Guerrilla Warfare
Just after the first Russian Revolution of January, 1905,
Lenin wrote “Guerrilla Warfare” (download linked below). 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 defense 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.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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