Revolutionaries (29 page)

It would thus seem that in the period of ‘counter-revolution' Korsch found himself in the very difficulty that he noted in Marx and Engels after 1848: in the absence of realistic revolutionary perspectives the ‘unity of theory and practice' was impossible to maintain, and there was an inevitable shift from ‘practice' to theoretico-empirical research. However, it is extremely doubtful whether the Korschian adaptation to this situation, unlike the marxian one, can be properly described as ‘still a comprehensive theory of social revolution'. Its practical side is reduced to platitude and hope. Its theoretical side provides a systematic bridge from what most Anglo-Saxons would (perhaps wrongly) call metaphysics to modern scientific method, as in the argument
that Hegel, whose method was not all that different from the axiomatic procedures of modern natural sciences, could not be regarded as in conflict with empirical research, and in Korsch's exploration of mathematical models in the social sciences, such as the ‘field theory' of his friend Kurt Lewin in psychology, and perhaps the theory of games. Unquestionably the reminder that the most committed social science must be subject to the usual tests of truth is valuable. Whether it has much specific connection with marxism, except as it were a biographical one, is another question.

It is relevant to stress this evolution to Korsch's political and theoretical analysis, because it forms a necessary background to his writings, and, though fairly explicit in
Marxismus und Philosophie
(or rather in the polemical introduction to the second edition of this work), is far from explicit in
Karl Marx
, a work which is in any case not easy of access to the non-specialist. It does not follow that the extreme position which he expressed in the period around 1950 – a phase of acute discouragement for more than one thinker brought up in the marxian tradition – is also that of works written in the 1920s or 1930s. However, these also mark points along a single line of development. This does not diminish the interest of these works both for the student of Marx, and for the student of the ulterior transformations and modifications of marxist thought. Korsch had an erudite and critical knowledge of the master's works, an admirable marxist awareness of the historic changes which underlay his and his followers' theoretical developments, and a point of view which makes his exposition refreshingly different from the fashions which have prevailed over the last generation.

Thus it is useful to remind young men brought up on catch phrases about ‘alienation' or ‘sociology' that Marx is above all an economist, in as much as the ‘critique of political economy' increasingly formed an analytical backbone of his theory, while the other aspects of the analysis were increasingly reduced to
incidental, if penetrating and brilliant
aperçus
. This is not epoch-making, but needs saying at a time when
Capital
may be seen by some as a treatise of epistemology or sociology: ‘Marx's materialist science of society is not sociology but economics.' It is equally useful to subject the historical process of the ‘reception' of marxism in late-nineteenth-century Germany and Europe to a cool, balanced and convincing analysis. Korsch shows that ‘revisionism' was not a rejection of a formerly predominant theory and practice of revolutionary marxism, but as it were the twin of a formalized marxist orthodoxy which emerged at the same time, each a response of revolutionary theory to non-revolutionary actuality. And so on.

Such observations are helpful, but not world-shaking. And though Korsch evidently thought otherwise, it is hard to get excited about the propositions to which he himself attached crucial importance. No doubt in the 1920s the application of historical materialism to the study of marxism itself was unusual, but it is so no longer:

So long as the material basis of existing bourgeois society can only be attacked and shaken, but not overthrown, by the practical revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, the revolutionary theory of the proletariat can only criticize the socially anchored forms of thought of the bourgeois era, but cannot finally go beyond them.

The recognition that marxism is ‘incomplete' is in itself not enough. Korsch's statement remains on the level of platitude, though the kind of platitude which can stimulate those not habituated to it. It is fair enough: but where do we go next? In the last analysis it is his failure to advance beyond this level which prevents Korsch from making a major contribution to the development of marxism. He is well worth reading, because he was both intelligent and learned. He wrote with some force
and lucidity, compared with the habitual prose-style of central European marxist theorists, though this is unlikely to emerge from English translations. What he says is often worth listening to though some of his best insights, such as those about the essentially proletarian character of syndicalism, antedate his marxian period and have no necessary connection with it. But in the end, there is no major reason today why we should have to read him.

