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.
Pg. 34. Our military cadre involved in this activity has the tactical advantage over the establishment’s terrorists only if we remain clandestine. While working at the direction of a political front we must remain separate from it. The ranks of these early soldiers must be absolutely impervious to infiltration; precautions must be made to keep this cadre impenetrable to police spies and less committed comrades.
Pg. 37. “There is no way to stop the infiltration of an above-ground political group, but we can guard the clandestine army by: 1. letting no one choose us (even if they did know about us and could find us); we do the choosing. 2. Once we choose someone to do the people’s military work they should be tested thoroughly, and their background checked. There are patterns to people’s lives that if studied one can easily spot pig tendencies and connections… dealing with people you’ve known over the years and have seen tested in fire already is best.” (Jonathan Jackson)
Pg. 41. People’s war is improvisation and more improvisation. It is organizing the masses around their realistic needs and moving them against whatever forces restrict their passage to power. I repeat: realistic day-to-day needs should be the basis of organizing people and making them conscious of revolution—that the world, the universe, must resolve—that it will stop, stagnate, and die for no man’s privilege.
Pg. 55-56. The first struggle is one waged within our own minds. We must accept the eventuality of bringing the U.S.A. to its knees; accept the closing off of critical sections of the city with barbed wire, armored pig carriers criss-crossing the city streets, soldiers everywhere, tommy guns pointed at stomach level, smoke curling black against the daylight sky, the smell of cordite, house-to-house searches, doors being kicked down.
Pg.61. Working against the establishment‘s general staff is its own mentality. They’ve convinced themselves or have been convinced by their experience at war with other mechanized armies that “having the most at the right time” wins wars. In other words, they feel that winning wars depends mainly on gadgets and they presume that they can dictate the terms and grounds upon which each battle takes place. They’re locked in on a fixed set of systematized ideas that conflict completely with the realities of People’s War.
Pg.65-6. It is quite easy for a pig to perform a particular function the same way, time after time, once he has learned the function; it is not so easy to vary. Cyclic men equipped with only a few learned responses can be watched, clocked, photographed and anticipated.
Mobility: On rare occasions, the guerrilla may rent or commander a piece of heavy equipment for an isolated or special purpose (which fits in with the improvised, extemporaneous nature of this form of combat). Provision must be made to move men [sic] and equipment in spite of the condition of today’s streets and roads in cities. That means making use of four-wheel drive civilian-type jeeps, station wagons, trucks, vans (all ordinary-looking family or commercial-looking vehicles) and motorcycles. The bicycle will regain popularity.
Infiltration: The guerrilla army that operates within the city is necessarily small, so we stop infiltration by being very selective and conducting thorough tests and making full use of the principles underlying departmentalization.
Camouflage: We must dress and equip ourselves with weaponry that will allow us to move in units of a dozen or more without appearing to be anything other than private citizens pursuing their private interests. We will make use of all forms of disguise: mailman, policeman, telephone repairman, priest, nun, National Guardsman.
Autonomous Infrastructure: It is our goal to wear away the establishment’s ability to produce and distribute goods, to feed its war machine, or organize any sort of social activity; then, of course, we must, at the same time, provide ourselves with the means of performing these functions on at least a subsistence level. Both the military and the political arms of the liberation movement must think of the provisioning of the people during the dark days when we stop the machine. Military supplies are stockpiled in advance with food staples. Depression-days’ foraging and war-years’ liberation gardens must be reintroduced and refined.
Pg.79. They’re going to claim that our clothing projects, the people’s bazaars, the people’s stores and decentralized cottage industries are fronts for stolen property. The establishment will claim that we are feeding and clothing people with goods stolen from the old enemy culture. Of course, this will be used to justify an attack upon our political projects, our infrastructure. The assaults will be justified by them in a dozen different ways, whether we establish ourselves in storefronts or in our homes. They will attack us—behind the fire ordinance, the sanitation department, the anonymous tip. It’s as predictable as nightfall.
Pg.81. The people must create something that they are willing to defend, a wealth of new ideals and an autonomous subsistence infrastructure.
Pg.123-124. Carving out a commune in the central city will involve claiming certain rights as our own—out front. Rights that have not been respected. Property rights. It will involve building a political, social and economic infrastructure, to feed and comfort all the people on at least a subsistence level, capable of filling the vacuum that has been left by the establishment ruling class, and pushing the enemy bourgeois culture either to tie their whole fortunes to the communes and the people, or leave the land, the tools and the market behind. If he will not leave voluntarily, we will expel him.
Pg.126. The very first political programs have had to be defended with duels to the death… We must build with the fingers of one hand wrapped around a gun. This must be understood by the other revolutionary people if we are to move together to conclusive action.