Armed Insurrection

Last updated
Armed Insurrection
Armed Insurrection (1970 edition).png
Cover of the first English edition, 1970, NLB
AuthorA. Neuberg (pseudonym)
Original titleDer bewaffnete Aufstand
Languagegerman
GenreMilitary manual, historical, political
Publication date
1928

Armed Insurrection (German : Der bewaffnete Aufstand) is a book published by the Comintern in Germany under the pseudonym of A. Neuberg, written as a kind of textbook on the theory of organizing an armed insurrection.

Contents

The book was prepared by an instructor of the military apparatus of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands ("Communist Party of Germany", KPD) and an agent of the intelligence department of the Red Army, August Gailis. It was originally published in German ("Der bewaffnete Aufstand", 1928), [1] followed three years later by translations into French ("L’insurrection armée", 1931) [2] and Russian ("Вооружённое восстание", 1931). [3] In 1932, Spanish Trotskyists published a Spanish translation without the knowledge of the Comintern. [4]

Contents and significance

According to Mao, a revolutionary or resistance war can be fought according to the doctrine of protracted war. This doctrine includes three consecutive phases. [5] [6] The first is the "pre-revolutionary phase" (or pre-resistance), in which the rebels organize themselves, train, equip themselves, form command cadres, create their own safe bases – the so-called "sanctuaries" – in the most remote and inaccessible areas of the country (or across the border, in a friendly or at least neutral country) for the purpose of storing and producing critical materials, create their own logistics network, their own encrypted communication system, etc. The second phase is that of the "strategic stalemate", or a long war of attrition that can last years or decades, characterized by proper guerrilla operations, aimed at demoralizing and increasingly wearing down the enemy: killings of isolated soldiers and policemen; sniping; ambushes against patrols and moving columns; raids against small units and military garrisons; sabotage and destruction of vehicles, depots and installations; seizing of weapons and ammunition; etc. The third and final phase is that of the “strategic counteroffensive”, in which the guerrillas, after having managed to sufficiently damage the enemy and after having accumulated adequate forces in terms of men, weapons and means, can come out into the open to transform themselves into a real regular army, capable of engaging and defeating the enemy by means of conventional tactics and battles, until the final victory.

The contents of the book Armed Insurrection have greater relevance to the third and final phase of a revolutionary war, contrary to other similar books – such as Guerrilla Warfare by 'Che' Guevara or as the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla by Marighella – which instead focus on the second.

Armed Insurrection deals with theory, practice and historical examples relating to an insurgent force that attempts to take definitive control of a territory – for example a city – by conquering arsenals, barracks, police stations, telecommunication centers, administrative centers, factories, railway stations, bridges, roads, etc. and then defending them from a possible enemy counterattack.

Engels, considering the revolutionary events of 1848 in Germany, described the passage from armed rebellion to the formation of a real revolutionary army, [7] thus raising the question – extremely relevant for radical left-wing politics between the second half of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century – of the transformation of spontaneous popular uprisings into armed forces capable of organized opposition to power. Armed Insurrection is a further development of this theme, which makes the book extremely interesting from the point of view of understanding the ideas spread among the leaders of the Comintern about armed insurrection, considered as the highest and «supreme form» of political struggle of the proletariat against the state power of the bourgeoisie, to be «conducted according to the rules of military science», so that «it presupposes a plan of campaign, offensive fighting operations and unbounded devotion and heroism on the part of the proletariat». [8] The book Armed Insurrection was written at a time when the leadership of the Third International (Comintern) and the Soviet Communist Party considered it possible to implement the idea of world revolution in the form of armed insurrections in individual countries.

According to Jörg Hülsmann, Armed Insurrection was probably the first systematic study of the suitability of guerrilla methods for establishing communist states. [9]

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri evaluated Armed Insurrection as follows: [10] [11]

This remarkable book, originally published in German in 1928, gives a rare inside view of communist military strategy in the early twentieth century.

Authorship

In 1933, a book by Nazi propagandist Adolf Erth was published, translated into many European languages, titled: “Armed Insurrection: Revelations of the Communist Coup Attempt on the Eve of the National Revolution”, in which it was claimed that Neuberg was the pseudonym of a major figure in the German Communist movement, Heinz Neumann. Erth's version became generally accepted in the anti-Communist literature of the 1950s and 1960s, being repeated in dozens of books, including in the memoirs of Chiang Kai-shek. [12]

In 1970 in Italy [13] and England, [14] and in 1971 in Germany, [15] three new editions of Neuberg's book were published, accompanied by introductory notes by former Comintern figure Erich Wollenberg, in which he named the "real authors" of the book: himself, as well as Vasily Blyukher, Hans Kippenberger, Osip Piatnitsky, Palmiro Togliatti, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Józef Unszlicht, Ho Chi Minh and Manfred Stern.

