People's Liberation Party-Front of Turkey
People's Revolutionary Vanguardes
Armed Propaganda and Guerrilla Warfare
ARMED PROPOGANDA AND GUERILLA WARFARE
Text of THKP/HDÖ ("Kurtulus" 5/91)
"Armed propaganda is the fundamental method, in order the artificial equilibrium, which exists between the reactions of the people and the political force of the oligarchy to destroy and to convince thus the masses for the revolution.
The economic-democratic fights of the workers against the oligarchy are prevented by terror.
In the countries, in which the army and the police apparatus are explained to the masses as "over-powerfully", armed propaganda is the only method to attach around with the masses of contacts and to clear it up over the political realities." [1*]
The "Politicized Military War Strategy" (PASS) shows us both, and the guidance of the revolutionary fight and, how its tactics must be constituted. Therefore the PASS strategy must be understood correctly and the revolutionary fight be accordingly led. This quite particularly applies to the time after the Militaerputsch from 12 September 1980, in which the artificial equilibrium became rather stable and strengthened at the same time the Entpolitisierung in all sections of the masses.
Armed propaganda covers both the war Stadt-wie also that the rural guerilla, and likewise the psychological and war of attrition guidance. If thus about armed propaganda one speaks, by it the guerrilla war (both in the city and on the country) is therefore understood immediately.
The connection between guerrilla war and armed propaganda is to be understood only as connection between a combat method and it appropriate means. Differently said: A guerrilla war, which is led with a revolutionary political target and as political mass fight understands itself, as a part of a campaign for the assertion of the political realities, is armed propaganda.
The decision, how it is led and practiced in the concrete case, requires a concrete analysis of the concrete situation. Only if such were made, armed propaganda can be executed correctly.
The target of the avant-garde war is it to destroy the artificial equilibrium and to cause so the reactions of the masses in relation to the existing system to then use and these reactions for the guidance of the people war.
With this war armed propaganda is required the basic form and of us an appropriate planning of the guerrilla war.
A guerrilla war must be planned according to the typical features of each country. Generally said, the guerrilla war requires a correct conversion of the policy of the military development. As Mahir Cayan in text explained "the revolution strategy of the THKP", the military argument of a long phase of the Guerillaaktivitaeten beginning up to the phase of the spreading develops and strengthening, by which from then the Guerilla will thus be achieved to an organized army and the victory can.
The armed internal messages, which are not executed after the policy of the military development, do not correspond to the standards the PASS, whereby armed propaganda can play their sympathy with the masses. Such experiences made many revolutionary groups everywhere in the world and also in Turkey.
Armed propaganda can be called in no case, at each time and with each target armed internal messages to execute. So also the guerrilla war, which is organized and is not executed not after the PASS and not after the policy of the military development, cannot achieve its strategic target. That does not mean the fact that an organization, which leads a such guerrilla war, loses this immediately and will smash. They can structure and reorganize quite sufficient cells, in order to execute Guerillaaktionen again and again, but thereby, like already said, never their actual strategic targets achieve them. The best example of it is the IRA.
"As we already do not know, have the term `guerilla war' a determining function. Also secessionists, which fight against a central authority, also small army units can fight against their enemies further with Guerillaaktionen." [2*]
Therefore organizations, which execute armed internal messages, are nor for a long time no part of the strategy of armed propaganda.
In the countries, in which the periods are clearly from each other separate from evolution and revolution, the proletarian parties particularly form armed units, which execute then armed internal messages occasionally in the periods of the evolution for certain functions. Lenin said e.g. at the beginning of the century: " we need combat units, in an educated manner from politically active workers, who did the military service, in order to be able to kill troublemakers and traitors, in addition, to release around arrested one and as order service with internal messages and demonstrations." [3*] by its representation we understand the difference between the revolutionary groups, which select armed propaganda as means for the fight, and which organizations, which selected the armed fight in crisis periods as a method "in the periods of evolution and revolution".
Mahir Çayan explained this difference in such a way in its factory "Continuous Revolution":
"In our country e.g. the group X comes together in the environs of a newspaper which reveals the political facts and it tries to get a foothold in factories and other places, it goes into economical-democratic mass organisations. While, starting from this point, they try to pull the masses to the side of the revolution, so while they take this form of struggle as their basis, they planned on the other hand one or two robberies to provide money for the organisation, and they may have undertaken one or two acts of sabotage and some attempted attacks. (But these achieved armed actions are not the same as armed propaganda)."
