Institute for the Study of Revolutionary Warfare

The purely military viewpoint is unusually widespread. It manifests itself as follows: 1. To regard military work and political work as opposed to each other; to fail to recognize military work as only one of the means for accomplishing political tasks. 2. To regard the task of the Red Army as similar to that of the White Army—merely fighting. To ignore the fact that the Red Army is an armed force for carrying out the political tasks of the revolution. When the Red Army fights, it fights not merely for the sake of fighting but to agitate the masses, to organize them, to arm them, and to help them to establish revolutionary political power; apart from such objectives, fighting loses its meaning and the Red Army the reasons for its existence. 3. Organizationally, therefore, to subordinate the organs of the Red Army’s political work to those of its military work. 4. At the same time, in agitational work, to overlook the importance of the agitation teams.

Now, insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them. Firstly, never play with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of organization, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, the insurrectionary career once entered upon, [must] act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising. Surprise your antagonists, prepare new successes, however small, but daily; keep up the moral ascendancy which the first successful rising has given to you; rally those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the strongest impuse.

 

 

Pg. 14. The superstructure of any edifice that is as extensive and as lofty as revolution must be reexamined with each successive layer, for faults, for possible improvement of method.

Pg. 33. In the opening stages of such a conflict, before a unified left can be established, before most people have accepted the inevitability of war, before we are able militarily to organize massive violence, we must depend on limited, selective violence tied to an exact political purpose. In the early service of the people there must be totally committed revolutionaries who understand that all human life is meaningless if it is not accompanied by the controls that determine its quality. Continue reading “Blood in My Eye, by George Jackson”