Comrade RJ raises a number of issues in his letter about terrorism, for example:

• What precisely do we mean by the term “terrorism”?
• Do Marxists oppose terrorist actions only when they are seen as a strategy for revolutionary change?
• Haven’t the experiences of the Irish national struggle and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua shown that “terrorist acts” have played a “useful” role in the struggle against imperialism.

By terrorism, Marxists mean attempts by individuals or small groups to achieve political or social change by carrying out acts of violence (political assassinations, taking of hostages, blowing up of buildings) against individual representatives of the ruling class. The purpose of such acts is to exert pressure on the ruling class to change its policies.

In social terms, terrorism is not a proletarian but a petty-bourgeois, individualist and elitist mode of action. It – like liberalism – expresses a fundamental lack of confidence in the potential of the masses to achieve political or social change. Like the middle-class liberal, the terrorist looks to the ruling class rather than the oppressed masses to effect social change. Indeed, as the American Marxist, George Novack, aptly observed, “terrorism is petty-bourgeois liberalism temporarily gone berserk” (“Marxism versus Neo-Anarchist Terrorism”, International Socialist Review, June 1970, p. 18).

Before examining the specific historical cases (Ireland and Nicaragua) raised by Comrade Jorquera, we should be clear on what the views of our revolutionary predecessors were in relation to terrorism. We are not blind worshippers of precedent, but Marxism is a science based on history. We examine each problem that confronts us bearing in mind the lessons drawn from the experiences of 150 years of struggle by the revolutionary workers’ movement. It is from that historical experience that Marxists derive their opposition to terrorism.

Lenin’s critique of terrorism

Lenin wrote a series of articles in 1902 on the program and strategy of the petty-bourgeois leftist Socialist-Revolutionary party (SRs) in which he explained why Marxists oppose terrorism. These articles appear in Volume 6 of Lenin’s Collected Works.

The Marxist critique of terrorism does not apply to only those who counterpose it as a strategy in opposition to the strategy of independent mass action. It is also directed at those who see terrorist acts as tactics to stimulate mass actions. The SRs, for example, saw themselves as attempting to spark a mass uprising through the use of terrorist acts. The SRs argued that their terrorist actions were conducting in conjunction with work among the masses. As Lenin observed:

In their defence of terrorism, which the experience of the Russian revolutionary movement has proved to be ineffective, the Socialist-Revolutionaries are talking themselves blue in the face in asseverating that they recognise terrorism only in conjunction with work among the masses, and that therefore the arguments used by Russian Social Democrats to refute the efficacy of this method of struggle (and which has indeed been refuted for a long time to come) do not apply to them… We are not repeating the terrorists’ mistakes and are not diverting attention from work among the masses, the Socialist-Revolutionaries assure us, and at the same time enthusiastically recommend to the [Social-Democratic] Party such acts as Balshamov’s assassination of [the Tsarist official] Sipyagin, although everyone knows and sees perfectly well that this act was in no way connected with the masses and, moreover, could not have been, by reason of the way it was carried out – that the persons who committed this terrorist act neither count on nor hoped for any definite action or support on part of the masses. [CW Vol. 6, p. 187]

The assassination of Sipyagin was a popular act. It had the sympathy at least of all politically conscious workers. But Lenin did not accept mass understanding or mass sympathy as sufficient justification for any action. It is not enough that the masses be spectators, even enthusiastic spectators – the possibility of mass involvement must be present:

Without in the least denying violence and terrorism in principle, we demanded work for the preparation of such forms of violence as were calculated to bring about direct participation of the masses and which guarantee that participation. [ibid., p. 195]

Lenin categorically rejected the SRs’ argument that acts of violence against the Tsarist regime carried out by small groups – called “single combat” by the SRs – could inspire or encourage the masses to enter the struggle against the Tsarist regime:

…we know from the past and see in the present that only new forms of the mass movement or the awakening of new sections of the masses to independent struggle really arouses a spirit of struggle in all. Single combat, however, inasmuch as it remains single combat waged by the Balshamovs, has the immediate effect of simply creating a short-lived sensation, while indirectly it even leads to apathy and passive waiting for the next bout. [ibid., p. 193]

As Trotsky later wrote:

In our eyes, individual terrorism is inadmissible precisely for the reason that it lowers the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. [Against Individual Terrorism, p. 7; my emphasis]

In the last of his 1902 articles on the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Lenin discussed what he saw as the proper activity of revolutionists. He described a strike in the provincial town of Rostov-on-Don, in which thousands of workers held mass meetings to discuss their demands. A few Marxists in the town distributed leaflets which were discussed by the workers. For several days the police and civic authorities couldn’t decide what to do, but finally an armed attack was launched against the crowd. Six workers were murdered, and their funeral served as the occasion for a political demonstration. The strike was broken.