This version has remained generally accepted, even though in the 1990s Comintern documents were published, according to which the real author of the book was the Soviet agent August Gailis ("Neuberg" was his pseudonym during his clandestine work in Germany), [16] probably aided by Tuure Lehén (an important Finnish communist and later Finnish-Soviet politician, as well as a philosopher, journalist and historian). [17]

Structure

Overall, the contents of Armed Insurrection are organized according to the following general index: [18]

The work has maps and diagrams.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maoism</span> Variant of Marxism–Leninism

Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist International</span> Political organization (1919–1943)

The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was an international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism, and which was led and controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress in 1920 to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was preceded by the dissolution of the Second International in 1916. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin were all honorary presidents of the Communist International.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Negri</span> Italian political philosopher (1933–2023)

Antonio Negri was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of Empire with Michael Hardt. Born in Padua, Italy, Negri became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Padua, where he taught state and constitutional theory. Negri founded the Potere Operaio group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia, and published highly influential books, including Empire and Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, urging "revolutionary consciousness."

People's war or protracted people's war is a Maoist military strategy. First developed by the Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976), the basic concept behind people's war is to maintain the support of the population and draw the enemy deep into the countryside where the population will bleed them dry through guerrilla warfare and eventually build up to mobile warfare. It was used by the Chinese communists against the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, and by the Chinese Soviet Republic in the Chinese Civil War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Avakian</span> Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Robert Bruce Avakian is an American political activist who is the founder and chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP), a group often described as a cult surrounding Avakian. Coming out of the New Left of the 1960s, he is credited with the organization’s ideological framework, "the New Synthesis" or "New Communism".

In political ideology, a deviationist is a person who expresses a deviation: an abnormality or departure. In Stalinist ideology and practice, deviationism is an expressed belief which does not accord with official party doctrine for the time and area. Accusations of deviationism often led to purges. Forms of deviationism included revisionism, dogmatism, and bourgeois nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foco</span> Theory of revolution by way of guerrilla warfare

A guerilla foco is a small cadre of revolutionaries operating in a nation's countryside. This guerilla organization was popularized by Che Guevara in his book Guerilla Warfare, which was based on his experiences in the Cuban Revolution. Guevara would go on to argue that a foco was politically necessary for the success of a socialist revolution. Originally Guevara theorized that a foco was only useful in overthrowing personalistic military dictatorships and not liberal democratic capitalism where a peaceful overthrow was believed possible. Years later Guevara would revise his thesis and argue all nations in Latin America, including liberal democracies, could be overthrown by a guerilla foco. Eventually the foco thesis would be that political conditions would not even need to be ripe for revolutions to be successful, since the sheer existence of a guerilla foco would create ripe conditions by itself. Guevara's theory of foco, known as foquismo, was self-described as the application of Marxism-Leninism to Latin American conditions, and would later be further popularized by author Régis Debray. The proposed necessity of a guerilla foco proved influential in Latin America, but was also heavily criticized by other socialists.

On Protracted War is a work comprising a series of speeches by Mao Zedong given from May 26, 1938, to June 3, 1938, at the Yenan Association for the Study of the War of Resistance Against Japan. In it, he calls for a protracted people's war, as a means for small revolutionary groups to fight the power of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gutian Congress</span> 1929 Congress of the 4th Chinese Red Army

The Gutian Congress or Gutian Conference was the 9th meeting of the 4th Red Army and the first after the Nanchang Uprising and the subsequent southward flight of the rebel troops. It was convened in December 1929 in the town of Gutian in Shanghang County, Fujian Province.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historic Eight Documents</span> Political documents

The Historic Eight Documents are a set of eight monographs authored by the Indian Maoist revolutionary Charu Majumdar that outline the ideological principles on which the Naxalite militant communist movement in India was based. They laid down the idea that the Indian State was a bourgeois institution and that the main Indian communist parties had embraced revisionism by agreeing to operate within the framework of the Constitution of India. They urged a Maoist protracted people's war to overthrow the Indian State. They denounced the Soviet Union both for being revisionist, as well as for supporting the Indian State.

<i>Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla</i>

The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla is a book written by Brazilian Marxist–Leninist revolutionary Carlos Marighella in 1969. It is one of Marighella's most publicized works, serving as guidance to communist revolutionary movements that want to use guerrilla tactics. In this work, Marighella detailed urban guerrilla tactics to be employed in the struggles against authoritarian regimes. The text has been banned in several countries, but remains largely in print and on bookshelves in several others, including the United States.

"It is necessary for every urban guerrilla to keep in mind always that he can only maintain his existence if he is disposed to kill the police and those dedicated to repression, and if he is determined to expropriate the wealth of the big capitalists, the latifundists and the imperialists."

<i>On Guerrilla Warfare</i> (Mao Zedong book) 1937 book by Mao Zedong

On Guerrilla Warfare is Mao Zedong's case for the extensive use of an irregular form of warfare in which small groups of combatants use mobile military tactics in the forms of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army. Mao wrote the book in 1937 to convince Chinese political and military leaders that guerilla style-tactics were necessary for the Chinese to use in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Vissarion Vissarionovich "Beso" Lominadze, was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician. The head of the Transcaucasian Oblast organization of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [VKP(b)], Lominadze is best remembered as a participant in the Syrtsov-Lominadze affair of 1930, a failed attempt to rein in the growing power of Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guevarism</span> Communist political and military theory

Guevarism is a theory of communist revolution and a military strategy of guerrilla warfare associated with Marxist–Leninist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a leading figure of the Cuban Revolution who believed in the idea of Marxism–Leninism and embraced its principles.

Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of Marxism</span> Overview of and topical guide to Marxism

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Marxism:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To the Rear of the Enemy</span>

"To the Rear of the Enemy", also translated as "To Go Behind Enemy Lines", is a Chinese patriotic song written in 1938 by Zhao Qihai. The song was a popular melody during the Second Sino-Japanese War, where it was used by numerous guerilla groups and gained popularity as a resistance song against the Japanese.

<i>Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan</i> 1927 essay by Mao Zedong

Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan or Inquiry into the Peasant Movement of Hunan of March 1927, often called the Hunan Report, is one of Mao Zedong's most famous and influential essays. The Report is based on a several month visit to his home countryside around Changsha, capital of Hunan in early 1927. The Report endorses the violence that had broken out spontaneously in the wake of the Northern Expedition, makes a class analysis of the struggle, and enthusiastically reports the "Fourteen Great Achievements" of the peasant associations (农民协会).

<i>Philippine Society and Revolution</i> 1971 book by Jose Maria Sison

Philippine Society and Revolution, first published in 1971, is a book written by Filipino Maoist revolutionary and founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines Jose Maria Sison, under his nom de guerre Amado Guerrero. Regarded as one of the CPP's principal references, PSR has also influenced the Filipino mass movement since its first publication. It applied Maoist analysis to contemporary Filipino society, describing its class structure, its basic problems, and the "class logic of the revolutionary solution — which is the people's democratic revolution."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erich Wollenberg</span>

Erich Wollenberg was until 1933 a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and in later years an independent journalist and publicist.

References

  1. ↑ A. Neuberg (1928). Der bewaffnete Aufstand. Versuch einer theoretischen Darstellung (in German). Zürich: Otto Meyer.
  2. ↑ A. Neuberg (1931). L'insurrection armée (in French). Paris: Bureau d'éditions, 132, Faubourg Saint-Denis.
  3. ↑ Нейберг А. Ю. (1931). Вооружённое восстание (in Russian). Translated by Б. Роземберга. Москва, Ленинград: Соцэкгиз.
  4. ↑ A. Neuberg (1932). La insurrección armada (in Spanish). Translated by Curiel y Marino Vela, Luis. Madrid: Roja.
  5. ↑ Zedong, Mao (1967). "On Protracted War". Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Vol. 2. Beijing: Foreign Language Press. pp. 18–19.
  6. ↑ Tse-tung, Mao (April 1989). FMFRP 12-18 Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare (PDF). Washington, D.C.: DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. pp. 20–22.
  7. ↑ Friedrich Engels (with the contribution of Karl Marx), Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany , 1852.
  8. ↑ Program of the Communist International , adopted at the forty-sixth session of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International, September 1, 1928, Chapter Six.
  9. ↑ Guido Hülsmann, Jörg (2003). Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (ed.). Secession and the Production of Defense - The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. p. 394. ISBN   0-945466-37-4.
  10. ↑ Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio (2004). A. Pandolfi (ed.). Moltitudine: Guerra e democrazia nel nuovo ordine imperiale (in Italian). Rizzoli. ISBN   978-8817002004.
  11. ↑ Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: The Penguin Press. p. 369. ISBN   1-59420-024-6.
  12. ↑ Kai-shek, Chiang (1957). Soviet Russia In China: A Summing Up At Seventy. New York: Farrar, Straus And Cudahy. p. 59.
  13. ↑ A. Neuberg (1970). L'insurrezione armata. collana Il pensiero socialista (in Italian). Translated by Petrillo, Raffaele. Milano: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore.
  14. ↑ A. Neuberg (1970). Armed Insurrection. Translated by Hoare, Quintin. London: NLB. ISBN   978-1786631473.
  15. ↑ (A. Neuberg) Hans Kippenberger, M. N. Tuchatschewski, Ho Chi Minh, etc. (1971). Der bewaffnete Aufstand: Versuch einer theoretischen Darstellung. basis (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. ISBN   3-434-45006-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ↑ Пятницкий, Владимир (1998). "Жестокий век. Кремлёвские тайны". Заговор против Сталина (in Russian). Москва: Современник. pp. 221, 291, 301. ISBN   5-270-01175-1.
  17. ↑ Я. С. Драбкин; Л. Г. Бабиченко; К. К. Шириня, eds. (1998). Письмо Ю . Гайлиса Т. Лехену о задачах военной работы в компартии Германии // Коминтерн и идея мировой революции : Документы (in Russian). Москва: Наука. p. 709. ISBN   5-02-009623-7.
  18. ↑ A. Neuberg, Armed Insurrection, op. cit., pp. 5–6.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.