(Note: This content reposted verbatim from my patreon)
Late last month, I was gifted a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's work, 'Guerrilla War'. I've been meaning to read Mao for a long time, and since I've been finding producing ebooks to be quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be, I decided to review the work instead. (I probably should have said something, but I didn't think that it would take this long either. Sorry.)
At this point, I've read the work through… I believe three times? It's not an exceptionally long work, but it's an interesting work, and one which is, I think, worth a bit of attention even if I disagree with some of the points it makes.
The translation of 'Guerrilla War' I have includes a short biography of Mao, painting him as an academic from a peasant background turned into revolutionary fighter, and eventually military leader. Mao's radicalization stemmed from his examination of China and it's context at the time, and his conclusion that China would not be able to remain on its existing course as the world changed around it. While I've read some material which implies that Mao was familiar with anarchist theory (and was, indeed, initially radicalized by anarchist works) there is no suggestion of that being the case in this work- which points towards him being radicalized by exposure to Lenin and Stalin's writings through his work at the Beijing University Library, instead. When the CCP formed, Mao joined as one of its first members.
When Cheng Kai-Shek took power, Mao began a campaign to organize and radicalize the peasantry of China. As someone from a peasant background, and with both academic credentials and a background in radical theory, he was quite successful at doing so- which put him into a position to be one of the many political and military leaders when Japan and China went to war.
The material conditions of the war and Mao's own position within it then created the context for this work. Faced with the constraints of the war, his backing, and his resources, Mao became an advocate for guerrilla war, and a radical decentralization of military force throughout a civilian populace- arguing that the peasantry were the waters in which revolutionaries, which he compared to fish, swam.
Ideologically, Mao was a supporter of authoritarian socialism and an opponent of Anarchism. In addition to other offhand remarks, in the first chapter of this work, Mao quotes a passage from Lenin- "Evil does not exist in guerrilla warfare but only in the unorganized and undisciplined activities that are anarchism," a quote which makes Mao's position on anarchism quite clear. Despite this, the context of guerrilla conflict created a fundamentally anarchistic framework in practice.
The contradiction between his personal beliefs on authority and the anarchistic framework of his praxis as a guerrilla fighter create interesting reading, as over the course of 'Guerrilla War' Mao constructs a series of strong justifications for a fundamentally anarchist approach to organization even as he- almost performatively- swears off all the evils of 'anarchy' and 'banditry' as something he is fully opposed to. It is notable that while Mao lived in the context of a war between states which allowed him to justify guerrilla war as part of a 'legal' conflict between different state entities, the context of revolutionary war in general necessarily calls for the absolute rejection of the state and it's legal and moral justifications by any revolutionary- thus meaning that for a revolutionary guerrilla in any other context, the possibility of disavowing banditry and illegalism is functionally nonexistent- meaning that any who would follow in Mao's footsteps will inherently be obliged to act as both anarchists and bandits, in spite of Mao's words to the contrary.
My thought is that Mao's opposition to anarchy causes him to fail to see that it is precisely the anarchic element which drives forth revolutionary guerrilla war. Anarchy is not an absence of order, but instead, a fluid and relational self-ordering where the individual member of society becomes both part of the waters of revolution and the fish swimming in the water.
It's exceptionally interesting to contrast Mao as a guerrilla fighter- as someone forced by material conditions into a fundamentally anarchistic framework, and as someone who was thereby forced to justify the self-organization and independent action of a radical organization- and his later position as a ruler, who was able to act through the centralized body and organs of the state. As an authority, Mao demonstrates almost perfectly the failures of authority that anarchist theorests, such as Malatesta, warn against- showing that even though Mao was a successful guerrilla leader, his 'leadership' did not equip him to be the perfect ruler which supporters of the state presume exists (though even if he was, that would still be insufficient to justify the existence of the state)- which leads me to the perhaps controversial conclusion that Mao was, in fact, at his best when he was an unintentional anarchist, and at his worst when he was a successful authoritarian.
With this in mind, I'd encourage other anarchists to read Mao's 'Guerrilla War,' and to take what they can from his theory and arguments and incorporate them into their own frameworks.