Today there are several left groups and organizations, which are with them same opinion in our country, Turkey. They think, it is possible, since the masses sympathy for the armed internal messages feel, to organize the masses by evenly these internal messages. They commit so the error to structure the organization not on a necessary and objective but adapted to the reactions, which are released by the armed internal messages. This type organizations, from which it gives some, do not belong, outwardly regarded, since they aim at the armed fight, in this political-ideological frameworks, actually however. Their view of "revolution" will turn out briefly or long over as revisionistic. These revisionistic groups were not created to do in order to implement their own interests, to have with armed propaganda them anything. For the masses however they seem to be revolutionary organizations so long, as long as the strategic difference between armed propaganda and its armed internal messages for it are not to be detected. (in the countries of the peripheral device, like Turkey, such revisionistic groups have possibilities of executing their armed internal messages. The strategic difference between revolutionary organizations and revisionistic groups, which structure armed units, exists military combat strategy "in the acceptance or refusal of the" Politisierten). That was seen already many years ago by Mahir Cayan and interpreted in such a way: By armed propaganda some organizations, which were actually insignificant, formed small Guerillaeinheiten and thus at prestige won. That has however no further meaning than a footnote history.
Armed propaganda is an important combat method. In the stage of the avant-garde war armed propaganda has the target to begin by the destruction of the artificial equilibrium the people war. A guerrilla war with this target (within armed propaganda) is constituent of a long-continuous war, more exactly said, it is the high-level personnel in the long-continuous people war. Therefore the Guerillakampf must be already prepared in the stage of the avant-garde war for the people war and be aligned the entire internal messages thereafter.
The guerrilla war of armed propaganda is to be differentiated from that of the simple armed internal messages, because the latter does not correspond to the PASS strategy. The revolutionary organization, which selected armed propaganda as combat method, must regard the city and the rural guerilla as a dialectic unit and use both forms of the fight, in order to explain the political statuses. So they can on the one hand the masses up clear and organize, and on which other page the guerrilla war develop and widen. In this way a unit between the armed forces and the masses can develop.
A revolutionary organization, which selected armed propaganda as combat method, must lead the fight of the city and of the rural guerilla after the appropriate given strategy. The policy of the military development and the "Politisierte military combat strategy" (PASS) do not only require the development of the urban guerilla, for it are also the internal messages of the urban guerilla not the crucial moment for the fight of the people for release.
Because the rural guerilla is the germ of the People's Army, an organic compound between city and rural guerilla must be made, and a land guerrilla war cannot be led also by a handful splinter, disorganized and from few militant ones existing guerilla group on the country. As Che said: "The guerilla war must be planned and prepared absolutely beforehand, otherwise she does not have agreement and a rescue function for a people, who is by defeats weakened and splintered." In this regard many examples in the Latin American countries point and also in Turkey to 12 September 1980, how much Ches of words correspond to the reality.
It is clearly, " that in the large cities, even if they are not industrialized it very heavily, if is not even impossible, to create the guerilla group because the masses are subject to ideological influences, which publicise a release through "peaceful" combat forms, and thus the emergence of the urban guerilla are braked." [5*] therefore it is by far more difficult to organize a urban guerilla to base than the rural guerilla. The armed propaganda, which is led of the rural guerilla, must also persist, while in the cities one fights, further. Not only for this reason the policy of the military development requires the simultaneous organization of the urban guerilla as also the emergence of the rural guerilla. Target of such a policy is not it to create and in shortest time maximal internal messages implement a urban guerilla, target of this politics is supported it, the fight of the rural guerilla, of the urban guerilla to lead.
