The ‘Principal Lessons for the Present’ are interesting.

The chapter begins again with questions. What is more important, the party or the guerrillas? ‘Which is the decisive link? Where should the principal effort be made?’

The orthodox answer would have revolutionaries rely on the party. Debray rejects this. He cites Castro favourably, as saying that a vanguard is necessary to make a revolution, but the vanguard does not have to be Marxist-Leninist:

There is … no metaphysical equation in which vanguard = Marxist-Leninist party; there are merely dialectical conjunctions between a given function—that of the vanguard in history—and a given form of organization—that of the Marxist-Leninist party.

In the run up to this quote, Debray notes that the guerrilla organ can have a political and military leadership, as in Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh and Giap), China (Mao and Chu Teh) and the USSR (Lenin and Trotsky). But in Cuba, both functions fell to Castro.

Debray argues that the dialectic of vanguard/party and of it’s leadership depends on how it arises, it’s material preconditions.

In China, the revolutionaries arose alongside Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang and found support from the Soviet Union. They soon faced disaster an urban revolutionary war. The third international’s line was to hold the line, but under Mao’s self criticism, they withdraw to the countryside.

The Vietnamese revolutionaries organised peasant insurrections in rural areas. These failed, to begin with, so the line was revised. Ho Chi Minh turned towards ‘armed mass struggle’. It was the peasants who ‘establish[ed] soviet power’, according to Giap.

In China and Vietnam, revolutionaries transformed themselves

into vanguard parties, each one with its own political line, elaborated independently of international social forces, and each profoundly linked to its people.

In these examples and with the Bolsheviks, the revolutionary

anti-feudal revolt was … transformed into an anti-imperialist revolt, the latter giving impetus to the former. The class struggle took the form of a patriotic war, and the establishment of socialism corresponded to the restoration of national independence: the two are linked.

The people involved in this organisation ‘achieved in practice the alliance of the majority class and the vanguard class: the worker-peasant alliance’. It would be tempting to read this as suggesting that the vanguard/guerrillas should be a spontaneous organisation. But we know from the earlier chapters that Debray argues against spontaneity.

So what is Debray saying? He seems to be arguing that although the vanguard (responsible for armed military struggle) should be organised, its work should not be determined by a separate political party. Although, so long as committees, commissions, etc, etc, are avoided (so as to allow the military organ the capacity to respond to things quickly), political representatives can join the guerrillas, because what is needed is a ‘new organisation’.

Exact forms of organisation must depend on the circumstances, even if this contradicts orthodox theory. Indeed, the vanguard needs a ‘new style of leadership’ and a ‘perfect Marxist education is not, at the outset, an imperative condition’.

Debray seems to use guerilla, vanguard, revolutionaries, etc as interchangeable in places, but I’m unsure if I’ve missed a subtlety here.