples army.
But how is a peoples army created?
Under the present conditions of
society, the peoples 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, arent 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? Shouldnt
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. Batistas 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 peoples
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
** 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 Iran. The most important
of these was the guerrilla struggle in Jangal from
the 1914-1921, which succeeded in establishing the first soviet republic
outside the U.S.S.R.: The
* The central government,
supported by imperialist powers, had long oppressed the peoples of
** See Land Reform by the
Organization of Iranian Peoples Fadaee Guerrillas,
translated by Iran Committee, c/o Gulf Committee, 6 Endsleigh
St., London, W.C.
* 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 Shahs regime and against
Marxism. Siavosh Parsa-nejad
was once active in the student movement in
** The CIA engineered coup detat 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 Jazanis group. Although at
the time this Ahmadzedah knew little of this group,
later Ahmadzedahs group joined with the remnants of Jazanis group to form the Organization of Iranian Peoples
Fadaee Guerrillas (OIPGF).
* Purported changes refers to
the reforms promised by the White Revolution
** 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.
* K. Marx, The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Progress
Pub.,
* 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 Maos own words, but due to their inaccessibility, this was
impossible.
** R. Debray,
Revolution in the Revolution?. Monthly Review, N.Y.,
1967.
* 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 detat
led by the petty-bourgeoisie such as Nassers in Egypt, Ghassers
in Iraq and the Baathist 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 andwe are certain
that in order to continue the revolution to hegemonythe 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 Lenins 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. Lenins 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 peoples 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 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.
8 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 China, some were dissatisfied with the fact that
it would decrease the role of the proletariat. Mao responded: Have no fear,
the important matter is to mobilize the masses, to wage armed struggle; what
does it matter if the proletariat plays a lessor
role, quantitatively? (Why Red China Can Exist)
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 peoples 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.
9 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 Debrays theses on the other.
10 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.
11Lenin 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.
12 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 Debrays 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 Debrays
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