Without a material basis, revolutionary militancy is only adventurism. To rush into the class and anti-colonial conflict with eagerness for war, without considering what preparations war will require and whether the given moment calls for it, is counterproductive. Ultra-left strains of the communist movement, like the Naxalite Maoists in India, have committed this error and consequently found themselves in a never-ending cycle of guerrilla warfare. In even worse cases, like the Maoist followers of Chairman Gonzalo in Peru, they've been totally defeated. As Mao himself said, to go on the offensive when the masses aren't ready is adventurism.
However, even more dangerous is the other error that Mao described: refusing to engage in militancy when the conditions demand that communists protect themselves from counterrevolutionary violence. He described this as right opportunism. When communists have committed this error, like was the case for the PKI in Indonesia (which refused to arm its members during the leadup to the 1965 anti-communist coup), they've neen exterminated or terrorized into submission. Crucial for our success is finding a balance between these two extremes of overly eager militancy, and neglect towards militancy. Pivotal towards this are knowing how to gauge when the conditions necessitate action, and knowing exactly what will be required to mount such a defense against counterrevolutionary terror.
I'll make this into a guide for how to do so within the United States. But the reasoning behind what I'll describe can also be utilized for tactical decisions by liberation movements outside the imperial center. In fact, it's from the exploited country of Peru that I'll be drawing my prime example of tactical maneuvers done wrong. And it's from the formerly colonized countries Vietnam and Cuba that I'll draw my main examples of militancy done right.
Gonzaloism: when communists fail to win the masses
Last year, one Medium columnist (who's interestingly named me as an example of someone who goes boldly far in my willingness to talk about militancy) put forth an analysis of the mistakes that Gonzalo and his Shining Path made. Their conclusion was Gonzalo followed the dogmatic logic behind Mao's Cultural Revolution: that proletarian revolution must follow a linear path where after the Communist Party comes to power, a purge of what the Party's leadership judges to be "reactionary elements" must follow. The way Mao's camp went about this, which today's Communist Party of China has rightly disavowed, was to unleash insufficiently disciplined violence so that the "capitalist roaders" (or rather the communists who properly understand how to develop an impoverished country) could be crushed. As this columnist assesses, what Gonzalo did was take these incorrect ideas of Mao's, and magnify them:
Gonzalo--not anymore Guzma'n [Gonzalo's original name]--had a flawed understanding of strategy, to say the least. If one is to look at the other important "kindred" regime of the era--Democratic Kampuchea--one can easily see the same linearity I mention: the KR had de facto control over the country at the time their most well-known policies were implemented. At their greatest power, SP [Shining Path] held significant power over the forests of central Peru--the modern San Matà as San Carlos reserve--and its influence or areas of operation extended from Lima to the Brazilian border, and from San Martà n to Puno. Yet, it had no absolute or significant control over these territories--no "forward bases", as the guerrilla term goes, not even the support of the majority of the population. Which brings me to another point. SP had an infamously strong perception of indigenous and rural communities. Their ideas somewhat mirrored those of the Democratic Kampuchea regime: "everyone must embrace our ideology, and if they don't, they are our enemy".
Why were the SP adventurist? Because ironically just as their idol Mao warned against, they acted out of step with the masses. They ignored the reality that they lacked the popular support required for a guerrilla army to exercise sovereignty, which naturally led to conflicts between them and the masses--especially the indigenous masses, who are the people that communists throughout the Americas should be especially careful to respect. As the Medium columnist assesses, "SP clearly lacked either the ability to bribe their way to acceptation to earn the 'hearts and minds' or the strength to chronically subjugate the communities they alienated. Precisely because of this was how its arguably biggest enemy was created: the ronderos."
The ronderos were a militia movement that fought against the SP. And due to Gonzaloism's adventurism and chauvinism, the social factors which produced them weren't necessarily reactionary. The SP failed to respect the self-determination of the indigenous nations whose lands it was operating within, and this strengthened the support for the ronderos. It replaced the tribal power structures with the structures that the Gonzaloists decided were best, without adequately considering the traditions of the natives (or the fact that these practices have been effective governing models for millennia). The consequence was failure to gain the social base required for a sustainable guerrilla insurgency. The equivalent has happened with today's Maoist guerrillas in India and the Philippines, which are locked in an endless cycle of costly struggle due to their ultra-leftist and adventurist approach.
For the Gonzaloists, these problems with Maoism were made doubly self-detrimental due to their exacerbating the colonial contradiction. If you try to dictate policies without following the leadership of the indigenous and otherwise colonized peoples, you'll place yourself in irreconcilable conflict with the masses, making it all the less likely that you'll win. This combination of adventurism and chauvinism isn't exclusive to Maoism, but extends to every strain that doesn't understand dialectics, whether anarchism or the "patriotic socialist" faction of U.S. Marxist-Leninists. As an indigenous communist I know has said to me about one adventurist anarchist group in our area: "White guys taking armed control over indigenous land without taking care to consult the First Nations? That's colonialism."
As Che Guevara wrote in Guerrilla Warfare, "Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier."
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