CAN CHINESE OR RUSSIAN PATH STILL BE EMULATED TODAY? URBAN INSURRECTION TO COMBINE WITH PROTRACTED PEOPLE’S WAR?

This was put together by reproduced excerpt from article by Kenny Lake in “When we ride our enemies” from Revolutionary Initiative blog. 

This is an interview of Joma Sison by Harsh Thakor.

I strongly feel that Urban insurrection should not combine with a protracted peoples war until the very final stages of offensive. It’s alos arguable whether we have reached a stage beyond Insurrection of the Russian type or protracted peoples war of the Chinese path with India being a classic example. After all some regions like Punjab do not have mountainous regions to terrain required so there is no scope of PPW there. Arguably classical semi-feudalism does not exist in some Asian or Latin American countries. It is even debatable in India if objective factors are favourable to launch a protracted peoples war, let alone subjective factors. -Harsh Thakor

HT: The article sums up blending of urban strategy in peoples wars all over the world. Not surprisingly, developments in Davao City in the 1980s led to internal struggle within the Communist Party of the Philippines over the strategy of protracted people’s war. Comrades in Mindanao contended that the advances in Davao presented the possibility of urban insurrections as a means for rapid victory. They continued to expand armed city partisan operations and looked to the experience of the Viet Cong and the Sandinistas’ quick victory through urban-based revolution in Nicaragua as models. This strategic view has been the target of criticism by the CPP central leadership, especially in its Second Great Rectification Movement. In a crucial document of that rectification movement, the CPP leadership points out how armed city partisan warfare in Davao City and other places advanced without an adequate mass base put the all-around development of the revolution, including building the mass movement and mass organization in the urban areas and consolidating military strength and base areas in the countryside, in danger of defeat by the repressive state apparatus. Moreover, ideas about quick victory through urban insurrection within the CPP became bound up with illusions about the “people power revolution” (also known as the EDSA revolution), in which massive street demonstrations played a pivotal role in ousting the Marcos military dictatorship in February 1986. Such illusions failed to distinguish between the overthrow of a particular faction of the bourgeoisie by a broad array of class forces of which communists were not in a leadership position, and a communist revolution led by the proletariat that shatters bourgeois state power. Central to the success of the latter is the defeat and destruction of the bourgeois repressive state apparatus, including the bourgeoisie’s military, by the revolutionary armed force of the proletariat, which cannot be achieved through overwhelming street demonstrations.96 While the revolutionary advances in Davao City in the first half of the 1980s became mired by erroneous strategic thinking, it is nonetheless important to recognize the objective factors and subjective actions that made these advances possible. Among a newly proletarianized population migrating from rural life to overcrowded urban slums, the CPP was able to forge a revolutionary people and territorial strongholds in which revolutionary violence was widely supported. To whatever degree its armed city partisan operations became overextended, they nonetheless engendered a revolutionary crisis for the bourgeoisie in Davao.

JMS: Indeed, the CPP was not in a position to overthrow the semi-colonial and semi-feudal ruling system in the Philippines in 1986. The New People’s Army had only 6,100 Red fighters nationwide at that time. There was only one NPA company deployed in Manila in February 1986. It was not enough to seize power in the city. What brought down Marcos was a convergence of the rising tactical offensives of NPA mainly in the countryside, the mass protests of the legal democratic forces and the conservative opposition (the anti-Marcos reactionaries) and the junking of Marcos by most of the big compradors and landlords, the Catholic Church and US imperialism from the assassination of Benigno Aquino in 1983 to the 1986 downfall of Marcos. In this broad range of forces against the Marcos fascist regime, the US and the local exploiting classes still had the most and could still install the successor to Marcos. When the Second Great Rectification Movement went into full swing from 1992 onwards, the following facts were already well-established: the urban insurrectionists of Mindanao appeared to be successful from 1981 to 1985 but from the latter half 1985 onwards the line of premature regularization of the NPA and neglecting mass work in the country side and making the NPA subordinate to spontaneous urban insurrection as the lead factor began to weaken the mass base of the revolutionary movement in the countryside. The failure of the wrong line resulted in certain leaders blaming the “deep penetration agents” for the effective counter-attacks of the enemy and generating a witch hunt by which crimes were committed in violation of due process.

HT: This raises two important issues to consider as communists develop new strategies and practices. First is the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)’s conception of fusion of armed insurrection and protracted people’s war.97 Davao City and Mindanao in the early 1980s are surely an example of this conception in practice.

JMS: Whether a line is correct or not is decided or answered by its consequences. In Nepal, the so-called fusion of armed insurrection and protracted of people’s war was in connection with the calculation and maneuvers of the CP leadership to be in a position in the urban areas to negotiate a exert direct pressure on those in power in Kathmandu and make compromise for peaceful settlement on the basis of ending the power of the monarchy but not of the ruling system of big compradors and landlords. The ultimate end of the Prachanda path has been capitulation. In the case of the urban insurrectionists of Mindanao, their line ended up in disaster for the revolutionary movement in their areas of responsibility and worse in the witch hunt and the crimes committed in the course of hysteria.

HT: Second is the problem of vastly uneven development of the revolutionary struggle within what for communists is, and has been for several decades, an unfavorable balance of forces internationally (to grossly understate the matter). While the Russian and Chinese revolutions succeeded in part through taking advantage of temporary weaknesses in the imperialist global order during and following world wars and a strong international communist movement, similar scenarios have not presented themselves since then. Since waiting for history, and “objective conditions” in particular, to repeat will always mean, for communists, resigning ourselves to the prison of the present, it is necessary to consider how to transform unfavorable conditions through struggle, taking advantage of particular situations and geographic locations where a revolutionary people can be forged into a fighting force.

JMS: Communists do not wait for objective conditions to change “on their own” or in other words modified by the bourgeois ruling class according to its own interests. There is no way to escape the law of uneven development. But this means that there are always weak spots of a ruling system or an empire by which the communists have the space for maneuver against oppression and exploitation. The form of struggle depends on the concrete conditions to take advantage of. In general, the communists can wage protracted people’s war in countries where the poor peasants and farm workers still abound and provide both the social and physical terrain for the people’s war to develop in stages in the countryside over an extended period. At this time, when the neoliberal policy is unraveling so fast and the extremist forms of exploitation and oppression are arising in both developed and underdeveloped countries, imperialist and nonimperialist, there are already crisis conditions favorable for the proletariat and the people to wage legal democratic struggles and strengthen their forces. All major contradictions are intensifying: between labor and capital, among the imperialist powers, between the imperialist powers and oppressed peoples and nations and between the imperialist powers and countries assertive of national independence and the socialist cause. The worldwide mass protest actions since last year signal the transition to a period of the resurgence of anti-imperialist struggles and the world proletarian revolution. The aggravation of the crisis and the resistance of the proletariat and people can result in the spread of protracted protracted people’s war in many underdeveloped countries and in the rise of urban-based mass movements that can enable the proletariat to carry out insurrections and seize power Petrograd-style even in imperialist countries in the next 50 years. The inter-imperialist contradictions can generate conditions that can favor both the rural-based people’s war as well as insurrections brought about by the people’s war or by strong mass movements in debilitated imperialist countries.

Pix by PPW.