Applying his own criteria, and those of marxism to this failure, we may perhaps say that it reflects the essential predicament of the ‘western' communist current to which Korsch belonged. It was a political non-starter. To be a social revolutionary between the wars usually meant in one way or another to choose bolshevism, even in a heretical form. Until the early 1920s, and in Spain until the late 1930s, it might still look as though it could also mean choosing something like syndicalism, but this was a horse which was already visibly collapsing under the rider who wished to urge it towards the goal of successful revolution. There was no other choice for a revolutionary, though marxism would have permitted various forms of theoretical adaptation and development which fitted it for non-revolutionary operation. For emotionally understandable reasons, Korsch rejected such ‘revisionist' adaptations. Since he also rejected bolshevism, he was left isolated, theoretically and practically sterile and not a little tragic, an ideological St Simeon on his pillar.

¹
Karl Korsch (ed. Erich Gerlach),
Marxismus und Philosophie
, Frankfurt, 1966. (English edition 1970).

²
Karl Korsch,
Kart Marx
, Frankfurt, 1967.

Three things have won conventional wars in this century; greater reserves of manpower, greater industrial potential and a reasonably functioning system of civilian administration. The strategy of the United States in the past two decades has been based on the hope that the second of these (in which it is supreme) would offset the first, in which the
USSR
was believed to have the edge. This theory was based on faulty arithmetic in the days when the only war envisaged was one against Russia, for the Warsaw Pact powers have no greater population than
NATO
. The West was merely more reluctant to mobilize its manpower in conventional ways. However, at present the argument is probably more valid, for some of the Western states (like France) will almost certainly stay neutral in any world war that is likely, and China alone has more men than all the Western powers likely to fight in concert. At all events, whether the arguments were right or wrong, the United States has since 1945 put its money entirely on the superiority of its industrial power, on its capacity to throw into a war more machinery and more explosives than anyone else.

Consequently, it has been badly shaken to discover that a new method of winning wars has been developed in our time, and that it more than offsets the organization and industrial power of
conventional military operations. That is guerrilla war, and the number of Goliaths who have been felled by Davids with slingshots is now very impressive: the Japanese in China, the Germans in wartime Yugoslavia, the British in Israel, the French in Indo-China and Algeria. At present the United States itself is undergoing the same treatment in South Vietnam. Hence the anguished attempts to pit bombs against small men behind trees, or to discover the gimmick (for surely there must be one?) which allows a few thousand ill-armed peasants to hold at bay the greatest military power on earth. Hence also the simple refusal to believe that it can be so. If the United States is baffled it must be due to some other – measurable and bombable – reason: to the aggressive North Vietnamese, who actually sympathize with their southern brothers and smuggle trickles of supplies to them; to the terrible Chinese who have the nerve to possess a common border with North Vietnam; and no doubt eventually to the Russians. Before common sense flies completely out of the window, it is therefore worth taking a look at the nature of modern guerrilla war.

There is nothing new about operations of a guerrilla type. Every peasant society is familiar with the ‘noble' bandit or Robin Hood who ‘takes from the rich to give to the poor' and escapes the clumsy traps of soldiers and policemen until he is betrayed. For as long as no peasant will give him away and as long as plenty will tell him about the movements of his enemies, he really is as immune to hostile weapons and as invisible to hostile eyes as the legends and songs about such bandits invariably claim.

Both the reality and the legend are to be found in our age, literally from China to Peru. Like the military resources of the bandit, those of the guerrilla are the obvious ones; elementary armaments reinforced by a detailed knowledge of difficult and inaccessible terrain, mobility, physical endurance superior to that of the pursuers, but above all a refusal to fight on the
enemy's terms, in concentrated force, and face to face. But the guerrilla's major asset is non-military and without it he is helpless: he must have the sympathy and support, active and passive, of the local population. Any Robin Hood who loses it is dead, and so is any guerrilla. Every textbook of guerrilla warfare begins by pointing this out, and it is the one thing that military instruction in ‘counterinsurgency' cannot teach.

