1. For a number of reasons that were spelled out in the resolution on Latin America at the Ninth World Congress and that are peculiar to that continent at this stage, any turbulent rise of the mass movement must soon confront a resolute attempt by the army to crush it and to establish a military dictatorship. The experience since 1969 has completely confirmed the correctness of this analysis, in Uruguay and Chile as well as in Bolivia.
Given the experience of the Cuban revolution, the numerical and social strengthening of the proletariat, and the decline in the control of the traditional leaderships over the most combative layers, the bourgeoisie and the various petty-bourgeois formations succeed less and less frequently in diverting the explosive mass move ments. They no longer dispose of sufficient economic resources to be able to eliminate the most basic causes of the masses' explosive discontent, or to be able noticeably and permanently to improve their material conditions. But the bourgeoisie still has at its command sufficient political and military resources to be able to confront the rise of the masses through the resolute intervention of its principal instrument, the "army-party." That is the objective and specific reason for the increase in the number of bloody confrontations between the Latin American proletariat and armed reaction. This does not mean that the bourgeoisie is unable to concede any economic or political (democratic) reforms to the masses, nor that a bloody dictatorship is the only form of government it can presently opt for on this continent.
When the mass movement is still at a relatively low point, the bourgeoisie can permit itself the luxury of certain reforms without fearing a rapid and explosive escalation of demands (military "reformism" in Peru for five years, the present situation in Venezuela). When the mass movement begins to raise its head under a dictatorship, the ruling classes may prefer a regime enjoying a certain popular base to a regime of "gorillas" in order to be able to divert the upsurge for a certain period, to avoid its generalization, and to slow its transformation into a revolutionary situation (change from the Barrientos dictatorship to Ovando's, then to the Torres regime in Bolivia; the change from Ongania to Lanusse and to the return of Peron in Argentina). But the key element in all these maneuvers always remains the degree of control they hold over the mass movement. When the latter begins to escape all control, the explosiveness of social contradictions and the rapid polarization of social and political forces in Latin America leave the bourgeoisie no other choice but to attempt to crush the proletariat by brute force. In the conditions of such an upsurge in the mass movement, there is no possibility for a "constitutional," bourgeois-democratic regime of any significant duration.
This is the essential lesson of the unfolding of the class struggle in Latin America since the Ninth World Congress, confirming the fundamental projection of the resolution of that congress on Latin America. Any strategy and any tactic of the revolutionary Marxists that does not start from this essential reality, that avoids giving a clear reply to this question, or that tries eclectically to advocate some contradictory variants, will prevent the vanguard from playing its essential role in such a phase: to prepare the masses, their organizations, and the vanguard itself for the inevitable confrontation, once a certain threshold of mobilization has been crossed.
2. The strategy adopted by the Ninth World Congress expresses a clear awareness of this correlation of social and political forces in all countries of the continent where a powerful rise of the mass movement is taking place. It signifies that the primary duty of revolutionary Marxists is: a. To continually warn the masses against any illusion that they can escape armed confrontation by extending their democratic or economic struggles. It is precisely the stepping up of the mobilization that makes armed confrontation inevitable in the short run, in the present social, economic, and political conditions in Latin America. b. To untiringly popularize the necessity for the general arming of the workers and poor peasants in self-defense bodies that can develop into workers, peasants, and people's militias. "Arming the proletariat and its allies with the desire to arm themselves" becomes the number one propaganda task when reaction's coup d'etat proves probable if not inevitable in the near future.
Nor is any strategy for the conquest of power possible if the working, masses are not likewise convinced of the necessity for armed struggle and have not already passed through the necessary experiences and skirmishes in this respect. When the prerevolutionary situation approaches a revolutionary situation, when the sharpening of class contradictions draws near to its culminating point, the incapacity of the proletariat and its vanguard to adopt a concrete orientation for seizing power, based on the arming of the masses, means the inevitability of a bloody and momentarily triumphant initiative by the Latin American counterrevolution. For considerations of defense as well as offense, the refusal to place the question of arming the masses at the center of political attention thus means, under these circumstances, taking a course toward certain defeat. c. To reject any spontaneist illusion that expects the workers to be armed through a sudden, unforeseen, and spontaneous outburst from the rank and file and postpones the political and practical preparations for arming the masses until other supposedly primary "political" tasks have been accomplished (that is, until the eve of a mythical general "insurrection," which will never occur under these conditions). d. Not to rest content with general and abstract propaganda in this area, but to undertake initial pilot projects, to enter into preliminary actions that are carefully calculated for the effect they can have in raising the level of consciousness of the masses, increasing their combativity, and their will and capacity for arming themselves.