"The delimitation of the urban guerilla can be explained in such a way: The relationship with the masses is difficult the militant one more difficult the urban guerilla by their unlawfulness. The freely mobile strategic unit on the country can itself, in order to develop themselves further, withdraw. Since the position on the country of the rural guerilla offers all possibilities for the war of aggression, it can hold itself long time. The militant ones the urban guerilla however can repeat only certain operations, them come again, where they came. They go out of the house, make an internal message and go again to home. The rural guerilla is an important factor in order to modify and create by the gradual and continuous integration of the farmers a People's Army the force equilibrium. Only the rural guerilla has this advantage. The urban guerilla cannot organize, conditionally by their isolation, in the cities a People's Army. Because no continuous relationship between the armed avant-garde and the masses exists, the Avantgardeinheiten cannot develop to a People's Army." [6*]
The armed organizations, which believe, the guerilla war in the cities is the prominent fight for the structure of a mass resistance, are unfortunately forced to be neglectable sooner or later. If they want to increase size and effect of their armed internal messages, they must increase the number of their militant ones, and from the mass fight a fight of "masses" of their militant ones for them, which must give under duress their Klandestinitaet up, becomes. That leads finally to smashing the urban guerilla, as the examples of Brazil and Venezuela in the sixties and that show the Tupamaros in the seventies, when the there urban guerillaeinheiten came into this vicious circle. Therefore the organizations, which set on one side on the urban guerilla and which rural guerilla neglect, should their targets and methods again consider.
The organizations, which do not follow the correct revolutionary strategy and thus also not a direct policy of the military development, run the risk, to be able and thus their revolutionary targets any longer to follow not be able to be determined by today's political events. As long as these deviations, we call it "urban Focoism", are not overcome, they will create a competitive situation within the revolutionary movement. An example of this type of deviations in Brazil describes Carlo Marighella in such a way:
"To the hour that is hauptproblem splintering the revolutionary organizations, of which everyone fights for the guidance. Practice is the only criterion. It justified the beginning of the armed fight in the urban zone. The selection from the organizations has begun, crucially is the ability for internal message.
There are still groups, which continue the fight for the guidance. But in the meantime one accessed to the weapons; one cannot achieve the guidance no more by discussions over problems and dogma desks of suggestions, which are far distant from the social reality Brazil.
But there is also the crucial error on the other page. In the fight for the guidance the thesis became common: who shot first, the others tear with itself away. Therefore for the moment partial internal messages are undertaken, which exceed the forces or are not appropriate. Errors of this type are fatal - organizations, which commit it, risk the life of their fighters and their own life." [7*]
But the danger, which results from such a deviation, is not only this result, it can also to a further heavy problem lead.
The Urban guerilla can succumb to the temptation to spread beyond their boundaries and try new ways out. The urban guerilla develops in this way to a hermaphrodite thing between city and rural guerilla, and those differences between both are smeared. The urban guerilla transports the Fokuismus on the country and starts up so the rural guerilla. Instead it must be however like that that the development of the land guerrilla war influences and supports the urban guerilla.
Our politics of the military development, as it described Mahir Cayan into "the continuous revolution", depend on our revolutionary procedure. Any deviation from this revolutionary route would be at the same time a deviation from the strategic line, as our experiences proved.
A correct policy of the military development requires a clearing-up campaign for the execution of armed propaganda over the political realities. But apart from the general target determined by the political realities there are tactical targets, which are produced by the concrete and real statuses. Also they are to be evaluated in the context of the policy of the military development.
Each revolutionary organization, which already tries at the beginning of the avant-garde war to organize large units is forced, sections of the masses, which stupefied their hope for any of the legal parties of the system by the imperialistic media and set to integrate into the revolutionary fight.
The clearing-up campaigns over the political realities consists concretely of the execution of internal messages, which destroy the artificial equilibrium. In the times of the Entpolitisierung of the masses armed propaganda has to be the function, a factor of the politicalization. In our days this function exists not only to expose the fascism of the regime 12 September and to spread the truth about the political system in Turkey, but above all also to inform the masses about the possibilities and perspectives.
The tactical function is the destruction of the factors, which lead to the Depolitisierung, whereby thereby on the target, which brought the respective concrete situation out, is to be depended.
The tactical function is it to spread the truth about the "SS decrees" and to repay "ball with ball". This second function determines thus both the targets and the internal message forms of armed propaganda.
Notes
1* Mahir Çayan, "The Continuous Revolution"
2* ebd.
3* Lenin "Letter to a friend"
4* Mahir Çayan, a.a.O.
5* Che Guevara
6* Joáo Quartim "The Dictatorship and Armed Struggle in Brazil"
7* National Liberation Action (ALN), "The role of the revolutionary action with the structure of the revolutionary organization "