From the viewpoint of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Lenin wrote:

… it would perhaps have been “more expedient” if the six comrades murdered in Rostov had given their lives in an attempt on the lives of individual police tyrants… We, however, are of the opinion that it is only such mass movements, in which mounting political consciousness and revolutionary activity are openly manifested to all by the working class, that deserve to be called genuinely revolutionary acts and are capable of really encouraging everyone who is fighting for the Russian revolution. What we see here is not the much-vaunted “individual resistance”, whose only connection with the masses consists of verbal declarations, publication of sentences passed, etc. What we see is genuine resistance on the part of the crowd, and the lack of organisation, unpreparedness and spontaneity of this resistance remind us how unwise it is to exaggerate our revolutionary forces and how criminal it is to neglect the task of steadily improving the organisation and preparedness of this crowd, which is waging an actual struggle before our very eyes… The Socialist-Revolutionaries cannot find enough praise of the great “agitational” effect of political assassinations… We, however, consider the only events that can have a real and serious “agitational” (stimulating), and not only stimulating but also (and this is far more important) educational, effect, are events in which the masses themselves are the actors, events which are born of the sentiments of the masses and not staged “for a special purpose” by one organisation or another… we are convinced that to sacrifice one revolutionary, even in exchange for ten scoundrels, means only disorganising our own ranks, which are thin as it is, so thin that they cannot keep up with all that is “demanded” of them by the workers. [CW, Vol. 6, p. 279-281]

“Steadily improving the organisation and preparedness of this crowd.” That is the task Lenin posed to revolutionists. He repeated and expanded on the point, insisting that revolutionists:

… not permit ourselves to depart a single step from the impending and pressing task of assisting these masses, who have already begun to rise, to act more boldly and concertedly; of giving them not a couple but dozens of open-air speakers and leaders; of creating a real, militant organisation capable of guiding the masses… [ibid., p. 282]

In a word, Lenin told revolutionists to carry out “the same old task (so dull and ‘uninteresting’ to the intellectual who is free from ‘dogmatic’ faith in the working class movement!) of carrying on agitation among the proletarian masses and organising a mass onslaught” (ibid., p. 278).

The workers of Rostov-on-Don “for several days won for themselves the right to hold political gatherings, fighting off a series of attacks on the part of soldiers against the unarmed crowd.” Lenin concluded: “By this sign shall ye conquer, is all that remains for us to say to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.” (ibid., p. 283)

Are there circumstances in which Marxists would admit the use of acts of terror?

Lenin, of course, did not reject terror “in principle”. Marxists do not reject any method of struggle “in principle”. We judge each method according to one criterion: will this method, used at this time and in these circumstances, advance the cause of proletarian revolution? If the answer is yes, then we use the method if we are able. If the answer is no, then we don’t. We are concerned only with effectiveness, and anyone who reads the works of Marxism on terrorism, including the citations from Lenin made above, will see that effectiveness is the only criterion used.

This of course means that Marxists recognise that there are circumstances when it is appropriate to use acts of terror such as political assassinations and the taking of hostages. As James P. Cannon explained in relation to the Marxist attitude to sabotage as a method of struggle:

Sabotage, to us, means individual acts of obstruction and destruction, substituted for mass action. That is the way Marxism defines it and, thereby, condemns it. Similarly, individual terrorism. But it is necessary to understand that such actions have one quality when employed as substitutes for mass action and another quality when subordinated to and absorbed by mass action. Marxism is opposed to terrorist assassinations, for example, but not to wars of liberation waged by the oppressed masses, even though wars entail killing some obnoxious individuals. So, also, with acts of obstruction and destruction as part of and subordinate to wars waged by the masses, not as substitutes for them. “Terrorism” and “sabotage” are then no longer the same things. Everything changes, including the attitude of Marxists, according to what is dominant and what is subordinate in the circumstances. [Marxism or Ultraleftism: What Policy for Revolutionists? p. 45-46]

Revolutionary socialists, says Cannon, “admit ‘sabotage’ only as a minor auxiliary factor in mass actions; that is, when it is no longer sabotage in the proper sense of the term. The difference is quite fundamental” (ibid., p. 46). The same point was made by Trotsky:

The proletarian party does not resort to artificial methods such as burning warehouses, setting off bombs, wrecking trains, etc., in order to bring about the defeat of its own government. Even if it were successful along this road, the military defeat would not at all lead to revolutionary success, a success which can be assured only by the independent movement of the proletariat…

The methods of struggle change, of course, when the struggle enters the openly revolutionary phase. Civil war is a war, and in this aspect has its particular laws. In civil war, bombing of warehouses, wrecking of trains and all other forms of military “sabotage” are inevitable… [“Learn to Think – A Friendly Suggestion to Certain Ultralefts”, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1938-39, p. 6.]

