FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF
REVOLUTION IN A REVOLUTION?
Regis Debray's book, REVOLUTION IN THE REVOLUTION, has recently become available in paperback edition which brings it within most people's budget, The book should be seen as a contribution to an analysis of the revolutionary possibilities in Latin America and as a starting point for discussion on future strategy. It is essentially divided into two parts: 1) To free the past from the present - which deals with the history of previous unsuccessful struggles and the policies of some of the principal political tendencies and, 2) The principal lesson for the present and some consequences for the future, which describes the tactical and organisational questions involved in guerilla warfare, including the relationship between the guerilla movement and the party.
Throughout the book he emphasises that the duty of a revolutionary is to make revolution and that if your political theories do not lead to this end then you need a new theory. However, in his analysis of past experiences he has a tendency to throw out the baby with the bath water, e.g.:
ARMED SELF-DEFENCE
This is traditionally defined as the creation of a region in which the army and state cannot proceed to exercise their normal function, The classic examples are in China and Vietnam in the earlier stages of the war. Debray contends that these tacit non-aggression pacts between the oligarchies and the popular forces will no longer be tolerated by imperialism however small their effect may seem, He includes as a more up-to-date example of this theory the exclusive defence by trade unions of workers' job interests, including the formation of workers' militias, The inadequacy of both these forms of activity is seen to lie in the fact that they do not have the conscious perspective of taking political power and leave the workers unprepared for the final confrontation,
Debray's classification of the Bolivian tin-miners into this category, however, does little to explain events which have taken place since the overthrow of the oligarchic government in 1952. The new government, which had the support of the mass of workers and peasants, carried out a measure of nationalisation and land reform, but being essentially bourgeois in character it was unable to fulfill a really progressive role and unrest became apparent in the country. A pre-emptive military coup took place which led to the response of a general strike during which the army viciously killed many hundreds of strikers.
How a guerilla band defined by Debray as "an armed detachment organically independent of the civilian population, freed from the tasks of civil defence and with the goal of winning political power", could have ensured the successful exploitation of the revolutionary situation and prevented such a massacre is not clear and seems to be a somewhat facile formula. It does not examine how the progressive forces, led by the miners, lost the initiative, and why having conquered power in 1952 they gave it into the hands of the bourgeoisie, To sum up, Debray's main criticism of self-defence is that it allows the enemy to take over the initiative and deprive the revolutionary forces of their main advantages; mobility, secrecy, flexibility and surprise. Hence, although it may be able to protect the population for a limited time, in the long run the opposite is true, as [illegible]
ARMED PROPAGANDA
This tactic is dealt with in the next section of the book and comparisons are made between the situation in Vietnam, where it is widely used, and Latin America, Debray concludes that there are several features which would make it premature at this stage to integrate large sections of the population into the revolutionary struggle The three most important features being: 1) The lack of any definite military gains which could convince the peasantry that you are on their behalf as well as putting forward an abstract programme. 2) The low density of the peasant population in most areas of Latin America, which would obviously reduce the effectiveness of such propaganda, 3) The difficulty which the guerillas find in mixing with the peasants, since [they are] usually easily identifiable outsiders,
Debray does, however, recognise that at some stage there will be a need for agitation and propaganda among the peasants and for the formation of an established base which will begin to organise itself as the embryo of the workers' state, One of the weaknesses, however, throughout the book, is his neglect of the question of how the masses of the people are to be integrated into the guerilla struggle, Nor does he mention the strengthening of the guerilla fight which could take place if fronts were simultaneously operating in several countries as later proposed by Che Guevara in his message to the Tricontinental,
THE ROLE OF THE PARTY
Almost every party and form of party organisation comes in for criticism under this heading, some of it petty and ill-informed and some of it very worthwhile, The communist parties are attacked for clinging to old concepts which are not based on a concrete analysis of the present situation, [illegible] on the following three points: 1) The concept of "a national democracy", i.e. the maintenance of capitalist relations of production freed from imperialist interference, which will at a later stage be transformed into socialism by the pressure of the masses, 2) The theory of a national front, i.e. an alliance including the national bourgeoisie, 3) An underestimation of the role of the [illegible]
The theory of an alliance with the national bourgeoisie has been shown by experience in Latin America to be a failure but Debray does not examine in a very detailed way why the national bourgeoisie is unable to fulfill its traditional "marxist tasks." Does it have a national identity and interests apart from those of the imperialists in this time and place?
