[PRWC Party Documents] Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade, April 22, 1972

Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade

Counter-guerrila views

III. On The Great Communist Leaders

Basahin sa Pilipino

Amado Guerrero

April 22, 1972

Revolutionary School of Mao Tse Tung Thought, Communist Party of the Philippines

To sugar-coat his counter-revolutionary statements, Pomeroy acknowledges the fact that as early as 1849 Marx said:

A nation, fighting for its liberty, ought not to adhere rigidly to the accepted rules of warfare. Mass uprisings, revolutionary methods, guerrilla bands everywhere; such are the only means by which a small nation can hope to maintain itself against an adversary superior in numbers and equipment. By their use weaker force can overcome its stronger and better organized opponents.

A full hundred years after in 1949, the correctness of the theory and practice of people's war was conclusively proven upon the victory of the Chinese revolution under the proletarian revolutionary leadership of Chairman Mao Tsetung. What is amazing about a book purporting to discuss guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare is that it completely omits and disregards Chairman Mao's theory of people's war and his unprecedentedly vast experience in leading and winning a people's war. It is only at one point in Pomeroy's book and in his chapter on "guerrilla warfare" in American history that Pomeroy refers to Chairman Mao in passing as having George Washington for a "forerunner".

Pomeroy has no intention at all of discussing guerrilla warfare as revolutionary weapon. For that would require an extensive discussion of Chairman Mao's theory and practice of people's war. Even in his discussion of American history, he is more interested in bringing out the unsavory about past guerrilla warfare than presenting guerrilla warfare as positive method of people's resistance in the present era. He slanders the people waging wars of national liberation by saying that "their pattern of struggle" has been that resorted to by the American Committee of Safety 199 years ago which used methods of terror such as house-burning; tarring and feathering; mutilation and the like.

Pomeroy writes at length about the U.S. counter-insurgency program in his book. And he admits that since 1961, in particular, the U.S armed forces have been increasingly readied and employed for counter-guerrilla warfare against the opppressed people of the world. he denounces the U.S. "special forces" for being guided by what he termed the "French theory of suppression", "Nazi theory" and the "British experience". But he fails all throughout the book to show how guerrilla warfare can defeat counter-guerrilla warfare. In the context of his sermon for "peaceful co-existence" and accomodation with U.S. imperialism, his "expose" of the U.S. counter-insurgency program is actually calculated to blackmail the oppressed peoples rather than prepare them for resolute revolutionary armed struggle.

Pomeroy's omission of Chairman Mao becomes more blatant in his chapter devoted to Communists and guerrilla warfare. It merely reveals Pomeroy's counter-revolutionary aims. The omission of Chairman Mao is therefore understandable. Pomeroy mentions or quotes from Marx, Engels and Lenin but only to give a distorted view of them. For this he deserves our comtempt.

The revisionist Pomeroy is obsessed with promoting the idea that violence, particularly guerrilla warfare, is something to be shunned. In the style of a mock defender of Communists, he says:

It has been charged by the advocates of repressive "special forces" that guerrilla warfare has been "taken over" by the Communists "for their purposes"; or other words, that Communists are putting an ancient form of warfare to reprehensive use.... The imperialists seek to create two impressions with this charge: to link Communists with violence in the achievement of their ends, and to make it seem that all armed struggle are communist-"instigated".

Mr. Revisionist, we Communists have no need for your sham defense and apologies. We are always proud and ready to employ revolutionary violence against counter-revolutionary violence. What we could be ashamed of and oppose vigorously are illusions that in an oppressive society our revolutionary ends could be achieved basically by peaceful means. In this 100th year of the Paris Commune, we recall the only "correction" made by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto; such correction was noted down in the preface to the 1972 German edition of this great document:

... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz. that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes"....

It is necessary to break up, smash the ready-made state machinery. So that no one may be misled by the revisionist, it is necessary for all Communists to read and re-read Lenin's State and Revolution. The reactionary classes will never surrender their power voluntarily. And so, it is best to hold on to the Marxist-Leninist line on the question of violence.

