Revolution in the Revolution? by Regis Debray

Author:Regis Debray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

3. The lack of a single command

This entails the lack of a general plan of action; it is not possible to combine and coordinate the available means and gear them to a main direction of action. The lack of a single command puts the revolutionary forces in the situation of an artillery gunner who has not been told in which direction to fire, of a line of attack without a principal direction of attack: the attackers are lost on the field, they shoot at random, and die in vain. The amount and strength of firepower mean nothing without a plan, without assigning a principal sector to be subjected to concentrated fire or cross-fire. The absence of a centralized executive leadership – a political-military leadership – leads to such waste, such useless slaughter. The Front and the Party have two arms, one the military and the other legal and peaceful. How to combine the action of the two? Even tougher: how to coordinate the two wings of the apparatus, the rural guerrillas and the underground resistance in the cities? Only a notably coherent and vigorous leadership, armed with a long-term rational strategic plan, actuated by a correct political analysis, can coordinate these two facets of direct action. At least it must save its own skin. If it remains in the city, the political leadership will inevitably be destroyed or dismantled. The leaders know this, or they suspect it. But the force of tradition, the deep-rooted adherence to forms of organization fixed and hallowed by time, prevents the dissolution of an established structure and the passage to a new form of struggle required by the war situation. This resistance is normal: Lenin and the Bolshevik Party encountered it until October 1917.

There are countries today in which numerous political leaders could, at a given moment, reach an agreement to abandon the city and go to the mountains, thus escaping the growing repression. But, each day they postpone their departure; each day there is a coup d’état ‘in the air’, a meeting postponed, hopes of seeing the crisis resolved in the twinkling of an eye. There is always a pretext. Until one day it is too late; the police jail them or kill them. Then the traditional leadership falls. A substitute underground leadership is quickly set up, cut off from the rank and file and from other organizations and lacking the qualifications of the former duly elected leaders, now imprisoned or annihilated. This improvised leadership attends to everyday matters and becomes completely drawn into the underground routine. Content at least to keep something like a party alive, it procrastinates, hesitates to take basic decisions, and leaves the guerrilla force as and where it is, hoping for better days and the always promised aid and, as ever, making great sacrifices.

In every case attempts will be made to enjoy the advantages of all forms of struggle without the drawbacks of any, to refuse to select one form of struggle as fundamental and another as subordinate. Each

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