Regis Debray's book, REVOLUTION IN THE REVOLUTION, has recently become available in paperback edition which brings it within most people's budget. The book should be seen as a contribution to an analysis of the revolutionary possibilities in Latin America and as a starting point for discussion on future strategy. It is essentially divided into two parts: 1) To free the past from the present - which deals with the history of previous unsuccessful struggles and the policies of some of the principal political tendencies and, 2) The principal lesson for the present and some consequences for the future, which describes the tactical and organisational questions involved in guerilla warfare, including the relationship between the guerilla movement and the party.
Throughout the book he emphasises that the duty of a revolutionary is to make revolution and that if your political theories do not lead to this end then you need a new theory. However, in his analysis of past experiences he has a tendency to throw out the baby with the bath water, e.g.:
ARMED SELF-DEFENCE
This is traditionally defined as the creation of a region in which the army and state cannot proceed to exercise their normal function. The classic examples are in China and Vietnam in the earlier stages of the war. Debray contends that these tacit non-aggression pacts between the oligarchies and the popular forces will no longer be tolerated by imperialism however small their effect may seem. He includes as a more up-to-date example of this theory the exclusive defence by trade unions of workers' job interests, including the formation of workers' militias. The inadequacy of both these forms of activity is seen to lie in the fact that they do not have the conscious perspective of taking political power and leave the workers unprepared for the final confrontation.
Debray's classification of the Bolivian tin-miners into this category, however, does little to explain events which have taken place since the overthrow of the oligarchic government in 1952. The new government, which had the support of the mass of workers and peasants, carried out a measure of nationalisation and land reform, but being essentially bourgeois in character it was unable to fulfill a really progressive role and unrest became apparent in the country. A pre-emptive military coup took place which led to the response of a general strike during which the army viciously killed many hundreds of strikers. How a guerilla band defined by Debray as "an armed detachment organically independent of the civilian population, freed from the tasks of civil defence and with the goal of winning political power", could have ensured the successful exploitation of the revolutionary situation and prevented such a massacre is not clear and seems to be a somewhat facile formula. It does not examine how the progressive forces, led by the miners, lost the initiative, and why having conquered power in 1952 they gave it into the hands of the bourgeoisie. To sum up, Debray's main criticism of self-defence is that it allows the enemy to take over the initiative and deprive the revolutionary forces of their main advantages; mobility, secrecy, flexibility and surprise. Hence, although it may be able to protect the population for a limited time, in the long run the opposite is true.
ARMED PROPAGANDA
This tactic is dealt with in the next section of the book and comparisons are made between the situation in Vietnam, where it is widely used, and Latin America. Debray concludes that there are several features which would make it premature at this stage to integrate large sections of the population into the revolutionary struggle. The three most important features being:
1) The lack of any definite military gains which could convince the peasantry that you are acting on their behalf as well as putting forward an abstract programme.
2) The low density of the peasant population in most areas of Latin America, which would obviously reduce the effectiveness of such propaganda.
3) The difficulty which the guerillas find in mixing with the peasants, since they are usually easily identifiable outsiders.
Debray does, however, recognise that at some stage there will be a need for agitation and propaganda among the peasants and for the formation of an established base which will begin to organise itself as the embryo of the workers' state. One of the weaknesses, however, throughout the book, is his neglect of the question of how the masses of the people are to be integrated into the guerilla struggle. Nor does he mention the strengthening of the guerilla fight which could take place if fronts were simultaneously operating in several countries as later proposed by Che Guevara in his message to the Tricontinental.
THE ROLE OF THE PARTY
Almost every party and form of party organisation comes in for criticism under this heading, some of it petty and ill-informed and some of it very worthwhile. The communist parties are attacked for clinging to old concepts which are not based on a concrete analysis of the present situation, particularly on the following three points:
1) The concept of "a national democracy", i.e. the maintenance of capitalist relations of production freed from imperialist interference, which will at a later stage be transformed into socialism by the pressure of the masses.
2) The theory of a national front, i.e. an alliance including the national bourgeoisie.
3) An underestimation of the role of the peasantry.
The theory of an alliance with the national bourgeoisie has been shown by experience in Latin America to be a failure but Debray does not examine in a very detailed way why the national bourgeoisie is unable to fulfill its traditional "marxist tasks." Does it have a national identity and interests apart from those of the imperialists in this time and place?
Having seen the degeneration of such parties and their inability to lead a revolutionary struggle, he completely rejects the concept of a traditional party and instead substitutes the idea, based on the Cuban experience, that the party must grow out of successful guerilla action. The guerillas are the nucleus around which the vanguard party grows, which means that those who do not physically take part in military activity must remain outside the party. Political and revolutionary consciousness, according to Debray's thesis, can only grow out of participation in guerilla activity. He does not consider whether the Cuban Revolution might have had fewer setbacks if it had had a firm party base earlier in the struggle.
STRATEGY FROM TACTICS
To continue with Debray's proposals: they are that strategy should grow out of tactics, the party should follow the guerillas, that the military leader should become the party leader and that within that party there is an absolute necessity for a central command. He points out many of the difficulties which can arise from too great a dependence on the cities.
The forces of the oligarchies and imperialism are always strongest in the cities and operate most effectively there, carrying out selective political assassinations of key leaders. He also suggests that the elementary comforts of city life lead to a bourgeoisification and softening of political cadres and that when it comes to giving aid to the guerillas the city-based people are apt to have a different order of priorities, not realising perhaps, that the guerillas are fighting a daily life and death struggle not only with the oligarchies but with the elements themselves.
ARMED STRUGGLE NOW
The book puts the strategy of armed struggle now on the table and should be followed both here and in other countries by a detailed discussion of the specific objective conditions in each of the Latin American states, i.e., what differences of tactics will be required in Peru with its large peasantry and Venezuala with its highly urbanised population.
Since the publication of "Revolution in the Revolution" the destruction of Guevara's guerilla group in Bolivia has been interpreted by some people as a failure of many of the theories put forward in the book. Before jumping to such conclusions, however, we must remember that the guerillas were forced to commence activity prematurely and that their network of support in the towns, doctors, etc., was completely destroyed by the police after they acquired an uncoded list of all the people involved. Indeed two of the conditions which were stated by Debray to be of major importance for guerillas - effective security and maintenance of the initiative by the revolutionary forces - were violated.
The book is very refreshing because at the forefront of everything written in it is the basic belief, stated by Castro and others, that the duty of a revolutionary is to make revolution and not just talk about it.