The main difference between the ancient, and in most peasant societies endemic, form of bandit operation and the modern guerrilla is that the Robin Hood type of social bandit has extremely modest and limited military objectives (and usually only a very small and localized force). The test of a guerrilla group comes when it sets itself such ambitious tasks as the overthrow of a political regime or the expulsion of a regular force of occupiers, and especially when it sets out to do this not in some remote corner of a country (the ‘liberated area') but over an entire national territory. Until the early twentieth century hardly any guerrilla movements faced this test; they operated in extremely inaccessible and marginal regions – mountain country is the commonest example – or opposed relatively primitive and inefficient governments native or foreign. Guerrilla actions have sometimes played an important part in major modern wars, either alone in exceptionally favourable conditions, as with the Tyrolese against the French in 1809, or more usually, as ancillaries to regular forces – during the Napoleonic wars, for example, or in our century in Spain and Russia. However, by themselves and for any length of time, they almost certainly had little more than nuisance value, as in southern Italy where Napoleon's French were never seriously inconvenienced by them. That may be one reason why they did not much preoccupy military thinkers until the twentieth century. Another reason, which may explain why even revolutionary soldiers did not think much about them, was that practically all effective guerrillas were ideologically conservative, even if socially
rebellious. Few peasants had been converted to left-wing political views or followed left-wing political leaders.

The novelty of modern guerrilla war, therefore, is not so much military. The guerrillas of today may have at their disposal much better equipment than did their predecessors, but they are still invariably much worse armed than their opponents (they derive a large part of their armament – in the early stages, probably most of it – from what they can capture, buy or steal from the other side, and not, as Pentagon folklore holds, from foreign supplies). Until the ultimate phase of guerrilla war, when the guerrilla force becomes an army, and may actually face and defeat its adversaries in open battle, as Dienbienphu, there is nothing in the purely military pages of Mao, Vo Nguyen Giap, Che Guevara or other manuals of guerrilla warfare, which a traditional
guerrillero
or band leader would regard as other than simple common sense.

The novelty is political, and it is of two kinds. First, situations are now more common when the guerrilla force can rely on mass support in widely different areas of its country. It does so in part by appealing to the common interest of the poor against the rich, the oppressed against the government; and in part by exploiting nationalism or the hatred of foreign occupiers (often of another colour). It is, once again, only the folklore of military experts that ‘peasants want only to be left alone'. They don't. When they have no food, they want food; when they have no land, they want land; when they are cheated by the officials of a remote capital, they want to get rid of them. But above all they want rights as men and when ruled by foreigners, to get rid of the foreigners. One ought to add that an effective guerrilla war is possible only in countries in which such appeals can be successfully made to a high percentage of the rural population in a high proportion of the country's territory. One of the major reasons for the defeat of guerrilla war in Malaya and Kenya was that these conditions did not obtain: the guerrillas were drawn almost entirely from
among the Chinese or Kikuyu, whereas the Malays (the rural majority) and the rest of Kenya remained largely outside the movement.

The second political novelty is the nationalization not only of support for the guerrillas but of the guerrilla force itself, by means of parties and movements of national and sometimes international scope. The partisan unit is no longer a purely local growth; it is a body of permanent and mobile cadres around whom the local force is formed. They link it with other units into a ‘guerrilla army' capable of nationwide strategy and of being transformed into a ‘real' army. They also link it with the noncombatant national movement in general, and the politically decisive cities in particular. This implies a fundamental change in the character of such forces: it does
not
mean that guerrilla armies are now composed of hard-core revolutionaries infiltrated from outside. However numerous and enthusiastic the volunteers, the outside recruitment of guerrillas is limited partly by technical considerations, partly because many potential recruits, especially from among city intellectuals and workers, are simply not qualified; they lack the sort of experience which only guerrilla action or peasant life can give. Guerrillas may be started by a nucleus of cadres, but even a totally infiltrated force such as the Communist units which maintained themselves for some years after 1945 in Aragon (Spain) soon had to begin systematically recruiting among the local population. The bulk of any successful guerrilla force is always likely to consist of local men, or of professional fighters who were once recruited as local men, and the military advantages of this are immense, as Che Guevara has pointed out, for the local man ‘has his friends, to whom he can make a personal appeal for help: he knows the terrain and all the things that are likely to happen in the region; and he will also have the extra enthusiasm of the man who is defending his own home'.