Recognition of thr need for revolutionary violence against counter- revolutionary violence has always been the dividing line between the Marxist revolutionaries and the opportunists. It was the dividing line between Leninism and the Second International; it spelled the differencies between the revolutionary triumph of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the slavish servitude of the revisionists and opportunists to imperialism. The victory of the Chinese revolution again proved the truth that "Political power grows of the barrel of a gun."

Knowing no bounds for his counter-revolutionary views, Pomeroy makes a brazen lie, a misrepresentation of Marx and Engels. He states:

The setbacks given to mass insurrectionary struggles in the middle period of the 19th century when capitalism was consolidating itself, led to a major shift of tactics by the Second International to electoral struggles by the working class parties. This was endorsed by Marx and Engels.

We notice here that the modern revisionism to which Pomeroy adheres is the forebear of the classical revisionism of the Kautskys and Bernsteins whom the great Lenin constantly and thoroughly assailed in defense of Marxism. Pomeroy has the most condemnable temerity to besmirch the names of Marx and Engels through sheer prevarication by claiming that these two great founders of communism indorsed the revisionist line of the Second International. Marx died in 1883, some six years before the founding of the Second International. How could he have made any endorsement? While alive, Engels always upheld the Marxist doctrine of revolutionary violence. It is very pertinent to cite how he stood firm against the revisionists. In 1895, he wrote an introduction to Marx's The Class Struggles in France in which he reaffirmed the Marxist doctrine of revolutionary violence. Before this could be published, the leadership urged him to tone down the "over-revolutionary" spirit of the work and make it "more prudent". He subjected the indecisive position of the party's leadership and its efforts to act exclusively within the framework of legality to scathing criticism. However, he agreed to delete or rewrite certain passages. At any rate, the abridged introduction retained its revolutionary standpoint. But subsequently, the revisionist scoundrels of the Second International tried on the basis of this to misrepresent Engels as a defender of "peaceful seizure of power" and as a worhipper of "legality quand meme (at any price)". Filled with indignation, he had the original introduction published in full in the Neue Zeit.

Pomeroy ackwoledges the fact that in 1918 Lenin states:

... violence will cover a world historical period a whole era of wars of the most various kinds -- imperialist war, civil wars within the country, the interweaving of the former with the latter, national wars, the emancipation of the nationalities crushed by the imperialist and by various combinations of the imperialist powers which will inevitably form various alliances with each other in the era of vast state-capitalist and military trusts and syndicates. This is an era of tremendous collapses, of wholesale military decisions of a violent nature, of crisis. It has already begun, we see it clearly -- it is only the beginning.

Then, in the guise of "clarifying Lenin and presenting the forces of socialism as basically "peaceful", Pomeroy turns to opposing the truth of Lenin's statement, which accurately describes the world now and for some time still to come. Pomeroy babbles:

These remarks by Lenin have frequently been quoted out of context, in an attempt to prove Communist predilection for violence. The violence that he predicted, however, clearly has its source in the forces of imperialism and not in the forces of socialism. This is actually an assessment of an historical period during which a lone socialist was sorrounded by aggressive imperialist powers eager to destroy it, but torn among themselves by uncontrollable rivalries. It was a period spanned by two world wars that arose out of these rivalries, a period featured by the brutal class violence of fascism, all of which underscored the correctness of Lenin's estimate.

Lenin's statement is clear enough. Thers is nothing for Pomeroy to "clarify". But the point of Pomeroy is not to clarify but to pose Lenin's statement as bearing no more truth, as having lost its validity in what Pomeroy thinks is a "new" historical period. The revisionist scoundrel further babbles:

This [Lenin's statement] was, however, an estimate of an historical period that has now evolved into a new period, the major feature of which is the acceptance of the socialist system by many countries and its growth in conjunction with other powerful forces that tend to curtail and restrain the resource of capitalism to violence as a means of solving its problems.

What a beautiful picture of imperialism Pomeroy wishes to draw! He imagines imperialism as now becoming "restrained" in its use of violence and he asks us to be kind to this monster. Here is one fool that would deny the fact that in 1964, when his book went to press, U.S. imperialism was flagrantly engaged in military intervention under the fancy name of "special warfare" in Vietnam and was set on sending in U.S. aggressor troops in large numbers. That is to cite only the most glaring of so many violent adventures of U.S. imperialism.

