Catch Revolution In The Revolution? Armed Struggle And Political Struggle In Latin America Created By Régis Debray File Ebook

hard to rate this book, Am I rating its political argument, or it as a piece of historical literature As a political argument its a good picture of what the guerillamovements of thes ands believed, purportedly based on the Cuban Revolution, though in this aspect its rather innacurate, since even the Cubans tended to underestimate though certainly less than some admit the centrality of their urban struggle committees.
Still, this is definitely worth checking out as a historical document of a particular moment, Taking the Cuban guerrilla war led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra as model, Regis Debray in Revolution in the Revolution concludes that certain revolutonary practices have become obsolete in contemporary Latin American.
He calls for a revolution in revolutionary practice,

Debray rightfully attacks legalist "MarxistLeninist" parties who cling to the illusions of empowering the masses exclusively through the parliamentary struggle, an arena dominated by the landed and monied elites.


He rails against the strategy of armed selfdefense, or the occupation and defense of a clearly defined territory by the revolutionary forces.
A guerrilla force's strength of stealth and mobility becomes dissipated without a distinction between the armed revolutionaries and the rest of the population.
The same reasons are deployed in Debray's argument against the establishment of fixed guerrilla bases, especially in the initial stages of the struggle.


At the same time, Debray takes lengths to denigrate armed propaganda, patient ground working and political agitation among the peasant masses onesidedly in favor of immediate and aggressive armed offensives that supposedly inspires the people

to rise up:

"The destruction of a troop transport truck or the public execution of a police torturer is a more effective propaganda for the local population than a hundred speeches.
Such conduct convinces them of the essential: that the Revolution is on the march, that the enemy is no longer invulnerable.
"

But while Debray's injunction for oppressed people to take up arms, basing the revolutionary leadership at the heart of the struggle in the countryside, and developing their forces from small to big, and criticisms against the dogmatic establishment of fixed bases or onesided reliance on armed selfdefense is laudable, these insights are weighed down on the other hand by an ultramilitarist stance.


The people's army, for instance, should not be under the revolutionary party's control because it is for him in itself already the political, organizational, and ideological director and locus of the struggle.
It would seem that Debray has a point when he argues that an urban political party's control over the guerrilla army is fraught with dangers ranging from risky meetings to lack of decisiveness.
But the better alternative liquidating the party altogether is the basing of the political party's center of operations in the countryside itself, alongside the army.


Painstaking mass work and building of organs of political power among the people is meanwhile relegated to the sides in favor of dashing armed exploits.
Military operations, political organizing, and the waging of agrarian reform in controlled areas go together, Of course, guerrillas cannot win or even survive without a consolidated and organized people's movement behind it,

Far from offering any revolution in revolutionary practice, it would come as no surprise that no armed struggle that took Debray's words to the letter only led to, as he himself put it, "a profusion of admirable sacrifices, of wasted heroism leading nowhere that is, leading anywhere except to the conquest of political power.
" I went back and forth while reading this, struggling to figure out if I liked it or couldn't stand to read another page.
I hopped on here and read reviews that seemed to agree with me most of the readers are confused as to how to feel about this book.


Regis Debray got an incredible opportunity: a firsthand experience with Cuban revolutionaries, mainly Che Guevara, His association with Guevara cost him quite a bit of freedom, as he was imprisoned after this book was published.
For how long, I am not certain, but I wonder if he revisited this book after his release and sought out any editing or revisions.


