Let us have no illusions about it: den, May 1849 ended in the defeat real victory of an insurrection over of the insurrection as soon as the se military in street fighting. leaders of the attack, unhampered ictory as between two armies, is by political considerations, acted ne of the rarest exceptions. And from the purely military standpoint. e insurgents counted on it just as and their soldiers remained reliable. arely. For them it was solely a The numerous successes of the uestion of making the troops yield insurgents up to 1848 were due to moral influences which. ina a great variety of causes. In Paris. ght between the armies of two in July 1830 and February 1848, as arring countries, do not come into in most of the Spanish street fightlav at all or do so to a much ing. a citizens guard stood between maller extent. If they succeed in the insurgents and the military. This his, the troops fail to respond, or guard either sided directly with the he commanding officers lose their insurrection, or else by its lukewarm, leads, and the insurrection wins. If indecisive attitude caused the troops hey do not succeed in this. then, likewise to vacillate. and supplied ven where the military are in the the insurrection with arms into the ninority, the superiority of better bargain. Where this citizens guard quipment and training. of single opposed the insurrection from the cadership. of the planned employ- outset, as in June 1848 in Paris, the nent of the military forces and of insurrection was vanquished. In liscipline makes itself felt. The most Berlin in 1848, the people were vichat an insurrection can achieve in torious partly through considerhe way of actual tactical operations able accession of new fighting forces s the proper construction and de- during the night and the morning ence of a single barricade. Mutual of (March) the 19th, partly as a upport, the disposition and employ- result of the exhaustion and bad nent of reserves-in short, concerted victualling trcops, and. ind co-ordinated action of the indi- finally, partly as a result of the /idual detachments. indispensable paralysis that was seizing the comeven for the defence of one section mand. But in all cases the fight was of a town, not to speak of the whole won because the troops failed to of a large town, will be attainable respond, because the commanding only to a very limited extent, and officers lost the faculty to decide nost of the time not at all. Con- or because their hands were tied. centration of the military forces at Even in the classic time of street a decisive point is. of course. out fighting, therefore, the barricade proof the question here. Hence passive duced more of a moral than a defence is the prevailing form of material effect. It was a means of fighting: the attack will rise here shaking the steadfastness the and there, but only by way of ex- military. If it held out until this was ception, to occasional thrusts and attained, victory was won: if not, flank assaults: as a rule. however. there was defeat. This is the main it will be limited to occupation of point, which must be kept in view. positions abandoned by retreating likewise, when the chances of postroops. In addition, the military have sible future street fighting are at their disposal artillery and fully examined. equipped corps of trained engineers, Already in 1849, resources of war which, in nearly were pretty poor. Everywhere the case. the insurgents entirely bourgeoisie had thrown in its lot Tacks No wonder, then, that even with the governments. "culture and the barricade fighting conducted with property" had hailed and feasted tha 1848: Vienna. greatest heroism-Paris. October 1848: Dres- June the rection. The spell of the barricade military moving against insurwas broken; the soldier no longer appear divided, and thus a me saw behind it "the people," DIlT powerful lever, so extraordinar rebels, agitators, plunderers, levellers, effective in 1848, is gone. If the scum of society; the officer had soldiers who have seen service ca in the course of time become versed over to the insurrectionists, the ar in the tactical forms of street fight- ing of them would become so mu ing. he no longer marched straight the more difficult. The hunting ahead and without cover against the fancy guns of the munitions shop improvised breastwork. but went even if not previously made round it through gardens, yards and usable by removal of part of houses. And this was now successful, lock by order of the police are with a little skill, in nine cases out from being a match for the magaz of ten. rifle of the soldier. even in But since then there have beer fighting. Up to 1848 it was poss very many more changes, and all in to make the necessary ammuni favour of the military. If the big oneself out of powder and towns have become considerably today the cartridges differ for bigger, the armies have become rifle, and are everywhere alike bigger still. Paris and Berlin have, in one point, namely, that they since fold, but their garrisons have grown 1848. grown less than four- a complicated product of big dustry. and therefore not to more than that. By means of the manufactured 'ex tempore, with railways. these garrisons can, in result that most rifles are useless twenty-four hours, be more than long as one does not possess doubled, and in forty-eight hours ammunition specially suited to th they can be increased to huge armies. And. finally, since 1848 the ne The arming of this enormously in- built quarters of the big cities h creased number of troops has be- been laid out in long, straight, bre come incomparably more effective. streets, as though made to give In 1848 the smooth-bore, muzzle- effect to the new cannon and rif loading percussion rifle, today the The revolutionist would have to small-calibre, breech-loading maga- mad who himself chose the n zine rifle, which shoots four times workine class districts in the Not as far, ten times as accurately and or East of Berlin for a barrica ten times as fast as the former. At fight. that time the relatively ineffective Does that mean that in the futi round shot and grapeshot of the artillery; today the percussion shells any role? Certainly not. It of which one is sufficient to demolish means that the the best barricade. At that time the 1848 have become far more pick-axe of the sapper for breaking favourable for civilian fighters a through fre walls; today the dyna- far more favourable for the milita mite cartridee.