Late last month, I was gifted a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's work, 'Guerrilla War'. I've been meaning to read Mao for a long time, and since I've been finding producing ebooks to be quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be, I decided to review the work instead. (I probably should have said something, but I didn't think that it would take this long either. Sorry.)
At this point, I've read the work through… I believe three times? It's not an exceptionally long work, but it's an interesting work, and one which is, I think, worth a bit of attention even if I disagree with some of the points it makes.
The translation of 'Guerrilla War' I have includes a short biography of Mao, painting him as an academic from a peasant background turned into revolutionary fighter, and eventually military leader. Mao's radicalization stemmed from his examination of China and it's context at the time, and his conclusion that China would not be able to remain on its existing course as the world changed around it. While I've read some material which implies that Mao was familiar with anarchist theory (and was, indeed, initially radicalized by anarchist works) there is no suggestion of that being the case in this work- which points towards him being radicalized by exposure to Lenin and Stalin's writings through his work at the Beijing University Library, instead. When the CCP formed, Mao joined as one of its first members.
When Cheng Kai-Shek took power, Mao began a campaign to organize and radicalize the peasantry of China. As someone from a peasant background, and with both academic credentials and a background in radical theory, he was quite successful at doing so- which put him into a position to be one of the many political and military leaders when Japan and China went to war.
The material conditions of the war and Mao's own position within it then created the context for this work. Faced with the constraints of the war, his backing, and his resources, Mao became an advocate for guerrilla war, and a radical decentralization of military force throughout a civilian populace- arguing that the peasantry were the waters in which revolutionaries, which he compared to fish, swam.
Ideologically, Mao was a supporter of authoritarian socialism and an opponent of Anarchism. In addition to other offhand remarks, in the first chapter of this work, Mao quotes a passage from Lenin- "Evil does not exist in guerrilla warfare but only in the unorganized and undisciplined activities that are anarchism," a quote which makes Mao's position on anarchism quite clear. Despite this, the context of guerrilla conflict created a fundamentally anarchistic framework in practice.
The contradiction between his personal beliefs on authority and the anarchistic framework of his praxis as a guerrilla fighter create interesting reading, as over the course of 'Guerrilla War' Mao constructs a series of strong justifications for a fundamentally anarchist approach to organization even as he- almost performatively- swears off all the evils of 'anarchy' and 'banditry' as something he is fully opposed to. It is notable that while Mao lived in the context of a war between states which allowed him to justify guerrilla war as part of a 'legal' conflict between different state entities, the context of revolutionary war in general necessarily calls for the absolute rejection of the state and it's legal and moral justifications by any revolutionary- thus meaning that for a revolutionary guerrilla in any other context, the possibility of disavowing banditry and illegalism is functionally nonexistent- meaning that any who would follow in Mao's footsteps will inherently be obliged to act as both anarchists and bandits, in spite of Mao's words to the contrary.
My thought is that Mao's opposition to anarchy causes him to fail to see that it is precisely the anarchic element which drives forth revolutionary guerrilla war. Anarchy is not an absence of order, but instead, a fluid and relational self-ordering where the individual member of society becomes both part of the waters of revolution and the fish swimming in the water.
It's exceptionally interesting to contrast Mao as a guerrilla fighter- as someone forced by material conditions into a fundamentally anarchistic framework, and as someone who was thereby forced to justify the self-organization and independent action of a radical organization- and his later position as a ruler, who was able to act through the centralized body and organs of the state. As an authority, Mao demonstrates almost perfectly the failures of authority that anarchist theorests, such as Malatesta, warn against- showing that even though Mao was a successful guerrilla leader, his 'leadership' did not equip him to be the perfect ruler which supporters of the state presume exists (though even if he was, that would still be insufficient to justify the existence of the state)- which leads me to the perhaps controversial conclusion that Mao was, in fact, at his best when he was an unintentional anarchist, and at his worst when he was a successful authoritarian.
With this in mind, I'd encourage other anarchists to read Mao's 'Guerrilla War,' and to take what they can from his theory and arguments and incorporate them into their own frameworks.