In a situation of an impetuous rise of the mass movement, the revolutionary Marxist organization must take this road as soon as it has crossed the minimum threshold of cadre accumulation enabling it to approach creating armed detach ments of the party without this undermining the party's overall work of rooting itself in the working class; carrying on trade-union activity, propaganda, and agitation; and continuing to consolidate and strengthen the organization as such. In this sense, forming armed detachments of the party is part of an overall revolutionary strategy. In close co-ordination with the party's mass work and complementing this, formation of armed detachments must serve the precise function of preparing the way for, facilitating, encouraging, and pushing the pace of arming by ever broader sectors of the workers and peasant vanguard. That is, its role is to promote the formation of workers, peasant, and people's militias and then to help organize them and to offer the centralized leadership that is essential in the event of confrontation with the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state (in this phase, moreover, the party should play a vanguard political and military role).
In a situation where the social contradictions are less acute, the revolutionary Marxist organization must likewise prepare itself and prepare the masses for the armed confrontation that is to come, without, however, regarding the formation of armed detachments as its central task. On the other hand, regardless of the numerical strength of the organization, there is still a need for a clandestine apparatus that can give members a practical education in military questions.
In a situation of severe repression (as in Brazil), even the political activity of a revolutionary organization requires armed protection in the Bolshevik tradition (i.e., to assure that leaflets can be distributed and that members can speak in factories).
In no case can military work be conceived of as being autonomous in a political way with respect to the party's mass work.
3. When a sharpening of the class struggle has led to a temporary victory by a military dictatorship and experience has shown the masses that struggling against such a dictatorship by trade-unionist, semilegal, and routinist methods is completely inadequate, then conditions exist for initiating armed struggle in various forms against the dictatorship.
Such initial actions of military harassment can only be effective, however, if: a. The masses understand the need for them based on their experience; that these actions flow in a way from this experience; and that they therefore receive growing support— at first of a political, and later of a material nature-from the masses. b. The period of clashes between small groups of partisans and the counterrevolutionary army does not drag on too long. This means that guerrilla warfare has succeeded as a tactic if it combines with a mass movement produced in part by the spur of these actions and by the mass work of the party. (In that case, by their political prestige and their military capacities, armed detachments can serve as the catalyst for creating broader armed formations arising out of the mass organizations.)
There is a need for a revolutionary Marxist organization that can correctly assess the evolution of the objective situation and the consciousness of the masses, that can subordinate a specific form of struggle to the interests of the proletariat as a whole and of the revolution, that can amplify the impact of guerrilla actions in the factories, the universities, etc., and that can bring about a convergence of the struggles against the bourgeois state. Without such an organization, guerrilla warfare loses its effectiveness, and there is a very real risk of its being transformed from a particular and episodic form of armed struggle into a fetish to which all forms of struggle by the proletariat and its vanguard are subordinated, if not sacrificed.
The Fourth International firmly rejects the Debrayist conception of the guerrilla "foco" and related illusions long promoted by the Cuban leadership. According to this way of looking at things, the activity of small nuclei with the determination to undertake military initiatives can be a sufficient motive force of revolutionary struggle and replace both the activity of the Leninist party as well as the mobilization and organization of broad masses, which in the last analysis are regarded as auxiliary elements. 4. The initiative of small armed groups prolonging the resistance of the masses to dictatorship must not be confused with a generalized civil war (or a war of national liberation) of the Vietnamese type, a war resulting from a revolutionary upsurge under the leadership of a party that has already won hegemony in the mass movement.
When a revolutionary crisis in a Latin American country does not culminate in a rapid defeat of the proletariat and its allies, a period of civil war may occur, with broad participation by the masses in armed revolutionary formations (something that should not be confused with an initiative by small armed groups). In the course of such a civil war, the proletariat and its allies run a serious risk of finding themselves confronted by a military interventionist force with superior re sources, sent in either by U.S. imperialism or one of its Latin American "standins" (notably the Brazilian army). The civil war could then assume directly features of a war of national liberation. A tendency to spill over national borders in the short or medium term and to become transformed into a continent-wide struggle could arise from the sort of foreign intervention mentioned above, from the repercussions the revolutionary process would have on neighboring countries that have mass movements with a relatively high level of consciousness, or from geographical and military factors. This possibility underscores the necessity of viewing the class struggle in Latin America —both politically and organizationally — from an internationalist and continental perspective.