On the other hand, all the condi- fore. be victorious only if this dise tions of the insurgents side have by other factors. Accordingly, it wilment of Louis Bonaparte grown worse. An insurrection with which all sections of the people sympathize will hardly recur; in the ning of a great revolution than class struggle all the middle strata will probably never group themselves round the proletariat so ex- These. however, may then clusively that in comparison the party of reaction gathered round the Revolution or on September 4 bourgeoisie will well-nigh disappear.
The "Deople," therefore, will always attack to the passive barricade Does the reader now understand owers that be positively us to go where the the sanrec slash? today of ecause we do not bewithout more ado inval where we are certain advance? Why they so us to play for art of cannon fodder.
OTE their their challenges for absolutely nothing. We Not so stand. my mir tems demand from their enemy war that he should _ CHORUS ept in the line formation Role divisions & la Wagram and or a rock n'roll band, cause in sleep and with the flintlock in hands at that. If conditions lave London town therés no place Jor a in the case of war between Is no less true in the Street Fighting Man. class struggle. The time attacks, of revolutions, Hay said the time is ight he palace Tried through by small conscious norities at the head of unconscious ises, In past. Where it is a ques- But where of live the game to play is of a complete transformation the social organization, the masses mselves must also be in it, must mselves already have grasped at is at stake, what they are going CHORUS for with body and soul. The tory of the last fifty years has ght us that. But in order that the sses may understand what is to be ne, Jong. persistent work is read red, and it is just this work that are now pursuing, and with a In future, street fighting can, thee cess which drives the enemy to - pair. vantageous situation is compensad On September 4, 1870, the gouoccur more seldom in the been rthrown and the republic proinmed, and on October 31 of the its further progress, and will Livee year there took place the unto be undertaken with greater fones cessful attempt of the Blanquists hellmake an insurrection against the prefer, as in the whole great Freschernment of "National Defence"
And.
October 31. 1870.! in Paris, the openFrederick II, King of Prussia 240-86) _Ed. (British record companies have refused to release the Moar Stones song, STREET FIGHT. -NG MAN as a sinale. We asked Mick Jagger to write out the words of the song for Dwarf readers and he kindlu agreed to do this. We reoroduce them below we understand why wasn't released - Editor)
e the Revolution, China laned in a poverty as legendary dia's. Troops and traders of dustrialised western countries roughshod over her sovereignty g and exploiting almost at The mandarins, who had long ted mercenaries and merchants eir proper place (lowly, since people for money and living noney are alike contemptible le scholar and philosopher). astonished at the avarice. ity and philistinism of the rn barbarians. They protested vailingly - to Queen Victoria the hypocritical British trade ium, saying. in coveting to an extreme, they have no 1 for injuring others. Let us where is your conscience?" exhortations. however. fell on cars, for the mandarins failed asp the elementary fact that aunted western individualism, h ostensibly rational and cratic. rested at heart on the • principle that money plus equals right. tressing though the intrusion è European powers and the quent impoverishment and lation of China were to the arins, it was the people who, urse, bore the brunt of oppresTo the timeless hazards of e, pestilence and predatory lism were now added the d of being kicked for even into the ditch by a long-nose had drunk too much at his es Only club or cantonment. ally people rebelled against reatment. At first-despite great ge and persistence the Chinese try were foiled by the foreign s and by local warlords n nav Abject poverty and toil continued to be their lot. lay all this has changed. As if ged by her rape, China has not asserted her own independence a firmness that defies denial. as also championed liberation les elsewhere and scrupulously red the