It should be noted that Trotsky identifies civil war with the “openly revolutionary phase” of the class struggle. Elsewhere he describes civil war as combining “a spontaneous uprising determined by local causes, bloody intervention by counter-revolutionary hordes, a revolutionary general strike, an insurrection for the seizure of power and a period of liquidating attempts at counter-revolutionary uprising” (Problems of Civil War, p. 8). That is, civil war is a situation of mass struggle of the most profound kind, involving not simply a pre-revolutionary situation but a fully revolutionary one in which the question of state power is actually posed. Only in such circumstances does Trotsky condone “sabotage”. Cannon comments on Trotsky’s view:

Sabotage is admissible as a weapon of the proletarian movement only “in quotation marks” as elucidated by Trotsky. That is, when, strictly speaking, it is no longer sabotage but a minor military measure supplementing mass action. Whoever speaks of sabotage in any other framework does not speak the language of Marxism. [op. cit., p. 47, my emphasis]

Similarly, terror is admissible only as “a minor military measure supplementing mass action”. Whoever speaks of supporting terror in any other framework does not speak the language of Marxism. Lenin made this clear in his 1901 article “Where to Begin?”:

In principle we have never rejected, and cannot reject, terror. Terror is one of the forms of military actions that may be perfectly suitable and even essential at a definite juncture in the battle, given a definite state of the troops and the existence of definite conditions. But the important point is that terror, at the present time, is by no means suggested as an operation for the army in the field, an operation closely connected with and integrated into the entire system of struggle, but as an independent form of occasional attack unrelated to any army. [CW, Vol. 5, p. 19]

Lenin’s views on terror and guerilla warfare

From October 1905 to September 1906 Lenin supported the carrying out of acts of terror against representatives of the Tsarist regime. Lenin’s tactical proposals however flowed from his evaluation that during this period Russia was in a state of civil war.

A review of the concrete situation and of Lenin’s writings during this period will help to provide a framework in which to evaluate whether or not the actions of the IRA or the Sandinistas referred to by Comrade Jorquera can be classified as terrorist.

The Russian Marxists had worked ceaselessly for years prior to 1905 propagating their ideas and developing cadres in the labour movement. They argued against the formation of “autonomous and clandestine” armed groups organised by the populist SRs. Lenin advised that only when the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) directly led the masses could it go over to armed street struggles (see, for example, his 1902 article “Concerning Demonstrations”, CW Vol. 6, p. 262).

With the outbreak of mass strikes and demonstrations in 1905, Lenin began to urge the RSDLP to prepare for an armed uprising against the Tsarist regime. The mass struggles led to a general strike in October 1905 which opened up a short period during which the Russian Marxists could act openly. It must be kept in mind that up to then Lenin’s party had had to operate illegally. During the mass upsurge of 1905 the RSDLP grew rapidly. By 1906 it had 100,000-150,000 members with about half of them in Lenin’s Bolshevik faction.

It was only after the October 1905 general strike in Petersburg that the RSDLP made any headway in organising armed detachments. These were organised within the broad workers’ movement around the defensive formulation of protection against the Black Hundreds (armed pro-monarchist gangs organised by the Tsarist regime). The party (both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) took the initiative in organising and arming factory- and neighborhood-based workers’ defence squads, known as the druzhinnikki.

The Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, in which the RSDLP was the strongest party, decided to attempt a general strike in December 1905. The druzhinnikki were brought into play as part of a general strategy by the RSDLP. The central strategic goal was to win over the Tsarist troops by demoralising them through the general hostility of the population and the harassment of the druzhinnikki, using “hit-and-run” guerilla tactics. The druzhinnikki numbered 600 in Moscow.

The aim was to turn the general strike into an armed uprising, that is, an insurrection. The uprising, however, failed after a week of street fighting. More than 1000 workers and revolutionary fighters were killed. Lenin described the fighting in Moscow and explained why the uprising failed in his article “Lessons of the Moscow Uprising”, printed in Volume 11 of his Collected Works.

The struggles that had been building up in Russia did not end with the Moscow uprising. Instead, hit-and-run armed actions appeared spontaneously on a very broad scale. These actions continued for a prolonged period during which the mass movement gradually declined.

The defeat of the December uprising was the turning point in the revolutionary upsurge of the 1905 revolution. However, this was not clear at the time. Lenin’s evaluation was that the defeat in Moscow marked only a temporary setback and that a new insurrection on a broader scale could be organised. The spontaneous increase in guerilla-type actions seemed to confirm this evaluation.

