Abstract
The underlying equation between revolutionary politics and military strategy in the work of Marx and Engels is well known. For the founders of Marxism, class struggle and revolutionary warfare are simply different intensities, different visibilities, of the same logic—“now hidden, now open”—of hostility (Marx 1986). If the class struggle over the working day represents a “veritable civil war” (Marx 1986: 231), and “every class struggle is a political struggle,” then it is no surprise that class politics, the confrontation of class-on-class, vying for state power, “is the point where [civil] war breaks out into open revolution” (Marx 1986). Revolution is warfare. Politics is coercion. Exploitation is domination. The state is an instrument of repression—the repression of the producing class by the exploiting class. The political struggle involves latent violence. Accordingly, everyday class struggle is simply an asymmetrical civil war.
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Notes
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“En cuanto a la fuerza armada, la guerra popular, las masas y el Partido han generado el Ejercito Guerrillero Popular, es un ejercito de neuvo tipo en cuanto cumple las tareas politicas de la revolucion estabilicidas por el Partido y como tal asume las tres tareas consagradas por la experiencia proletaria internacional: combatir, producir y movilizar a las masas lo que implica politizar, organizarlas y armarlas; Es un ejercito campesino … la base es la construccion ideologica del mismo segun el marxismo-leninismo-maoismo y su applicacion que es el pensamiento guia, la linea politica general y politicias partidarias. … La construccion militar del Ejercito se hace partiendo de la teoria de la guerra popular, la linea militar del Partido y los planes militares del mismo … La construccion de Ejercito Guerrillero Popular parte de tener presente la necessidad de plasmar la gran thesis de Lenin sobre el partido revolucionario y la milicia popular … [como] Neuvo Poder (Partido Communist del Peru 1987: 33–34).
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Boucher, G. (2017). The Long Shadow of Leninist Politics: Radical Strategy and Revolutionary Warfare After a Century. In: Sharpe, M., Jeffs, R., Reynolds, J. (eds) 100 years of European Philosophy Since the Great War. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50361-5_8
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