In the style of a counter-revolutionary pretending to be a revolutionary, Pomeroys uses Lenin to attack Lenin and has the temerity to say: "Lenin, whose constant emphasis was on the 'concrete analysis of concrete conditions', would have been the first to have recognized a new situation." Pomeroy's "new situation" is supposed to permit "peaceful transition".

Always contradicting himself, Pomeroy cannot deny at one point what he calls the "prolification" of popular guerrilla movements since world war II. But he is quick to say that "neither communist-led nor non-communist-led liberation movements view it as anything but a stage in the tactics of contending with imperialist domination". What a belittling phrase, this "stage in the tactics"! In this regard, he also insists that the peaceful forms of struggle are at par with, if not superior to, armed struggle in the following words:

As previously pointed out, political mass movements, utilizing peaceful or generally peaceful forms of struggle, together with the operation of world factors that often inhibit imperialism from resorting to open intervention or agrression, have been instrumental in an equal number of cases in gaining independence for once-colonial areas.

Pomeroy repeatedly contends that Communist have been among the first to acknowledge that "independence" and "popular programs" can be achieved by peaceful means. He tries to support this view by saying:

In Korea, in Laos, and as proposed in Vietnam, they have readily turned from armed struggle to armed truces and negotiations to realize popular national objectives. In the recent Philippine struggle, from its beginning to end, three Huk leaders made known their readiness to negotiate and to arrive at a democratic peace. Communists have never been wedded to armed means even, when these means have been undertaken through no other alternative, have been ready to terminate them whenever the possibility has arisen of gaining end by avoiding unnecessary losses.

It is peculiar of Pomeroy to dish up the untruth by compounding issues. But let us take one by one the issues he raises. The truce in Korea marked the victory of the Democratic Republic of the Korea in defending itself and failure of U.S. imperialism in its war of aggression. The revolutionary attitude held by the Korean revolutionary leadership and people towards the truce is still to be prepared not only to defend the north but also to liberate the south by every necessary and possible means so as to reunify the Korean fatherland. With regard to Laos, the facts have clearly shown that the Laotian people are ceaselessly holding their ground through armed struggle and are now coordinating with the two other Indochinese peoples in a revolutionary war of resistance against U.S. imperialism. With regard to Vietnam, we state the obvious to Pomeroy, that the Paris talks cannot formally bring peace to Vietnam without basic reference to the resounding military victories not only of the Vietnamese people but also of the entire Indochinese peoples in the expanded U.S. war of aggression. Pomeroy should take note that the Paris talks has not stopped U.S. imperialism from expanding its war of aggression under the "Nixon doctrine"; it would be disastrous for the Indochinese people to turn away from armed struggle before they can win complete victory and complete independence in the battlefield. Any negotiated settlement will merely reflect the outcome of people's war.

Pomeroy is thoroughly shameless when he tries to use the opportunism of the Lavas and the Pomeroys as a model for communists. True Communists, not the fake ones like the Lavas and Pomeroys, know their Marxist-Leninist theory of state and revolution. Pomeroy cannot be allowed to misrepresent Communists as imbeciles like him who would throw away their arms whenever the enemy offers to make a cheap bargaining agreement. The opportunist errors of the Lavas and Tarucs have already been discarded by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The party is determined to root out all the poisonous weeds spread by the opportunist leaders of the old merger party.

In his revisionist renegade line, Pomeroy believes that the imperialists' "knowledge of guerrilla warfare" may well be "the great deterrents of aggression in the future". We tell him that the enemy will always try to know guerrilla warfare in order to set its own counter-guerrilla warfare. What is most convincing to the enemy is his actual defeat. To rebuff Pomeroy and his imperialist matters, we quote from Chairman Mao:

Make trouble, fail, make trouble again,fail again... till their doom; that is the logic of the imperialist and all reactionaries the world over in dealing with the people's cause, and they will never go against this logic. This is a Marxist law. When we say that "imperialism is ferocious", we mean that its nature will never change, that the imperialist will never lay down their butcher knives, that they will never become Buddhas till their doom.

Fight, fail, fight again, fail again ... till their victory; that is the logic of the people, and they too will never go against this logic. This is another Marxist law. The Russian people's liberation revolution followed this law, and so has the Chinese people's revolution.