D STRUGGLE ght back against

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FRELIMO freedom fighters in Mozambique rank and file committees in the example-the Bolshevik party army and the councils of action. under Lenin and Trotsky that The development of the led the Russian workers to militia as the armed combat power in October 1917. class is the first real step on gramme and strategy show a the road to the arming of way forward in building the the masses. armed self defence of the The fight to build the working class and carrying this militia must be accompanied by defence through into an attack ind flows.

This • complexity and liversity makes it impossible to provide a uniform, detailed plan if action to counter the riolence and terror mobilised by imperialism and its agents in lach situation.

But the advanced workers nust be armed with evolutionary programme and ¡trategy based on the general of . development.

Without such political weapons, ne necessary preparation and fold perspective is impossible.

Workers defence

Throughout its history, the vorking class has resorted. to irmed methods of truggle in spontaneous lefensive actions. Revolutionary farxism starts from Infidence in the strength and nitiative of spontaneous 'vorking class struggle, and seeks o develop them in a conscious evolutionary direction.

The fight for the building if workers' defence squads -trained, armed and ready protect strikes, lemonstrations and meetings gainst attacks by state and ixtreme rightwing forces- must te taken up in the workers' novement as part of the fight to nobilise and organise the vorking class in defence of its ndependent class interests.

The defence squads must re controlled by independent working class committees of itruggle; based on the mass organisations of the class where hese exist. Industrial workers nust form the core of the lefence squads.

As part of a revolutionary programme taken into the day o day struggles of the working ilass, the slogan for workers elf defence starts from the ixperience and needs of the vorking class.

Militia By turning workers towards eliance on their own mobilised trength, the demand combats iny tendency to rely on the upposed "protection" of the lapitalist state so eagerly sought ly the reformist and Stalinist eaders.

It also prepares the ground or the future offensive on state lower under a new evolutionary leadership.

As the struggle broadens ind deepens, the necessity harpens for the development of i workers' militia unifying the pcal defence squads and linked o the fight to build councils of Iction as the central organs if mass struggle. A genuinely lass-based militia would be ontrolled by the councils of ction.

To the extent that the vorking class puts forward bold revolutionary programme ncluding measures to prevent he ruin of the oppressed layers it peasants and petty bourgeois, ind thus shows in action its lapacity to lead a serious truggle for a new social order, he workers' militia would gain he sympathy and support of he broad masses:

On this basis, the possibility Nould open up evolutionary fraternisation retween the workers and soldiers, through links between organisation of the working persistent propaganda tor ine general arming of the workers and poor peasants.

The historical experience of the international workers' struggle shows that the working class will get arms when it seriously wants them (for example- Russia 1917, Germany 1923, Spain 1930, Portugal 1974, Angola 1975, Iran and Nicaragua 1979). • As Trotsky wrote in 1934:"The proletariat produces arms, transports them, erects the buildings in which they are kept detends these buildings against itself, serves in the army and creates all its equipment. It is neither locks nor walls which separate the proletariat from arms, but the habit of submission, the hypnosis of class domination .:.

It is sufficient to destroy these psychological walls and no wall of stone will stand in the way. It is enough that the proletariat should want armsand it will find them. The task of the revolutionary party is to awaken this desire and to facilitate its realisation"

• ('Whithor Franco") • GO Like the united front of mass workers' organisations, the workers' militia in itself is not enough to secure victory in the civil war.

A. correct revolutionary policy is necessary, as shown in the negative by all the previous examples except Russia in 1917.

The final victory of the working class: requires the building of a : revolutionary party capable of organising an armed uprising on the basis of a general strike at the opportune moment.

History has provided an Only the Trotskyist proon statA nAuer The political arming of the working class vanguard with a revolutionary programme, lays the basis for the physical arming of the working class.

This is the central feature of the Trotskyist policy. Armed struggle conducted by the working class is a form of the political struggle imposed on the working class by the transformation of the class struggle into civil war; and this in turn results from the ruthless fight of the bourgeoisie to maintain its decaying system.

Armed actions, like any tactical act in the political struggle, must be assessed in relation to the over-riding task— to build the political independence and mobilisation of the working class, in defence of its class interests and in leadership of the mass struggle.

The existing reformist and Stalinist misleaders of the working class seek to tie the working class to a class collaborationist strategy of seeking reforms within the system or alliances with so-called "progressive" sections of capitalists. They attack the class independence • . and leading revolutionary role of the working class, and attempt to derail the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class into sterile protest action and parliamentary 'pressure' These misleaders actively obstruct the tasks of workers' self defence.

