Course on Anti-Imperialism,
War and Peace, Part 6
Military and
Political
Presuming that we have by now
established that we are not pacifists, but are revolutionaries who intend, by
any means necessary, to assist the working class to expropriate the expropriator
bourgeois class, which by itself is a violent act: Then why can we not move
with speed, and without any restraint, towards an armed overthrow of the
oppressors?
The late William “Bill”
Pomeroy started his essay “On the Time for Armed Struggle” (linked below) from
exactly this point of departure, like this:
“Because of
the decisive results that can follow from an armed smashing of the main
instruments of power held by a ruling class or a foreign oppressor, some of
those who acquire a revolutionary outlook are eager to move to the stage of
armed struggle; and their concept of it as the highest form of revolutionary
struggle causes them to cast discredit upon other forms as 'less advanced', as
amounting to collaboration with or capitulation to the class enemy.”
But, he wrote:
“Too often
the aura of glory associated with taking up arms has obscured hard prosaic
truths and realities in the interplay of forces in a period of sharp struggle.”
And later on, Pomeroy adds:
“The
experiences of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines offer an
interesting example of the complex, varied and fluctuating processes that may
occur in a liberation struggle.”
Pomeroy writes that “analysis and understanding of the
revolutionary experiences of others is indispensable”. He proceeds to offer
his own rich and extraordinary experience as a military combatant and
revolutionary. His main lesson is that the military must never think that it
can cease to be subordinate to the political. Such thinking is bound to bring
disaster, as it did in the Philippines.
Not only is the military
subordinate to the political in the hierarchical sense that the military takes
its orders from the political leadership and reports back to it. It is more
than that. The revolutionary movement goes away from military, and towards
political, essentially peaceful means. Far from armed struggle being the
“highest form”, it is a form of struggle that we do not adopt unless it is
forced upon us, and we pursue it, if we have to, with the main aim of returning
as quickly as possible to political means.
This is not only a
revolutionary political principle. It is also, in terms of the best military
theory (that of Clausewitz) a military principle that force of arms can only
serve to return the parties to the negotiating table. That is all it can do;
and if it fails to do this much, then military force is simply a disaster.
The picture shows William and
Celia Pomeroy, next to a newspaper report about their incarceration in the
course of the Philippines struggle. William Pomeroy passed away on 12 January
2009 and Celia Pomeroy passed away on 22 August 2009.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: On the Time for Armed
Struggle, 1974, Pomeroy.
