The theology of insurrection
A false dilemma: the violence of a few or the violence of many
The true and the false in the new revolutionary movement in Western Europe
Summary:
The theology of insurrection
A false dilemma: the violence of a few or the violence of many
The true and the false in the new revolutionary movement in Western Europe
The polemic maintained in the revolutionary circles of Western Europe about the most important experiences of the class struggle in the last years is going beyond this sphere to become a much more general debate. In an increasing number, the workers, the students and other democrats become interested and take part in the open discussion actively. There are several causes that provoke this growing interest, but the main one -it is necessary to bear it in mind- is the persistence and the big spreading that the improperly called "terrorist phenomenon" is reaching; that is to say, the incapability of the imperialist States to annihilate the people's resistance movement that is raising everywhere against their exploiting and oppressive measures in spite of the arsenal of laws and special corps with which they are equipping themselves.
It is within this general atmosphere and in the middle of the prospects that are created where this ample debate to which we referred above takes place. Naturally, among the flood of proposals, of more or less severe criticisms and self-criticisms, of new and old ideas, of sincere proposals of rectification, also appears from time to time, as an alien voice, the swanking proper of some idle and conceited intellectuals -true pedants- that have never made nor will ever make anything but to criticise, believing themselves in the right of teaching the others what they must and must not do.
One of those strident voices, that of a certain P. Becker has joined the fray with an article entitled "The false via of the urban guerrilla in Western Europe", published in number 4 of the review "A world to win", voice of the self-called Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). It would be long and tedious to number here the many tergiversations, the omissions and all the commonplaces of the repertory of the most reactionary bourgeois press contained in this text. For this reason we will only stop in the questions of the most burning actuality, in those that in our opinion have a bigger interest.
P. Becker starts his article confessing his proposal of making an annihilating, "decisive criticism", from a pretended "scientific", Marxist-Leninist, position to what he doesn't doubt to label as "continuous revisionist and reformist deviations" in the new revolutionary movement of the Western European countries. Let's see how he does this:
"Last year, in Western Europe, a series of sabotage actions and assassinations have taken place; from the explosion of bombs against NATO targets and companies that keep relations with South Africa to more dramatic incidents: the executions of a French general and of an arms dealer of Western Germany in the winter of 1985". Such are the "reformist and revisionist deviations" (the "dramatic" incidents, the "sabotages" and "assassinations") that provoke the most uncontrolled reactions in Mr. Becker. Certainly, one could suppose, at least for a moment, that it is only a slip, one of those dirty tricks that the "spirits of the unconscious" play on individuals like him; for us, however, this passage quoted above represents the clearest expression of its true class position. That same position is expressed throughout his long article under many other forms. But let's continue with his exposition: "In some countries -he repeats a little further quoting the Declaration of the RIM- a small number of people have gone to the side of terrorism, a politic and ideological line that does not lean on the revolutionary masses and that lacks a correct perspective of the overthrowing of imperialism. While they pretend to appear as very 'revolutionary', those terrorist movements have incorporated in most of the cases a whole series of revisionist and reformist deviations, as 'the liberation struggle' in the imperialist countries, the defence of the imperialist USSR and many more. Those movements share with economism the fundamental incapability to understand the importance of the duty of increasing the politic consciousness of the masses and of guiding them to the politic struggle as a preparation for the revolution".
Here we have the synthesis of the criticism to "terrorism" made by Becker, as well as the conception that guides it and its political programme. But there is more, according to him, "in the imperialist countries there are generally no revolutionary situations; moreover, they take place only very rarely". Under such conditions of peace, politic stability and general progress, Becker asks, "How can a strategy of attrition war mobilize the masses for the revolutionary war?". The answer, as can be easily understood, is contained in the question itself; for that reason, we think that there is no need to make any other comment on this particular subject. What is important to highlight here is that, in spite of that idyllic vision of the current bourgeois society -which, as we will see later on, will be immediately transformed into a catastrophic vision-, this does not impede him to admit that in the imperialist countries "revolutionary situations will inevitably appear". The very running of the system, Becker preaches, "including the dynamics that lead it towards a world imperialist war... will push thousands of people to the scenery of History". It will be then when the conditions for insurrection will appear; the so awaited time to give "a jump in the precise moment" will have come.