But this hypothesis assumes something that is still far from being attained in any Latin American country: the existence of a revolutionary leadership already enjoying broad mass support and thereby capable of engaging in large-scale and organized armed resistance against the "national" and international forces of counterrevolution.
In general, despite the ripeness of the overall objective conditions, the revolutionary parties' weakness in numbers, influence, and military preparation makes short-term revolutionary victory in Latin America highly improbable. Nevertheless, if an impetuous upsurge in the mass movement should push toward a decisive test of strength, revolutionary Marxists are obligated to prepare themselves politically and militarily for this test, and to prepare the masses for it as well. Furthermore, protracted armed struggle appears to be the most probable variant whether or not this upsurge emerges victorious or goes down to defeat, foreign intervention being virtually inevitable in the case of victory.
5. In the context of its overall programmatic approach to the problems of strategy and tactics raised by the rise of the revolutionary process in a succession of Latin American countries, the Fourth International supports a strategy in which armed struggle plays a role in the fight for the Transitional Program as a whole, inasmuch as the necessary mobilization of the masses for the program's national-democratic and workers demands will itself increasingly lead to violent confrontations with the counterrevolutionary army, that is, to raising the question of arming the masses and preparing for this organizationally and politically.
This strategy is part of the general strategy of permanent revolution in these countries. None of the fundamental problems of Latin American society and its underdevelopment can be resolved without the conquest of power by the proletariat allied with the poor peasantry. Without systematically preparing the proletariat and masses to take up arms, any attempt to struggle for power against the "army-party" of the Latin American bourgeoisie is irresponsible and will turn into a deadly trap.
This strategy for Latin America fits into the Fourth International's primary task of solving the crisis of revolutionary leadership by building new mass revolutionary parties. Unless the International offers a concrete answer to the problems posed by the revolutionary upsurge, such parties cannot be built.
The explosive character of the Latin American class struggle, and the resulting dynamic of confrontation between the mass movement and the forces of reaction, has its effects on the work of building the revolutionary party. It would be illusory to think the accumulation of militants in the framework of a propagandist organization alone will eventually make it possible to undertake in a natural way the necessary political and organizational transformations. From this fact flows the importance of strictly adhering from the very beginning to Bolshevik norms regarding the structure of the organization and the training of party members. It is only in this way that the party will be able to intervene politically in the class struggle, overcoming all the obstacles the bourgeoisie may put in its way.
The theory that the preparation and launching of armed struggle must be subordinated to the development of propaganda within the bourgeois army, and that this will then create the political preconditions for armed struggle, has been disproved by the events in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Chile. These experiences confirm that this theory involves a misunderstanding of the uneven pace of the maturing of revolutionary consciousness among the vanguard work ers and peasants on one hand, and within the army on the other, as well as a lack of understanding of the prevailing political, organizational, and psychological difficulties that mark the outbreak of widespread mutinies within the bourgeois armed forces. If the masses do not have substantial self-defense forces capable of welcoming and protecting the rebel soldiers at that moment, the first significant incidents of indiscipline within the army will be put down with particular savageness and may even be the signal for a coup by the extreme right. The bourgeoisie understands that it cannot, under any circumstances, tolerate the disintegration of the last effective political instrument it possesses. The necessary propaganda in the army must be matched by the strengthening of the armed detachments of the party and growing successes in the formation of armed detachments of the proletariat and poor peasantry. Political campaigns denouncing the bourgeois army should also be used to lay the groundwork for this dialectic.
On the other hand, the case of the majority of the Argentine PRT has also demonstrated the danger of militarist deviations when the turn toward the formation of armed detachments of the party has been carried out successfully. These deviations consist of neglecting tasks that are indispensable under these circumstances — the tasks of political agitation and propaganda, systematic efforts to raise the class consciousness of the workers, struggle against the influence of reformist, class-collaborationist, or confused petty-bourgeois nationalist ideologies, as well as the tasks of patient, systematic work in the plants in order to constantly extend the party's roots in the class.
