For more than a hundred years revolution, significant liberating revolution, has been kept in check throughout the world. The powers that be have maintained revolutionaries weak and divided, exploiting the natural diversity of any movement which claims to be tolerant. The forces of reaction are not divided or diverse or tolerant. Dissension is destroyed and opinions silenced. This is their strength, one they have exploited since the dawn of their era.
As such the only successful revolutions have been those that have used this intolerance to weed out any difference of opinion. Like a monkey mimicking the actions of a man, they imitated the powerful by reinforcing their intolerance, their power and their authority. In effect they slowly, but surely, turned themselves into new oppressors. These walking, talking, all-conquering parodies went by many names: Leninists, Maoists, National Socialists but all are of the same feather. By adopting the tools used by the enemies of freedom, they ceased to be champions of liberty and lost all legitimacy.
But these self-proclaimed revolutions have the merit of success. In the past the Bolsheviks of Russia, the Maoists of China, the Stalinists of North Vietnam, were all successful. Indeed in India, the Philippines and many other parts of the world these intolerant, authoritarian and reactionary groups are still alive and kicking, while the freedom-seeking, tolerant and diverse movements are spread into millions of ineffective groups, unable to effect any change.
Groups which reject the militarism of the Bolshevik (or Bolshevik based, like the Maoists) revolutionary method are often doomed to failure. Hitherto the only exception to this rule has been the Zapatista rebellion of 1994. But once the movement began to include groups whose interests where not entirely aligned with the bulk of the Zapatista Army, that is groups whose interests did not center around the interests of the Indian Peasants of Chiapas, the movement petered out.
It is clear that disunited movements cannot succeed. Diversity, in purely practical terms, is a weakness. When not all the components of the movement agree on exactly which direction to take it is difficult for the movement to take any action at all, lest it break down into its components. And this is what has occurred now. There is not one united revolutionary movement, ready to take the actions necessary but a myriad of small groups, who cannot effect any change due to their size and lack of coordination. The reasons for this disunity are mostly clear: diversity of opinions, historical precedent and geographical distance.
Historical precedent should be ignored. Indeed this reeks of tradition and tradition is the enemy of progress. The libertarian's left inability to move past its historical roots, to move away from being clubs of nostalgics and history enthusiasts is its greatest bane. While the past is an important source of information and advice, the emotional attachment to the past which is a source of conflict and disunity, is a negative influence and should be eased out of the mentality and way of working of the radical left.
Geographical dispersing cannot be helped, but thanks to the advent of new communications technologies distance has, to a large extent, become irrelevant in terms of interchange of ideas. These new communications can allow revolutionaries to organise much more effectively, as an isolated element can rapidly become communicated with many other groups, increasing unity.
The most important impediment to effective organisation is the diversity of opinions and points of view within the movement as a whole. Other than the various interest groups (ecologists, anti-war activists etc) there exists a myriad of opinions concerning many details of the revolutionary process and its outcome. The revolutionary left has, as whole, failed to come to binding compromises amongst all of these opinions. This, in practice, has meant that while ultimately the goals of the Left are quite homogeneous, the ways they seek to achieve these goals, and the time frame in which they believe it will occur, could not be more diverse. This is a good thing.
Indeed if the revolutionary left were to be one front, with one opinion, one way of seeing things, the left would be the right and everyone would be confused. One of the things that makes the left different from the right is its great tolerance for differing viewpoints. However this has wrongfully translated into disparity and disorganisation of actions. Rather than striking in one direction, the left finds itself trying to hit towards all directions, occasionally even at itself.
Actions should under no circumstance be homogeneous. On the contrary they should all exist as representations of the diverse worldviews that spawned them. However in order for each individual action to be of any effect, they must as a whole have a common direction and organisation. Pacifism, direct action, civil disobedience, striking, rioting, demonstration, violent armed resistance are all techniques which should be used in unity to achieve results. Discussion has its place, but outside of action. In action the left should be united as one and all of the struggles, so long as they tend towards a common stated goal, should attempt to defend and support each other, no matter what tactic is employed.
Unity in action has more than one advantage. The first is that if various groups work together, lending each other resources, advice, and other forms of assistance this dramatically increases the odds of all groups succeeding. A united front also means that the institutions, the enemies of the revolution, find it more difficult to stigmatise and marginalise the more dangerous elements. One of the reasons why violent revolutionaries are either caught or marginalised is that their natural allies attempt to distance themselves from these radical groups in a ridiculous attempt to legitimise their own movement. This is why we seenBlack Bloc activists reneged and insulted by pacifist revolutionaries when their goals are the same, or the crushing zapatista military victories turned into defeats, as the liberal left of Mexico abandoned them.
These idiotic attempts to reduce the links between violent revolutionaries and self-proclaimed peaceful ones are entirely pointless. Both are enemies of the status quo and neither can win entirely on their own. The pacifist view that violence only begets violence is redundant. As soon as any groups forms enough of a threat to the system, it will be destroyed by any means possible. The illusion comes from the fact that those in power use violence to destroy violence and more peaceful methods to destroy the more peaceful groups. Unity amongst the revolutionaries is one which is born of necessity. Without one another, none will triumph.
All must realise that they are enemies of the system in equal measure and that they must all work together if any process is achieved. Some groups may feel that they can achieve more by not being ruthlessly hounded like criminals, and so will prefer non-violence. But violence will reach these naive Utopians eventually, and without long term support they will be entirely wiped out with the same ruthless efficiency as any other group which threatens power.
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