RÉVOLUTION DANS LA RÉVOLUTION? (“Revolution in the revolution?”)

A 144-page book, by French Marxist Régis Debray, subtitled lutte armée et lulte politique (“armed fight and political fight”) published in 1967, simultaneously in Paris and Havana, which elaborated Fidel Castro’s doctrine of the period, emphasizing guerrilla warfare. Not only are orthodox Communist theory and leadership – which insist on the guiding role of the party and diminish the possibility of struggle in the countryside – a hindrance to the liberation movement, but parties and ideology are unnecessary in the initial stages. Debray explained that Castroism’s decisive contribution to the international revolutionary experience was that “under certain conditions the political and the military are not separate, but form one organic whole, consisting of the people’s army, where the nucleus is the guerilla army. The vanguard party can exist in the form of the guerrilla foco itself. The guerrilla force is the party in embryo.” A determined group of revolutionaries with no party support could initiate a rural guerrilla foco, create the conditions for the defeat of the armed forces and overthrow an established government. Castro attempted through Debray to provide a new theory of revolution based on his own struggle against Batista. Forgetting that Batista’s army collapsed from internal demoralization and corruption, Castro claimed that the guerrillas had defeated the army and that this could be repeated elsewhere in Latin America. Guevara in BA 144-page book, by French Marxist Régis Debray, subtitled lutte armée et lulte politique (“armed fight and political fight”) published in 1967, simultaneously in Paris and Havana, which elaborated Fidel Castro’s doctrine of the period, emphasizing guerrilla warfare. Not only are orthodox Communist theory and leadership – which insist on the guiding role of the party and diminish the possibility of struggle in the countryside – a hindrance to the liberation movement, but parties and ideology are unnecessary in the initial stages. Debray explained that Castroism’s decisive contribution to the international revolutionary experience was that “under certain conditions the political and the military are not separate, but form one organic whole, consisting of the people’s army, where the nucleus is the guerilla army. The vanguard party can exist in the form of the guerrilla foco itself. The guerrilla force is the party in embryo.” A determined group of revolutionaries with no party support could initiate a rural guerrilla foco, create the conditions for the defeat of the armed forces and overthrow an established government. Castro attempted through Debray to provide a new theory of revolution based on his own struggle against Batista. Forgetting that Batista’s army collapsed from internal demoralization and corruption, Castro claimed that the guerrillas had defeated the army and that this could be repeated elsewhere in Latin America. Guevara in Bolivia, and others all over Lain America, died trying to prove Castro’s theory correct.