sovereignty of all countries (there are no Chin. oops or bases beyond her own rs), Iiternally, hunger--a conshadow in the past has gone: is no way. wrote a recent visitor. of proving or disprov- Communist Party in 1920-21. From ing (this) claim, except that for- that point, he devoted his life to the eigners of all political persuasions socialist transformation of China, to have travelled extensively in China serving the people. For over two and reported no starvation. I myself decades he was national liberator was on the lookout for under- and guerrilla leader of his people, nourishment, but saw no evidence of and he led them at last out of the it even in the poorest regions I wilderness. He suffered setbacks visited. In India. Indonesia, and without number, he saw comrades elsewhere in 'free' Asia it is still all and colleagues jeopardize everything too easy to discover human victims with adventurist and dogmatic lines of hunger oedema and starvation. In (such as urban putschs or concenaddition, China is now one of the trating on China's handful of indusworld's largest exporters of rice. A trial workers), he lost members of spectacular advance has been made his own family at the hands of the in public health, hygiene and medi- enemy, including a wife and a son. cine-in itself a major contribution In his brilliant China: Yellow to liberating China's millions. In- Peril? Red Hope?, Richard Hensdustrialization has so far advanced man wrote: The best single guide to of Mao Ise-tung. We may not like of her free' democratic neighbour and action were continuous with Union, wrote another recent visitor, life epitomizes China's development.
of when he was a boy. He was a youth consumer goods in China. In big or the shops are full of goods imperialist support, supplanted How great a part in this remarkthe May 4 Morement, the formation Ismunar himself? Mao was the formation of the Koomintang Government of 1925 and the Chiang of the Kiangsi Soviet and the Long trite, on his education He was at continuous invoeation of his name.
counter from end to end/ how can asing Mab is simply an Asian Stalin. The has soon plunged in political work. His has he ruled by capricious personal the Chinese people and his keen interest in the peasant revolts and communist hierarchy, however guerrillas of China's past were opposed on some issue to Mao, has already his characteristic political approach beginning to harden into ever suffered the fate of those who dared to cross or contradict Stalin.
when China began to learn of the Many of Mao's opponents in the Russian Revolution. Mao quickly hierarchy. having been disgraced by assimilated his own vouthful think- demotion after Party and public ing to Marxism, and he was active criticism, have subsequently been in the formation of the Chinese reinstated (Marshal Hsu Hsiangchien and Politburo member Chen Yun for example. Mao doesn't execute his opponents. He hasn't the personal power to do so, but in any case his chosen method ot situation, after all, could be quite as own in 1927 or in 1934, Chide e Communist Party ConcernRevolution, because sometimes the dilterent forms in different periods the minority is wrong they fould and reserve their views. When there bringing pressure to bear on those It obvious whose Febeived, western Liest analysis, no less material means to Perhaps it is not surprising. Sorokin self-gratification than large dry in his youth had been a revolumartinis. grey fannel suits and tionary peasant leader too. and stereos in the suburbs. The style regarded the western world as it varies but not the content. What had become throuch industrialisawas missing was an objective truly tion and individualism with horror. outside the self-a social objective Against the overwhelmingly (politics fact) plus. very im- prevalent tide, both struck out back portantly, hope. The putative apathy towards sounder shores than those of the rural poor of the third world afforded by the now conventional was as nothing compared with anarchy of values and morals. despairing apathy of the urbanite It would be l Incorrect and foolish Mao offers hone, bots in his insis tence on the capacity of men in all all that he circumstances to grasp and not b or eyen has sought to grasped by these circumsunces (a0 right and good.