In order to write what we have just read, Becker must have forgotten such a clear and essential fact as it is the general crisis in which the capitalist world is today immersed; he has not given us the information about the accelerated arrangements for the war that the imperialists are making, as well as about the rise of the tides of revolutionary struggle that can be seen everywhere. He maintains that there are no revolutionary situations in the capitalist countries, to recognize later on that those conditions "will inevitably appear". Of course, he makes them depend, in all cases, on the outbreak -and we suppose that also on the development- of a III World War. All his ideas focus on this conception. Is this a Marxist position? Becker pretends so. Mao has written: "Either the revolution impedes the war or the war will make the revolution break out". Becker, however, discards any possibility of revolution before the war breaks out and leaves us naked and impotent in front of the blind forces unleashed by capitalism.
The conception of the world (an only and indivisible one that marches towards the abysses of its self-destruction) that we describe as doomster, forms the ideological basis of Becker's politic positions. According to this conception, in the present world there is only one socioeconomic system (the imperialist system) and this marches, by the very inertia of its internal contradictions, towards a new general conflagration. The popular masses of the different countries, according to this same conception, do not have here any role to play; the "millions of people" to which Becker refers, have not been already pushed by the historical stream (by the crisis, the imperialism and the disturbances provoked by it) "to the scenery of history". As it seems, the two imperialist wars and the revolutions to which they gave place were a children's game. In all other respects, the general crisis of the system that they have generated, following Becker, does not deserve to be taken into account; and, as regards the next war that is being prepared by the most aggressive imperialist circles, it does neither denote a situation of severe crisis of the system.
In any case, the "revolutionary" masses will have to wait calmly sitting down to be pushed to the "scenery" by the explosion of the bombs. When these fall over their poor heads, then, as Becker says, the final hour (the hour of insurrection) will have struck; in the meantime, the workers of all the countries, and in particular those of Western Europe -since this is what it is all about-, will not be able to do anything to avoid this war, fomenting the revolution everywhere and opposing the revolutionary war to the imperialist war.
In fact, what Becker and others of his sort pretend is nothing else but to tie the hands of the workers and to secure the rearguard of imperialism, since if this objective was not attained, the USSR and the rest of the socialist and progressive countries would be in better conditions to confront the aggression. In "theory", the position maintained by Becker calls to the struggle against the two superpowers and to keep equidistant from them in order to be able to make revolution; but, even if we consider that in this position there is a sincere revolutionary aim, the force of the facts pushes him once and again towards one of the two sides, precisely to the field of the capitalists and not only against the "imperialist" USSR, but also against all the revolutionary countries and movements. It is not strange that Mr. Becker crowns his article with a furious attack against the urban guerrilla in Western Europe describing it as "Gorbachev's assault troops". What could we say of him and of those who like him continuously work things towards the advantage of Yankee imperialism?
His contempt for the organized armed struggle and the apologia he makes for the spontaneous outbreaks of the mass struggle (that he considers as "truly revolutionary") alert us, from the very beginning of his article, to his true politic ideas: "a day of revolt of the masses in Birmingham -Becker affirms- causes the imperialists a hundred times more material damage than years of urban guerrilla -not to speak of the fact that the most important damage inflicted is the one constituted by the political and ideological blows struck to the bourgeoisie and to all its pretensions of being a just and satisfactory society; in front of this the actions of the terrorists turn pale".
Our "hero" places himself at a prudent distance from the battlefield and from his hill harangues the organized revolutionaries and the rebellious masses by saying them: abandon your stance! Lay down arms! Don't you know that the "most important damage inflicted to the bourgeoisie is the one constituted by the politic and ideological blows"? The spontaneous struggles, on the one hand, and the politic and ideological blows, on the other, such is the platform of economism that Becker pretends to present as the latest word of revolutionary Marxism. All those trinkets, certainly, make us turn pale.
What actually confuses and astonishes us is that constant worry that seems to impede Becker to sleep and that makes him criticise in the most demagogic and surly way a politic line that, according to him, "substitutes the revolutionary struggle of the masses by the armed attacks of a small group". Now well, in the light of what we have just read, in the light of his conception of the "revolutionary struggle" of the masses, are we not legitimated to affirm that what really worries him is precisely the contrary of what he affirms? That is to say, that the armed struggle of the urban guerrilla, headed by an authentic communist detachment, not only does not "substitute" (how could it do it?) the struggle of the masses but, on the contrary, -as we maintain- it stimulates this struggle, helps to its better organization, prepares the ground for it and allows it to provide itself with a programme and clear objectives. On our part, we have not any doubt as regards this, but in case we had, in case we were not convinced about it, the mere appearance of Becker's criticism to "terrorism" would have been enough to convince us definitively about it.
