Socialist Strategy [Sonny Melencio]

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.

Socialist Strategy [Sonny Melencio]

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