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.

I thought this last section was very interesting, with a very persuasive argument for Debray’s vision for future revolution.

II. The principal lesson for the future:

He spends quite a bit of time arguing against making revolution through current parties, and for developing separate socialist guerilla movements. I thought this was a key quote:

"“Who will make the revolution in Latin America? Who? The people, the revolutionaries, with or without a party” (Fidel)
Fidel says simply that there is no revolution without a vanguard; that this vanguard is not necessarily the Marxist-Leninist party; and that those who want to make the revolution have the right and the duty to constitute themselves a vanguard without those parties. (p. 98)

He talks a bit about how vital a worker-peasant alliance is to making a revolution, and leaves me wondering what that looks like in the modern imperial core.

He talks about remaking the party into an “effective directive organism” involves putting an end to endless meetings and bureaucracy, but also says that will involve “suspending democratic centralism”. Which gives me pause. I understand the need for defined hierarchy in battle, but it feels like a core component.

He adds a rad quote from Che: “you are capable of creating cadres who can endure imprisonment and torture with silence, but not of training cadres who can capture a machine-gun nest”. (p. 103)

I liked another quote on party work from Debray: "Let us speak clearly. The time has passed for believing that it suffices to be “in the Party " to be a revolutionary. But the time has also come for putting to an end the acrimonious, obsessive, and sterile attitudes of those who think that in order to be a revolutionary one must only be “anti-party”…the value of a revolutionary, like that of a party, depends on his activity” (p. 104).

He calls the guerilla force “the party in embryo” and mentions that guerillas don’t want political commissars because their leaders hold that role. There’s quite a lot that I found thought provoking and interesting in this chapter, and I think a lot of use could be found here for revolution in the Americas still.

Consequences for the Future:

I’ll let the quotes speak for themselves in this section. I really think it’s a good read entirely:

"The setting up of military focos, not political focos, is decisive for the future. (p. 119)

In short, the political organization has become an end in itself. It will not pass over to armed struggle because it must first wait until it establishes itself solidly as the party of the vanguard, even though in reality it cannot expect recognition of its vanguard status except through armed struggle (p. 121).

The creation of one more political foco mobilizes only the mobilized: a number of militants and a handful of old leaders are siphoned off from one party to another, subtle internal adjustments are made within the profession; but that does not result in raising the level of the class struggle (p. 121)

sounds like a scathing critique of western parties

antibodies must be created at the base, at the level of the masses, by offering them a real alternative within their reach. (p. 121)

Let us indulge in a little sociology. Such splinter groups, “vanguardist” or otherwise, do not exist where an active guerilla movement is found…They really amount to something only in those countries that are remote from the armed struggle, where there is no clear-cut revolutionary vanguard in action. (p. 123)

No one can avoid seeing that in Latin America today the struggle against imperialism is decisive. If it is decisive, then all else is secondary (p. 125)

Summary on the work:

Debray has a lot of really great critiques of existing (at the time) forms of organization, and of making revolution. He does seem to suggest that to start a revolution, you just need to start “waging war against whichever agents of imperialism are closest to you”. I’m not sure I find that convincing, and I’m not sure that’s been born out as a fully successful strategy in the areas he’s speaking for either.

I thought this was a great work, and I’m happy I read it. I think any communist would do well to read it, and any communist in the Americas could find a lot of worth in it.

I’m glad I own a paper copy.

Submission suggestion.

@AgreeableLandscape@lemmygrad.ml suggested a book, The Red Deal.

My copy arrived and having a quick skim through, it could be a good text for NEBulae. Short chapters, short book, written for the public, focuses on a narrow enough topic/region, and there’s a PDF. (I can’t find the PDF, atm, though. Will have to do some digging if we go with this one.)

As AL suggests, this might be mandatory for people in settler colonies, but that’s something we could discuss and I don’t think it’s a well known text.

Submission suggestion: “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor”.

https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630