In the specific conditions where it is necessary to form armed detachments of the party, the conception of the Fourth International is never to give an absolute priority to any one aspect of revolutionary activity, but to integrate it into an overall strategy of preparing the masses to set up organs of dual power and carry out the revolutionary seizure of power. 6. After the Cuban experience — an experience in which rural guerrilla warfare played a decisive role in the development of the revolutionary struggle-and even in the period following the Ninth World Congress, Latin America has witnessed other instances of armed struggle. These developments show the urgency of clarifying the decisive question of the role of armed struggle in our strategy for seizing power.
The Tenth World Congress resolutions on Bolivia and Argentina provide a brief balance sheet for these two countries. Armed struggle in Brazil, which took the form almost exclusively of urban guerrilla warfare conducted by very small nuclei, ended in the defeat and breakup of nearly all the organizations that engaged in it. The objective conditions turned out to be much more difficult than the revolutionists expected. In reality, the struggle was launched in a period in which the dictatorship was consolidating its grip significantly by smashing every potential mass mobilization in the egg and winning a relatively strong social base, especially among layers of the petty bourgeoisie. From the subjective point of view, the armed organizations paid a steep price for their adherence to Debrayist concepts and for their militarist deviations. In Uruguay, the mass mobilizations against the regime had, by 1968, already won near-unanimous support in a situation in which the regular armed forces were still quite weak and unprepared to stand up against a generalized confrontation. Because of the grip the traditional parties, above all the Uruguayan Communist party, had on the masses, the proletariat did not have a revolutionary strategy for seizing power, and the movement began to ebb, opening the way for a repressive counterattack by the regime. Five years later a similar situation occurred. The reactionary coup by Bordaberry and the military provoked a powerful response, including a general strike, occupations of factories, and almost total paralysis of the country. But even a mobilization as powerful as this one was not enough to overcome the offensive of a government that was prepared for a military test of strength and had decided to make full use of its military apparatus. The only way out would have been to arm the proletariat in preparation for an armed struggle for power, counterposing a proletarian military force to the repressive forces of the ruling classes, the latter aided by imperialism and its allies. The absence of such a strategy and the concrete actions it would have inspired led to a situation in which one of the largest and most courageous mass mobilizations in the history of Latin America ended in a sorry defeat and the installation of reactionary dictatorship. The events of July 1973 also marked a de feat for the Tupamaros, owing to their failure to elaborate an overall revolutionary perspective and their inability, despite the popularity won by their courageous actions, to present themselves as an alternative leadership.
The defeat suffered by the Chilean proletariat tragically illustrates how far short the spontaneous and defensive resistance of the working class falls of being able to block a coup of this sort. This harsh lesson confirms once again the role that must be played by the arming of the proletariat, as well as of the revolutionary organization and its members. A revolutionary victory is possible only if the party and the masses are prepared to face a coup and if on the eve, or at the first sign, of such an event, there is a capacity for taking decisive action.
A balance sheet heavy with failures must not lead to a total rejection of the forms of armed struggle that have been tried or, in particular, to the conclusion that the guerrilla-warfare experiences represent a total bankruptcy. Nonetheless, the problem of what to do in the face of a series of military coups, the crushing of the most promising mass movements in one country after another, as well as the problem of what to do in the face of the total failure of "focoism," is one of the most burning questions that has been raised by the unfolding class struggle in Latin America.
7. Despite the fact that it was based on a correct analysis of the social contradictions and of the inevitability of confrontations on the Latin American continent, and that it initiated a correct turn, the Ninth World Congress resolution did contain errors of analysis and perspectives, especially in underestimating the possibility that the reactionary forces could crush the mass movement for a long period (Brazil), or hold it at a manageable level for a fairly long time (Peru). Above all, however, it made dangerous extrapolations: "Thus not only in a historical sense but in a more direct and immediate one, Latin America has entered a period of revolutionary explosions and conflicts, of armed struggle on different levels against the native ruling classes and imperialism, and of prolonged civil war on a continental scale." ["Resolution on Latin America," in IIDB Reprint, Discussion on Latin America (1968-1972), p. 46.] Formulations like this do not permit making the essential distinction between a situation of embryonic civil war in which guerrilla actions take place and a situation of revolutionary war in the strict sense of the term. This is a distinction that the Argentine PRT [Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores — Revolutionary Workers party] never made. It was fully convinced that war had been declared and it made this the framework for its activity, notably for building the ERP [Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo — Revolutionary People's Army]. To this must be added the importance the resolution accorded to the notion of a "strategy of armed struggle." The formula can perhaps be explained by the need to emphasize the differences that exist between Europe and Latin America from the point of view of party building. But the notion of a "strategy of armed struggle" is ambiguous, and in any event does nothing to provide a Latin American section with the necessary instruments for working out specific perspectives.