Debray consistently slams MarxistLeninists of which he is presumably thought he never officially states for sticking too close to the line of Communist history up to then he says that too many Communists are focused on bourgeois parliamentarianism that existed in the days preceding the Bolshevik Revolution, or of the extremely intricate, peasantbased Communism of the Chinese Revolution.
He speaks as if MarxistLeninists are not at least somewhat acquainted with historical materialism we as Communists and I myself am a MarxistLeninist, so I'm speaking to that as well know that material conditions change as history and therefore, the class struggle, advances.
What worked for Marx in, was different than what worked for the Paris Commune in, which was different than what worked for the Bolsheviks in, which was different than what worked for China in, etc etc.
Hell, even what worked for the Bolsheviks inwasn't the same as what worked for them inand we KNOW this or we should, anyway, because we know that in dialectics, everything is constantly in motion.
On one hand, Debray seems to comprehend this, and if his writing style took on more of a warning tone, I would understand, but at times, he seems almost smug, condescending, and patronizing, even going so far as to insulting and criticizing the Bolsheviks and the Red ArmyChina for their methods of revolutionary work, which, at those specific times, worked for them.


It is roughly in the lastor so pages that Debray finally reaches what I consider to be the thesis of this book: conditions in Latin america are different than they have been anywhere else, and thus, the rise of Communism in Latin america, has been different, namely that what worked in the Cuban Revolution was Guerilla Warfare, and that is what Debray believes must be built on, that Guerilla Warfare is the nucleus of the rising socialist movement, and should be the focal point by which a socialist revolution is built around.
Certainly a departure from previous lines of thinking, but again, that is what worked for Cuba, and at the time, it was seen as a proper line.
However, Debray goes so far to one end of the spectrum to defend this, that at times, he outright favors abandoning any sort of nonmilitary camaraderie he advocates canceling all conferences, meetings, or rallies in favor of building up an armed struggle and Guerilla Warfare groups.
Essentially, whereas MarxismLeninism calls for a balance of theory and practice, Debray concerns himself much more with advocating mainly for practice, with little room for theory.


In one annoyingly patronizing passage of the book, he claims that the peasants presumably of Cuba are "frightened" by big words and therefore, big words and theory discussions are useless to them, and that they should instead just be persuaded to join combat.
This, coming from a white man from France strikes me as incredibly racist and patronizing towards Cubans, AfroCubans, etc, who are rural, but that of course, does not make them some sort of horribly uneducated persons like Debray implies here.


Finally, Debray has praises of Fidel Castro constantly and YES, Fidel Castro was an amazing, revolutionary figure who changed the course of history, and a lot of what Debray says is true Fidel truly did build a revolutionary movement, not with bourgeois scholars or intellectualist college students, but with rural peasants in combat, in Guerilla Warfare in one passage I did enjoy, Debray, in so many words, says that the Cuban revolution wasn't made, it was born inin the Moncanda Barracks, and that the leaders were elected by history on that day, and Fidel did say that the people of Latin america would be revolutionaries and there would be a revolution with or without a Party, but that does not mean Fidel Castro was anarchic in his thinking and accepted that as a solution he was a MarxistLeninist at his core, and advocated for that until the day he died.
Party work as we know it was not a top priority for Castro like it would be for us, but as Debray says at the end of this book, seemingly contradicting himself, there may be a thousand ways to speak of revolution, but there must be an agreement between all those resolve to make it.
Fidel Castro, in leading this revolution, advocated for a Communist Cuba and world, and was a MarxistLeninist, and saw only MarxismLeninism, as the solution, with or without a Party.
Debray seems to ignore or disregard this,

Overall, a pretty impressive read, This is definitely an early look at Third Worldism and the socialist revolution in the Global South, and I can appreciate that, despite the glaring errors.
Also, there is a random but humorous nonetheless, criticism of reactionary trotskyism in the first part of the book, and of course, I love a good takedown of trotskyism.


I'd recommend reading this with a very critical lens, I sat on this one several years before finally getting down to read it, Written when the author was in a Bolivian prison, Debray had spent some months with Ernesto "Che" Guevara's illfated little band prior to their capture by CIAled local forces.
Some of the book is about shared experience, but much of it, too much of it, is about the theory of organizing foci of armed guerillas throughout countries of the third world, primarily in Latin Americaprecisely the volunteeristic enterprise Che had failed to accomplish in Bolivia.


I read this book while on breaks from working at the Mission of Our Lady of Mercy on Racine and Jackson in Chicago.
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