Transcript
8/8/2019 Socialist Strategy [Sonny Melencio]
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Socialist Strategy
Presentation by Sonny Melencio,
Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM)Philippines
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What is strategy?
Oxford dictionary:
a plan ofaction or policy designed to achieve
a major or overall aim.
the art ofplanning and directing overall
military operations and movements in a war
or battle.
Socialist strategy: a plan ofaction or policy designed to achieve
socialism.
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What is strategy?
Trotsky: Revolutionary strategy refers to a
combination ofsystem or process ofactions
which by their association, consistency, and
growth must lead the working class to theconquest ofpower.
Mao: The task of the science ofstrategy is to
study those laws for directing a war that
govern a war situation as a whole.
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What is strategy?
Stalin: Strategy is the determination of the
direction of the main blow of the proletariat
at a given stage of the revolution, the
elaboration ofa corresponding plan for thedisposition of the revolutionary forces (main
and secondary reserves), the fight to carry
out this plan throughout the given stage of the
revolution.
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Theres no strategy for all seasons
Strategy is not something constant, fixed once andfor all. It alters in accordance with the turns inhistory, or with historic changes. With eachseparate turn in history a separate strategic plan is
drawn up corresponding to that turn, and effectiveduring the whole period from that turn to the next.Strategy defines the direction of the main blow to bedelivered by the revolutionary forces and thecorresponding disposition of the vast masses on the
social front. Naturally, a strategic plan suitable forone period ofhistory, which has its own specificfeatures, cannot be suitable for another period ofhistory, which has entirely different specific features.
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Historic Turns
Development in the class struggle
Intensification of the class struggle (class
war)
Political crisis
Development in the balance ofclass forces
(breakdown of consent)
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Period of Marx and Engels (19th
centu
ry) For a long while during the period ofcapitalist
development, when the capitalist class was still a
progressive class, Marx and Engels remarked that
the immediate taskf
aced by the revolutionarysocialists was to organize the broad masses of
workers to fight for reforms. These are reforms that
will be fought under the framework ofa developing
capitalist societyside by side with the advance of
propaganda work and education among the masseson the ultimate objective ofsocialism.
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There is no strategy during this period
There is no talk ofstrategy during the time ofMarx
and Engels, save for the period of the outbreak of the
bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Europe in 1848-
49.
In CommunistManifesto, they anticipated the
eruption ofbourgeois revolutions in Europe,
particularly in Germanyrevolutions which, they
said, would occur in countries with more advanced
capitalist system as compared to the bourgeoisrevolution in England during the 17th century and in
France during the 18th century.
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Historic turn: the 1848-49 revolution that
eventually failed
In the aftermath of the successive defeat of the
bourgeois-democratic revolutions in 1848-49, Marx
and Engels reviewed theirformer assessment of therevolutionary epoch: History has proved us... wrong.
It has made it clear that the state ofeconomic
development on the Continent [ofEurope] at the time
was not... ripefor the elimination o
fcapitalistproduction.
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Return to protracted organizing
Period ofextended preparation of the workingclass. The revolutionary socialists led theday-to-day struggle of the workers for
economic and political rights, alongsideconducting socialist propaganda among theworking class masses. The formation ofmass-based working class parties. Codifiedin the programs of the parties; the mostfamous ofwhich was the Erfurt Program ofthe German Social-Democratic Party formedin 1891.
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Historic turn: Lenins period
While Lenin did not use the term strategy, the
question ofstrategy was posed in the 1905
and the 1917 Russian revolution when it was
resolved in the capture ofpolitical power bythe working class.
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Historic turn:WorldWars
The world wars constituted historical turns.
The second world war gave rise to the
national liberation movements.
Mao: Peoples War or Protracted PeoplesWar
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Rise of the National Liberation
Movements (1940s-1960s)
Strategy ofnational liberation movement (war
and guerrilla movement)
Victory in Cuba (January 1, 1959)
Culminated in the victory of the Vietnamese
revolution (1975)
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Strategy according to Gramsci
Gramscis war ofpositions and war ofmaneouvers.
The key struggle for revolutionaries is not a directassault on state power, but the struggle forideological dominance, for hegemony.
In Russia the State was everything, civil society wasprimordial and gelatinous; in the West ... when the
State trembled a sturdy structure ofcivil society wasat once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch,behind which there stood a powerful system offortresses and earthworks.
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War of position & War of maneouver
War ofposition -- a long drawn out struggle in
which the two armies are deadlocked in
battle, each hardly able to move forward,
like the trench warfare of1914-18.War ofmanoeuvre -- involves rapid movement
by the rival armies, with thrusts forwards
and backwards as each tries to outflank the
other and its cities (frontal assault on the
state, i.e., 1917 revolution in Russia).
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Historical Turn:1980s
1980s up to the present, period ofNeo-
Liberal Globalization
Political impasse
Combination ofuprising and electoral victory
(Venezuela and Bolivia, Latin America today)
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PLM Strategy
Combination ofuprising (peoples power action) and
electoral intervention (winning political seats).
Gains in the barangay elections
Prospect: Unresolved economic mess, unfoldingpolitical crisis
Disunity of the Left former divide between the
democratic left and the non-democratic left
remains; but a new division among the left in terms of
social democracy (reforms through alliance with the
ruling elite) and revolutionary democratic project.
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New Forces
New forces:
Military Rebels (OMRs), radicalizing layer
Youth and students
Unemployed laborforce
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Third Period
Prospect for advance
Escalation ofclass struggle (influence of the
European escalation ofclass struggle; TINA
replaced with CIM. There is no alternativereplaced with Capitalism is a mess.
Left unity
Absence of left unity, the emergence ofnew
forces and new leadership in the massstruggle.
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