In fact, the only explicit guideline for applying this "strategy of armed struggle" that emerges from the Ninth World Congress resolution is the axis of rural guerrilla warfare, an axis that is given a "geographical-military meaning," a statement that comes down to viewing the development of guerrilla warfare as relatively independent of the social substratum that could be provided in certain countries by the agrarian question. The political perspective for this sort of rootless guerrilla warfare can only be understood if one takes seriously the "conjunctural" importance of "prolonged civil war on a continental scale"; or, in other words, if the intensity of class confrontations objectively presents the masses with a military task that is immediately assumed, i.e., if the civil war is already more than embryonic.
8. The Ninth World Congress orientation is based in part on the Trotskyist movement's unity tactic toward the Castroist current— a current that emerged under the impact of the Cuban revolution and reached its political high point in 1967 with the holding of the OLAS [Organizacion Latinoamericana de Solidaridad — Organization of Latin American Solidarity] conference. The Ninth World Congress resolution posed the following task: "Integration into the historic revolutionary current represented by the Cuban revolution and the OLAS, which involves, regardless of the forms, integration into the continental revolutionary front which the OLAS constitutes." ["Resolution on Latin America," p. 50.] In the spring of 1969, however, OLAS as an organization hardly existed except on paper. What did exist were bilateral relations between the Cuban state and the Latin American revolutionary movements. The distinction is important. For while the path being followed by the Cuban leadership was not as well defined then as it is today, a turn had already begun with the positions it took on Czechoslovakia, France, and Mexico. It can be predicted that Cuban aid to revolutionary movements will carry more and more political conditions. This means that any relations in the spirit of unity with the Castroist current, which remain a central question, presuppose a political struggle, which is the only way to firm up the sections of the Fourth International against the inevitable pressures. The insufficiencies and errors in analyzing the conditions and forms of armed struggle can in large part be explained by the weakness of our movement at the time of the Ninth World Congress, by the weakness of its roots in the socioeconomic reality.
Recognition of the weakness of our sections, though essential, is missing from the Ninth World Congress resolution. The resolution did not assess the consequences of its analysis insofar as the forms of development of our sections are concerned. This led to an underestimation of the qualitative leap that had to be made, and must still be made, if groups that are still mainly propaganda organizations are to take up the tasks of the period.
The Ninth World Congress resolution affirms the relevance of armed struggle in Latin America and thus represents one of the gains made by our movement. It fills an important gap in drawing for our sections the general implications of the new situation that emerged on the continent following the victory of the Cuban revolution. The fact remains, however, that it left open several essential questions, and contains certain errors mentioned above- errors that require self-criticism.
These omissions and errors not only prevented the Ninth World Congress resolution from fully defining our strategy for the seizure of power (by failing to clarify the concepts of "prolonged revolutionary war" and the role of insurrections, the revolutionary army and organs of dual power, prerevolutionary situations and the revolutionary crisis, urban and rural guerrilla warfare, etc.). They also opened the door to sometimes sterile polemics by enabling a current in the International -a current that still refuses to draw the necessary lessons from all the costly defeats of the mass movements that have found themselves disarmed or taken by surprise by the initiatives of the military in Latin America —to concentrate its fire on false targets and obscure the essential content of the debate, a development that has had unwholesome consequences not only for the internal life of the International but most of all for the arming of the Latin American sections, both politically and organizationally. In light of the series of experiences in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Chile, it is high time to bring the discussion back to its real terms and alternatives. Such is the aim of the present statement.
This resolution does not propose to settle all the problems involved in the armed struggle for power. It is up to our sections and groups in Latin America, based on the orientation of the Tenth World Congress, to draw the lessons of their own experience in order to define their tasks more specifically. In doing so they will help to deepen and give impetus to the collective thinking of our entire International on this question.