The opportunists are afraid of being unmasked by the development of the class struggle. Due to this, their most outstanding task consists in attacking those who take up arms to fight imperialism, arguing continuously that they carry out their actions "leaving aside" the struggle of the masses, that "they substitute", "delay" or "dismantle" their movement, etc. They affirm this while, on the other hand, they preach the submission and the superstitious respect to the legality imposed by the guns of the bourgeoisie, while they preach pacifism and reformism. When, in spite of their traitorous labour, the workers and other toilers launch themselves to the decisive and all-out combat, then, in order to avoid being completely unmasked, they search in the classics to "argue" about the "inopportunity of the moment", the "unfavourable correlation of forces", the "lack of preparation of the armed struggle" and other things of the same sort; and this when they do not shelter themselves behind the most backward sectors to isolate and make withdraw the ones that march forwards, those who are really ready to struggle and to give example to the others. What does the experience of our country teach us? For many years, the carrillists and other ruffians centred their activity on the liquidation of the revolutionary working-class movement, basing themselves on the supreme argument that "the conditions of crisis of the system were not given" while, at the same time, they called upon the workers to "take" the fascist trade union, met in round tables with the "evolutionist" sectors of the oligarchy, devoted themselves to pursue the communists (all those who opposed and denounced their anti-worker manoeuvres) labelling us as "impatient", as wanting to make politics "only with sub-machine-guns", as "revanchists", "provocateurs", etc. In this way, when the economic and politic crisis of the regime started and the plans of reform of the regime were implemented, we were not surprised at all at seeing those very elements proclaiming the urging necessity of "getting the country out of the crisis" with the aim of saving both the "democracy" and the leftovers of the great feast that the finance bourgeoisie had let fall from its table to keep them happy.
Well, we discover now in Becker's article, without being able to avoid making a gesture of scorn, the same demagogic old story with which all the pack of hounds of the "left" (the self-called "communists", "Marxist-Leninists" and even "Maoists") deafened our ears for the last years. Because that sort of speech is the same, it only differs in a few details. What is new in Becker -and this is what has attracted our attention more- is the anger and malice that take him. Let's hear him once more:
"The gazes of those who burn impatiently waiting for the day when they will be able to square up with the bourgeoisie must elevate a bit higher, beyond the mere and simple thirst for revenge, towards the horizon in which outlines the perspective of undertaking the armed struggle with the objective of making the human gender advance towards a completely new epoch in the history of the species". This beatific attitude is rounded off by Becker with a painful calling upon replacing the criticism of the arms to the rotten bourgeois society by the "weapon" of criticism, or as he says, "by the weapon of the science of the revolution".
The piousness has also wanted to make theology look like a "science". The fact that in this case Becker calls his theology "the science of the revolution" does not change at all the roots of this question. In both cases there is no intervention of the practice. The difference lies here: Marxism is a doctrine for action, while Becker's old-fashioned "Marxism" is nothing but, and this in the best case, a contemplative and ineffective doctrinarism. In this way, through this contemplative and self-satisfied attitude, it is how Becker proposes us to "raise the gazes" (above the worldly things) "a bit higher" with the aim of "making the human gender advance" and getting it out of the darkness that surrounds it. No "squaring up"!, he preaches: leave aside the "mere and simple thirst for revenge"!, we have to look "towards the horizon in which the perspective is outlined"!!
Violence is not in fact, the central issue in Becker's criticism of the urban guerrilla. His attempt is directed towards establishing the false dilemma as whether it would be the masses or a "small group" the ones to exert violence. But, as far as we know, nobody has said here that the revolution can be the labour of a few chosen, no matter how heroic, abnegated and ready for sacrifice they are. What we maintain is the absolute necessity of incorporating the armed struggle to the revolutionary strategy, conceiving it as an essential part of it, as something that comes from all the historical development, from the objective-material conditions in which the class struggle in the capitalist States takes place nowadays and from their deeply reactionary, fascist and plundering nature. Under these conditions, which Mr. Becker is very careful not to mention, the armed struggle appears unavoidably as a result of the crisis, of the intensification of the exploitation upon the working class and other toilers, of the brutalities and the oppression that they suffer at the hands of the State; it comes from the conscious resistance that the masses are opposing to the system of the bourgeoisie which is immersed in a process of ruin and decomposition. This form of struggle, in a given moment, which is not necessary to precise now, will have to become the main one, to which all the others will have to subordinate.
