Course on
Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 3
Uprising
“To be successful,
insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the
advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a
revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection
must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when
the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the
vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak,
half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is
the third point. And these three conditions for raising the question of
insurrection distinguish Marxism from
Blanquism.”
This wrote Lenin [Image], in “Marxism & Insurrection” (download
linked below), in September 1917, just before the Great October Russian
Revolution.
Insurrection must rely upon the advanced class, and not upon
the party. It must rely on an uprising of the people, and be timed to coincide
with their maximum degree of resolution and the maximum degree of vacillation
in the ranks of their enemies.
Lenin concludes:
In order to treat
insurrection in a Marxist way, i.e., as an art, we must at the same time,
without losing a single moment, organise a headquarters
of the insurgent detachments, distribute our forces, move the reliable
regiments to the most important points, surround the Alexandriusky Theatre,
occupy the Peter and Paul Fortress, arrest the General Staff and the
government, and move against the officer cadets and the Savage Division those
detachments which would rather die than allow the enemy to approach the
strategic points of the city. We must mobilise the armed workers and call them
to fight the last desperate fight, occupy the telegraph and the telephone
exchange at once, move our insurrection headquarters to the
central telephone exchange and connect it by telephone with all the factories,
all the regiments, all the points of armed fighting, etc.
“Of course, this is
all by way of example, only to illustrate the fact that at the present moment
it is impossible to remain loyal to Marxism, to remain loyal to the revolution unless insurrection is treated as an art.”
Insurrection is an art! This is a short document, comrades,
and readable. Read it.
Please download and read the text via the following
link:
Marxism and Insurrection, 1917, Lenin
(2101 words)
Further
reading:
Guerrilla Warfare, 1906, Lenin (3917
words)
Revolutionary Adventurism, 1902, Lenin
(8645 words)
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