Having seen the degeneration of such parties and their inability to lead a revolutionary struggle, he completely rejects the concept of a traditional party and instead substitutes the idea, based on the Cuban experience, that the party must grow out of successful guerilla action. The guerillas are the nucleus around which the vanguard party grows, which means that those who do not physically take part in military activity must remain outside the party. Political and revolutionary consciousness, according to Debray's thesis, can only grow out of participation in guerilla activity. He does not consider whether the Cuban Revolution might have had fewer set-backs if it had had a firm party base earlier in the struggle.
STRATEGY FROM TACTICS
To continue with Debray's proposals: they are that strategy should grow out of tactics, the party should follow the guerillas, that the military leader should become the party leader and that within that party there is an absolute necessity for a central command. He points out many of the difficulties which can arise from too great a dependence on the cities. The forces of the oligarchies and imperialism are always strongest in the cities and operate most effectively there, carrying out selective political assassinations of key leaders. He also suggests that the elementary comforts of city life lead to a bourgeoisification and softening of political cadres and that when it comes to giving aid to the guerillas the city-based people are apt to have a different order of priorities, not realising perhaps, that the guerillas are fighting a daily life and death struggle not only with the oligarchies but with the elements themselves.
ARMED STRUGGLE NOW
The book puts the strategy of armed struggle now on the table and should be followed both here and in other countries by a detailed discussion of the specific objective conditions in each of the Latin American states, i.e., what differences of tactics will be required in Peru with its large peasantry and Venezuela with its highly urbanised population political identity.
Since the publication of "Revolution in the Revolution" the destruction of Guevara's guerilla group in Bolivia has been interpreted by some people as a failure of many of the theories put forward in the book, Before jumping to such conclusions, however, we must remember that the guerillas were forced to commence activity prematurely and that their network of support in the towns, doctors, etc., was completely destroyed by the police after they acquired an uncoded list of all the people involved. Indeed two of the conditions which were stated by Debray to be of major importance for guerillas - effective security and maintenance of the initiative by the revolutionary forces - were violated,
The book is very refreshing because at the forefront of everything written in it is the basic belief, stated by Castro and others, that the duty of a revolutionary is to make revolution and not just talk about it.
Barbara Wilson
MAY DAY MANIFESTO
The May Day Manifesto is an attempt to group [illegible] during Labour's first four years, First produced as the "New Left May Day Manifesto" in 1967, it has been considerably enlarged, especially in those sections on economic analysis and on the present position in the Labour movement,
The authors of the Manifesto largely succeed in their self-appointed task of "making connections" between the symptoms of the present crisis in British capitalism and presenting a comprehensive alternative view of the system, They do this first examining some of the current realities about poverty and social inequality - compressing the findings of such researchers as Townshend and Abel-Smith into a concise critique of the myths of the "Affluent Society". Other aspects of the conventional wisdom of our society are also examined, For instance, the usual view of the Cold War - of an aggressive Russia with 15-20 million dead after the war threatening to overrun the rest of Europe - is demolished,
BRITAIN'S ECONOMY
It is above all for its economic analysis that the Manifesto is important. Britain's crisis is set in its world-wide context - the rise of U.S. economic hegemony in Europe, the rise of the international company and the new imperialism, The large corporations have been driven, in order to survive, to invest abroad both in their competitors' markets and in sources of raw materials. Thus figures are given for the 50's and 60's showing the enormous outflows of capital invested abroad, The balance of payments surplus on current account has been too small to finance the outflow and government military expenditure overseas, increased reinvestment rather than repatriation of foreign earnings, and the decline of the Sterling Area have further accentuated the problem, The solution adopted - resort to greater and greater short-term borrowing - could only be temporary in nature. Devaluation and the other crises showed that the illusion could be maintained no longer.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The future course then can be fairly easily visualised. There will be increased restrictions on existing institutions of dissent which conflict with the efficient working of the system - the trade unions, the Labour Party and so on. Ultimately also the expropriation of the peoples' political identity. Whether the authoritarianism of the sixties will be as bland as the Manifesto claims remains to be seen. Certainly the recent upsurge of racialism, especially among the working class, is an ugly symptom of what may happen as the present frustrations and set-backs continue,
What, then, is to be done? The ending, as with the 1967 Manifesto, is disappointing - though perhaps understandably so, In the present situation there are no easy and clear cut courses of action and the Manifesto's suggestions are sensible but hardly inspiring. We are given a survey of the existing position of the Labour movement and of its organisations, The only way to defend these organisations and to move forward is to make new and more flexible demands attacking the new capitalism on the basis of human priorities, At the same time the different struggles must be linked - they cannot succeed in isolation and in any case they all stem from the same source, The purpose of the Manifesto is seen as an educator - a useful, if limited, role.