Does this conception exclude the party tasks, the politic and ideological struggle, the labour of organization, etc.? We maintain that not only it does not exclude them, but, on the contrary, it presupposes and reinforces them; making them necessary in the most evident way. We do not deny that there are "small groups" determined to reject the necessity of the proletarian party armed with the Marxist-Leninist theory; groups whose armed activity, in most of the cases, turns against themselves. But this is another question that has nothing or very little to do with what we are dealing here. What we maintain, once more, is that the propaganda and the "criticism", the politic struggle and the ideological struggle in the way in which they were conceived in the previous stage of the development of the capitalist system, are not enough, on their own, to raise the masses to the comprehension of their historical objectives and even less to take them to the struggle for power.
Our ideas about this are well known, since we have analysed this problem on many occasions; so, the many tergiversations made by Becker in his article will be completely useless. For instance: when have we denied the fact that the revolutionary war is a war of masses? However, we do not merely repeat as parrots such a simple truth. Our attention is centred in looking for the ways that will allow the masses to get closer to their objective, abandoning the dead vias and the well-worn paths -that, as it has been completely proved, lead nowhere. Isn't this, precisely, the mission of any true communist party? Also for the "Chinese Bolsheviks" and the Komintern that backed them up, the line advocated by Mao for the Chinese revolution had nothing of "Marxist-Leninist"; it was "nationalist", "opportunist", "petty-bourgeois" and scarcely "scientific". The same can be said about the attacks launched by Kautsky and his friends against Lenin and the October revolution concerning what it meant of breaking with the riddled orthodoxy that he and others had incubated during decades of "peaceful" development of capitalism. In both cases, just like Becker wants to make nowadays seeking the support of Lenin and Mao, it was a question of preserving by all means, that is to say, at the expense of the real movement, the doctrinarian "purity" that so good results had brought to imperialism. The fact is that, as Lenin reminded the doctrinaires of this sort, "theory is always grey and eternally green is the tree of life".
Our Party, the PCE(r), has not renounced to the inheritance left by the two great revolutions; but what we do refuse to accept is the scholastic scheme that has betrayed the revolution, at least as many times as it has promised it (delaying it once and again to the Greek calends) with similar subterfuges to those used now by Becker.
Although it is not possible to separate the objective (the liberation of the masses) from the way in which the combat is carried out, then, why shouldn't this same principle be applied to the methods of struggle of the revolution? If what we try here is to prepare the general conditions for the insurrection of the masses (and not only those of ideological type), why not starting from now to prepare them in all fields? Should we trust once more (that is to say, after all the experiences lived) in the insurrectional promises that will become true in the last hour? Is it possible to improvise an act of such nature? Through that badly-called "October via" we will never reach the insurrection, and if this took place by a spontaneous reaction of the workers, it will surely fail.
Where, in our position, can be found the narrow-mindedness, the thirst for revenge, the moral exhortation, "the charge of the white man" in R. Kipling's style and other nasty comments that Mr. Becker lavishes on us? What kind of a Marxist would dare to affirm that the incorporation of the masses to the politic struggle and to the armed struggle for power, as its highest expression, has ever taken place suddenly or in the first stage of a revolutionary process? When Mao maintains that a single spark can set fire to the prairie, is he not referring to the incorporation of the masses to a combat that a little army is fighting from some time before? Were not the masses the ones who were combating up to that moment? It would be necessary to decipher the ambiguity and the relativity of the very concept of masses to finish making this question clear. But not even in the experience of the insurrection of October 1917, that Mr. Becker takes as a model, can we talk, as it is generally done, of a unique and automatic act. It is a complete fallacy to present History like this, to deform in such a way the experience of the October revolution in order to oppose it later on, in the most opportunist way, to the most advanced forms of class struggle that are taking place in the capitalist countries, alleging the absence of revolutionary conditions in these same countries. How to explain the phenomenon of the armed struggle? By the lucubrations and the will of revenge of some individuals? Becker wants to be taken seriously and that we admit his "Marxism-Leninism-Mao's thought" as "scientific"; but we are not young birds that have just fallen from their nests; we developed spurs long time ago. If things were as this man affirms, it is sure that neither him nor all the filibuster bourgeois propaganda would have dedicated so much time nor would be so worried about combating "terrorism".
It will be impossible to understand the October insurrection without taking into account the February democratico-bourgeois revolution which dethroned the Tzar and both revolutions without the preceding one of 1905. Besides, the imperialist war had dismantled the already corrupted and depleted Russian State. The masses, posted in their majority in the army and the navy, were armed and ready to fight to the end. Under such conditions it was relatively easy to make them turn their rifles against their oppressors.