By politically confusing and disarming the working class, they obstruct the organisational and physical arming of the masses and open the door to the danger of the physical defeat of the working class at the hands of monopoly capitalists • counter-revolutionary gangs-as took place SO tragically in the Spanish Civil War and the Chilean coup of 1973.

The popular frontist policies put forward by reformism and Stalinism are rationalised by peddling the illusion of the peaceful evolution of bourgeois democracy into socialism.

In countries like Britain, where decaying bourgeois democracy is under seige by big capital and its agents, these misleaders try to tie the working class to alliances with "democratic" sections of the bourgeoisie.

They look to the organs of the decaying parliamentary regime to stop the drive towards extra-parliamentary methods (police repression, fascism, militarisation).

Pretensions

The hypocrisy behind even the democratic pretensions of the labour bureaucracy in Britain, is most sharply exposed by its line up behind imperialist repression " and propaganda against the 'terrorism' of the IRA and INLA.

The part played by the British ruling class in the systematic terror, starvation and wars organised by imperialists shows clearly who the real terrorists are.

The British bourgeoisie is responsible for the death of each civilian and soldier who dies in the course of imperialist aggression against Ireland.

Revolutionary Marxists fight for the working class movement to support, without reservations hesitations, the anti-imperialist struggles of national liberation movements, and to defend their organisations and militants against all forms of repression and attack.

This support is the starting point for aiding the fight for a working class leadership of the national liberation struggle.

In political opposition to the programme and strategy of the existing nationalist leadership (which guides the tactics and actions of militants), a Marxist programme and strategy must be advanced.

Under openly repressive capitalist regimes the reformists and Stalinists may at times be forced to cover their popular frontist strategy with the militant facade of a commitment to "'armed struggle"

In this approach, the threat of violence is seen as part of the pressure on the capitalist state to force the democratic reform of the regime-which, they trust, will then evolve peacefully into socialism.

This is the perspective of guerillaism, a reformist strategy with a particular attitude to the question of armed struggle.

Guerillaist

The petty bourgeois nationalist and Stalinist leadership of organisations from the ERP (Argentina) to the ANC (South Africal, SWAPO (Namibia), the PLO (Palestine), ETA (Euskadi) and the IRA (Ireland), all embrace the guerillaist strategy as part of their attempts to maintain leadership over militant mass struggles.

Trotskyism is certainly not opposed in principle to all guerilla actions (assassination of agents, ambush of state forces and so on).

But in themselves, even the most spectacularly successful guerilla acts can in no way weaken capitalist control.

At most they disrupt temporarily the smooth functioning of part of the capitalist system (and this kind of disruption takes place continually through the decay of capitalism).

The legitimacy in each particular case of a tactical use of guerilla methods, must be decided in relation to the political movement of the working class.

Trotskyism is the politics of revolutionary mass struggle. It is this struggle which must command the gun and bomb at all times.

Guerillaism is a popular frontist strategy in which the use (or threat) of • guerilla actions politically weakens the working class by fostering the illusion that gains can be won and defended outside of the organised and mobilised strength of the working class.

In periods of upsurge in workers' struggles, guerillaism undermines the working class movement by turning workers away from reliance on their own independent strength towards the false hope of liberation by a petty bourgeois led guerilla army.

At the same time, some of the best militants steeled in the heat of the mass struggle are removed from the struggles of the working class in the illusionary search for a revolutionary • way forward under guerillaist leadership.

Removed from the strength and direct pressure or working class struggle, these militants are increasingly vulnerable to the control .of: the guerillaist bureaucracy • on whom they depend materially for training and arms.

Frustration and" disillusion create antagonisms between the militants and bureaucracywhich revolutionary Marxists must exploit in seeking to turn the guerilla (with his or her arms and training) to the political. tasks posed by the workers' struggle.

But • frustration and disillusion can also foster ultra left adventurism and even acts of terror against the working class-and this tendency will clearly be exploited by the opportunist: bureaucracy and by the imperialists.

In periods of lull in working class struggle, guerillaism can even be a means for the reformist and Stalinist organisations to abandon the class.

This was the case for example in China, after the Stalinist policies of the CCP had led to a disastrous defeat of the working class in 1927.

The CCP . turned to the peasant revolt that still rolled through the countryside.

Without changing its popular frontist perspective, the Stalinist CCP organised : rural guerilla warfare, completely disconnected from the demoralised urban working class.

: As Trotsky argued, without the mobilisation and leadership of the urban working class, rural guerilla war can only serve to advance one bourgeois faction against another.