THEBLACK DWARF 13.7 hundred million. Mao's constituents Against the technologically-centered were part of the world's coloured obsessions of the urban heartlands majority, Che's and Fidel's were he has opposed the human spirit not. None of the Cuban leaders can and the human will. The deepclaim to rival Mao's corpus of seated robot-myth, the fear that socialist writing and theory from his Machine will take over from Man, *Analysis of the Classes in Chinese that servant is becoming master, he Society' (1926) onwards. attacks head on. 'Men," he insists, It remains to consider the wider for example, are more important implications of Mao's thought and than weapons. In China he was example. I believe this boils down able to show this; he fought withto consideration of aspects of the out material aid while his enemies urban rural dichotomy. In the first had infinite access to it. The place, Mao's faith in the peasantry spiritual atom bomb is more power(still the large majority of the ful than the scientists physical atom human race) contrasts strongly with bomb; the power of men liberated the attitude taken towards it by dwarfs the achievements of men some sections of the western Left. enslaved machinery. As Mao believed that the potential America's military technology force of the poor peasantry was becomes more and more 'sophistia mighty storm, like cated' Vietnam, the peasant hurricane, a force so swift and people yet hand out defeat after violent that no power, however defeat to their machine-embalmed great, will be able to hold it back oppressors. The re-affirmation of ..*; his correct diagnosis and Man's primacy strikes chords everyIt is hard to pick a way between the harnessing of this latent power where.
Nearly fifty years ago, Bertrand Russell wrote, after a stay in China, of the then Young China movement The Politics of Harold Wilson where as follows: "If the Chinese were to Ism and self-denial on the other. It adopt the Western philosophy of lessly imprisoned in its own life, they would, as soon as they CLE had made themselves safe against spiral to still further disillusionment foreign aggression, embark UDON They would exploit their material resources with a view to producing tion Courtyard' there is an immense La few bloated plutocrats at home world. Apart altogether from brush- millions dying of hunger attdence of Chinese abroad. Such are the results which world were here more in veristed the West achieves by the application of science. If China were led astray by the lure of brutal power, she basic attitude to society might repel her enemies outwardly, but would have yielded to them Asta and Africu, li ignores, inwardly. It is not unlikely that the people and trust the world will bring about their own for its distance from that revealed has been liberated by the peasantry destruction by their inability to abstain from war, which will become with every year that Late an ever rounded to us passes, more scientific and more devastating. If China joins in this Beatles contempt for those who buy rest. But if Chinese reformers can Industry is as pseudo-democratic have the moderation to stop when culturally as parliament and electhey have made China capable of tions are socially), self-defence, and to abstain from peasant guerrillas now control two- the further step of foreign conquest; fifths of the country It ignores the it, when they have become safe at national liberation struggles, inspired home, they can turn aside from the slightest disparagement of Fidel and by Maoist thought, everywhere in materialistic activities imposed by Che, but simply in the interests of the third world. Unhappily, too, it the Powers, and devote their time a sense of proportion in these has something about it of the dying to science and art and the inauguramatters, that Cuba's revolution is gasp of imperialism-a last despair- tion of a better economic systemnot strictly comparable with China's. ing effort to keep the reins of human then China will have played the Cuba's average income before the destiny in western hands. part in the world for which she is revolution was some five to six But 1 believe there is something Stted, and will have given to mantimes hicher than that of pre- more involved over and above the kind as whole new hope in the revolutionarv China tand indeed of question of the respective polítical moment of ereatest need. I believe "free" Asia today). The guerrilla roles of the industrial worker (i.e. China, under Mao, is fulfilling these campaign lasted two years. not the West) and the peasant (ie. the hopes. twenty. The biggest battles involved tri-continents) in the future of hundreds where China's engaged world socialism. In the first place, millions, Seven million people were, Mao has consistentiv stressed the beside Maci seven primacy of Man over Machine.
Age men i ult that he har soughi China's circumances to grasp and not that all he has sought to millions. Seven million people were grasped by these circumstanss tog achieve has been right and good. liberated beside Mao's the fufure of world socialiem In the first place, Mao has consistently stressed the primacy, of Man over Machine.
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and articulated countere to the with Mao's line. Bur even the arch-
and apathy.. The hopes for the aggression on their own account...
exampic. Laos (a country, without great military nations of the modern indukral workers) est of which
madness, China will perish like the creative initiative in production.