From all this comes another question: can a similar situation appear in any Western European country, so that it would offer the proletariat the possibility of concentrating its forces to seize power in that way? Of course, this cannot be completely discarded, even if it seems very improbable to us. But the revolutionary strategy is not constituted by a calculation of probabilities which are all of them submitted to the caprices of the chance; revolution requires in any moment to depart from the real conditions, from the experiences that come out of all the days of the struggle; it is not a jumble of past experiences nor a guessing riddles game.
What makes Becker lose his temper is a series of deviations of the consecrated principles that he appreciates in the revolutionary groups and organizations when in their untempered ambitions those affirm "to be the vanguard of the class struggle, to be guided by Marxism-Leninism itself and that their objective is the revolution and communism". "Besides, -he complains hysterically- they define their urban guerrilla as a practical expression of a true internationalism". But what is even worse, what means a true sacrilege and an intolerable interference with the affairs of his church is the fact that some of those groups have started "to write about the necessity of a new Communist International" and consider the "Guerrilla Front" as a kind of step in that direction.
Now well, on our part we are not going to make the foolishness of defending that movement as a wholenor the politic conceptions that they are advocating for, in the same way that we don't agree with each and every of their actions; we know that in its bosom several tendencies merge and fight (and not a single one, Mr. Becker) and some of them, certainly, are very subjective, anarchist and even openly nationalist. This has always happened with any movement in process of formation. Its heterogeneity and undefined ideological knowledge are the features that better define it. From all this arises the cult to spontaneity and the predominant role that some assign to the armed actions, which lack many times a clear politic orientation that only a true Marxist-Leninist party can provide them. The absence of those parties in most Western European countries is what has made of this movement a good breeding ground for the most outlandish bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas and conceptions. But, who but a complete ignorant would dare to deny today that in its bosom work and maintain a constant politic and ideological struggle the only healthy forces, non-rotten to the core, and the honest communist militants that in spite of all have survived to the "pro-Chinese" and "pro-Albanian" collapse of the 60s and 70s? Who but a declared revisionist or something much worse (if it is possible to be something worse than that) would dare to deny that this movement, in spite of its heterogeneity, of the rigidness that on other occasions can be observed in it, of its exaggerated romanticism, etc., does not represent a giant step forwards as regards that other group of aesthetes and gesticulators?
It is useless that Becker enlarges on considerations about the "failure" of the "terrorist via" as if the "parties" that he represents were giving us the happiness of a victorious revolution everyday; it is useless that he makes abundant demagogy hand in hand with the repentants, as if in the jails of Italy and of other countries there were not hundreds of militants serving very long sentences and suffering endless tortures for not abjuring of their revolutionary ideas. In fact, what Becker proposes in the name of Marxism-Leninism is nothing but the going in bloc of all these revolutionaries and of many communists to the side of the repentants, to the side of the informers and collaborators of the police and the reaction. He pretends in this way to complete the dirty work that the imperialist bourgeoisie, with all its repressive and propaganda machinery, has not nor will be able to achieve ever.
Becker never maintains, neither about this important question nor about any problem, a Marxist position. It should be considered as a miracle the fact that after the revisionist treasons, the betrayal of others and the abandonment of almost all the rest of them, the best of the European youth, the most sagacious, healthy and intelligent ones, have opted for communism and try to find their way towards it. It is not necessary to say that this miracle is not due to Becker's church, but it responds to causes which are completely alien to his evangelizing task, which is contrary -as we have already seen- to the force of attraction that Marxism-Leninism and communism exert upon each time more ample sectors of workers and of the rebel and combative youth.
In this issue, Becker's doctrinarism expresses nothing but an extreme subjectivism. For him, as we could prove at the beginning of his article, in the world there is only the black and the white; this is this and that which is a bit further is a completely different thing, without any connection nor relation between them and, what is more important, without the existence of a process of struggle, of change and of transformation within each of them. The states of transition neither exist for Mr. Becker; that is to say, something is as it is and can never become a different thing. If a struggle of tendencies is taking place within the revolutionary movement, this is something that Becker does not know or does not like to admit since, for him, the things and the phenomena only exist in "pure" state, in a static form. This method allows him to get rid of the laborious work of having to investigate the deep causes and to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, it is much easier to label everything with the same name ("terrorism"), to put everything in the same sack and to throw it from the cliffs as if it was a herd of furious cats. In politics, this idealist conception and its scholastic, metaphysical method -of which Mr. Becker has shown us enough- is translated into the biggest imaginable aberrations. But let's leave this issue and what has been outlined at the beginning of this section for a better occasion.