“Armed clashes and conflicts between the Black-Hundred government and the population are taking place all over the country”, Lenin wrote in his 1906 article “Guerrilla Warfare” (CW Vol. 11, p. 220). Lenin saw these “guerilla” actions as “partial, secondary and auxiliary” to the main forms of mass struggles; “the all-Russian political strike accompanied by local cases of barricade fighting (October 1905), mass barricade fighting and armed uprising (1905, December), the peaceful parliamentary struggle (April-June 1906), partial military revolts (June 1905-July 1906) and partial peasant revolts (autumn 1905-autumn 1906)” (ibid., p. 215).

In Lenin’s opinion, these guerilla actions were different from the previous terrorist actions even though they included acts of a similar kind, such as assassination of hated officials. They were different because the context was different. In Lenin’s judgment, civil war had opened in Russia, and the guerilla actions were simply the form mass armed struggle was taking between insurrections. He believed that the masses were preparing for a broader, more decisive nation-wide insurrection.

The same judgment was responsible for Lenin’s call for a boycott of elections to the Duma. As he subsequently wrote: “…to be successful the boycott requires a direct struggle against the old regime, an uprising against it and mass disobedience (such mass disobedience is one of the conditions for preparing an uprising)” (CW, Vol. 13, p. 25).

This was Lenin’s view in 1906. He foresaw in the immediate future, a few weeks or months away, a mass revolutionary uprising. Therefore, he supported the involvement of Bolsheviks in armed detachments and called for a vigorous boycott campaign. (In fact, he considered the boycott to be more important than the guerilla actions.)

History proved that Lenin had misjudged the situation. By 1907 he came to the conclusion that the revolutionary mass movement had peaked at the end of 1905. By 1907 the guerilla groups had become isolated from the mass movement. Their actions degenerated into terrorism, reaching a high point in 1907 with the assassination of 1231 persons.

A full account of the guerilla and boycott experience of 1906 is given by Trotsky in Stalin: A Political Biography. This book, written in 1940, represents the most mature and considered judgment of the Russian guerilla experience by the former central organiser and first commander of the Red Army:

Disagreements [on the guerilla-boycott strategy] came with the evaluation of concrete historical circumstances. When two major battles of the civil war are separated from each other by two or three months, that interval will inevitably be filled with guerrilla blows against the enemy. But when the “intermission” is stretched out over years, guerrilla warfare ceases to be preparation for a new battle and instead becomes a convulsion after defeat. (Stalin, Panther, London, 1969, Vol. 1, p. 152)

Acts of terror and terrorism

From the exposition given above, it should be clear that Marxists are not opposed to the use of acts of terror under particular historical circumstances, i.e., under conditions of insurrection or civil war. However, we are unequivocally opposed to terrorist acts, whether their advocates regard them as a strategy or as tactics. By definition terrorist acts are carried out outside the context of an insurrectionary situation or civil war, i.e., they are acts of terror carried out by individuals or small groups separate from a mass armed struggle.

The FSLN’s August 22-24, 1978, occupation of the Nicaraguan National Palace has to be evaluated in the context of the concrete historical circumstances of the time. What were these? On January 10, 1978, the Somoza regime assassinated Pedro Joaqun Chamorro Cardenal, owner of the big daily La Prensa and a leading liberal bourgeois critic of the Somoza dictatorship. In the aftermath of this act, mass struggles against the regime multiplied. They included a national student strike, mass demonstrations and the first popular uprisings in the cities of Leon and Massaya. The FSLN was not a small, isolated, group, but the leading political formation within this mass movement. Its armed action in August 1978 was therefore not a terrorist act, but a guerilla operation undertaken in the context of a growing insurrectionary mood among the Nicaraguan urban masses – a mood which exploded in popular insurrections in September 1978 in Leon, Estel, Masaya, Chinandega and other cities.

Comrade Jorquera states that acts of terror (i.e., kidnapping or assassinations of hated government officials) can be a “useful” tactic. That’s true – if such acts are carried out by a mass revolutionary movement in the context of a popular insurrection or a civil war. But if these acts are carried out by individuals or small groups outside of such a context they are not “useful” – they are terrorist actions that are counter-productive to advancing the mass struggle.

Since there is not, and nor has there been since the early 1920s, a state of civil war in Northern Ireland, the IRA’s acts of terror against the representatives of British imperialism and the Orange state have been terrorist actions. Moreover, since these acts have constituted the overall method and orientation of the IRA – its strategy – the general perception that the IRA is a “terrorist organisation” is a correct one.

The fact that the IRA’s terrorist actions have “kept the pressure on the British government” is no reason for Marxists to give any endorsement to such actions. Small groups can also keep “pressure” on government ministers by bombarding their offices with faxes. Such methods reflect a petty-bourgeois approach to politics – substituting the “pressure” of individuals or small groups (either of terrorists or fax operators) on other individuals or small groups (individual government ministers) for the revolutionary education, organisation and mobilisation of the masses.

– The Activist was as the internal discussion bulletin of the Democratic Socialist Party