Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 3a
Guerrilla Warfare
Just after the first Russian
Revolution of January, 1905, Lenin wrote “Guerrilla Warfare” (attached). Almost
immediately in this work, Lenin plants his experienced revolutionary feet on
solid revolutionary ground, thus:
“Marxism differs from all primitive forms of socialism
by not binding the movement to any one particular form of struggle.
“It recognizes the most varied forms of struggle; and
it does not "concoct" them, but only generalizes, organizes, gives
conscious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes
which arise of themselves in the course of the movement.
“Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to
all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass
struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class
consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crisis become
acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defence and
attack.
“Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any
form of struggle. Under no circumstances does Marxism confine itself to the
forms of struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only,
recognizing as it does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants
of the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation changes. In
this respect Marxism learns, if we may so express it, from mass practice, and
makes no claim whatever to teach the masses forms of struggle invented by ‘systematisers’
in the seclusion of their studies.”
Later in the same work, in
which he defends the Latvian comrades who have taken up some forms of armed
struggle, Lenin says:
“… such an objection would be a purely
bourgeois-liberal and not a Marxist objection, because a Marxist cannot regard
Civil War, or guerrilla warfare, which is one of its forms, as abnormal and
demoralizing in general.
“A Marxist bases himself on the class struggle, and
not social peace. In certain periods of acute economic and political crisis the
class struggle ripens into a direct Civil War, i.e., into an armed struggle
between two sections of the people. In such periods a Marxist is obliged to
take the stand of Civil War. Any moral condemnation of Civil War would be
absolutely impermissible from the standpoint of Marxism.”
Are you worrying about what
form your struggle should take? Read this document, comrades.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Guerrilla Warfare, 1906, Lenin.
