Meditations on War of the Flea and Thoughts on Laying A Foundation for Armed Struggle on American Terrain

When thinking about hypothetical revolution in the United States, it is essential to draw on the full canon of theory and practice as developed through previous attempts at revolution in this country and others similar to our. Specific characteristics must be taken into account and looked at through the lens of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist military theory — that of protracted people’s war. I’ve recently finished Robert Taber’s book drawing mainly on the experience of three major guerilla struggles — those in Cyprus, Vietnam, and Cuba, which Taber had direct experience of as a correspondent embedded with Castro’s forces. I recommend it highly for every comrade for whom military and organizing questions are a point of interest, which should be literally every comrade. Every Maoist and every Communist in general should be considering and looking at conditions in their own neighborhood, city, town, or rural environ through a military perspective. Furthermore, we must keep in mind that every action we take must be guided by the realization that a united front led by Maoists is part of the three magic weapons (people’s army and Party are the other two) and failure to incorporate all progressive and left forces into a formal or informal united front against fascists, landlords, the police, what have you is an intolerable left deviation that, were we in a revolutionary situation, would result in the immediate slaughter of the supposed Communists who are to stupid and sectarian to realize that a handful of people with no mass support is, in the tactical and strategic sense, a water balloon thrown against a brick wall. Practical unity forged through bitter class struggle, mass support generated through concrete unity of action against objective class enemies, line struggle carried out between respected equals on a principled basis devoid of personal considerations or spite.

Maoists know that Guevara’s theory of focoismo, the method of small, fast moving guerilla groups with little to no mass base or support and no construction of base areas, is an erroneous one. It got Guevara himself killed in Bolivia. He tried to apply it to the Congolese context and left in frustration. Yet, it was all the rage in the ’60s, and every group that tried for armed struggle in the United States, from the Symbionese Liberation Army cult to the Black Liberation Army to the Weather Underground Organization drew heavily on it. All of them failed. Of the three, the Black Liberation Army was definitely the most advanced. It routinely conducted attacks on the police, many of which were fatal, and united with white revolutionaries to liberate cadre Assata Shakur from prison. This experience should be studied — the revolutionary left in the United States today is not freeing anybody from prison yet we keep making political prisoners. That’s a contradiction. We need to build and study so we can do better. It’s essential to build a strong mass base, involve ourselves in movements that are not necessarily initiated by us but attract the attention, sympathy and support of broad segments of the lowest and deepest masses and select individuals who have distinguished themselves by their militancy and revolutionary political line for leadership of mass and intermediate organizations. Militants must be selected from the masses in the course of social practice, trained in Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory, and won through social practice away from the sugar coated bullets of reformism, revisionism, opportunism, and electoralism. This can only happen concretely through the involvement of revolutionary cadres in every aspect of local work that has aroused the masses. Armed self-defense formations initiated by the masses themselves, groups such as the Black Women’s Self Defense League, must be included in local united fronts and political workers attached to local Maoist-led formations should be encouraged to join and develop their politics/identify members of these organizations who are politically advanced and receptive to our ideas — these comrades should be invited to our study groups, political education sessions, and other activities along with segments of the masses who they have given leadership to through their social practice and work. Consider the text on Mass Work by the Communist Party of the Philippines:

“Mass activists are individuals among the ranks of the masses who are active in revolutionary work and in advancing the mass movement. Numerous mass activists will emerge if the masses with whom we link and mobilize are encouraged to take initiative, are assisted in raising their political consciousness, are given concrete guidance, are aided in summing up their own experience, and are supported in resolving their personal problems.

An important objective of mass work is the emergence and training of numerous activists in the countryside and in the cities. In order to carry out the numerous and heavy tasks of the revolution, we need to learn how to combine a few experienced cadres with numerous mass activists. This is a concrete expression of trusting and basing ourselves among the masses. Even at the stage of preliminary contacts and forming coordinating groups, the emergence and training of mass activists already begins. Even at this stage, we already select those who have initiative, have a good record of humanity, relate well with others, are responsible, are disciplined and have dedication. We train and provide them with preliminary studies in order for them to carry out the tasks they face. We continue to raise their capacity by continuously providing studies, by assessing and summing up their work, and by helping them in their problems with the work, in their studies or personal problems. We test them in more important undertakings, and we elevate their tasks and responsibilities in the work or organization.

As our mass work and revolutionary activities develop and become more complex, the need for more leaders/ mass activists who can manage different lines of work becomes more important. We need a program for the emergence of mass activists that can ensure that there will always be those who can attend continuously to the different lines of work. This program includes the criteria for selection, education and training programs, and assistance in work problems as well as personal problems. We must ensure that the mass activists have sufficient skill and readiness, because it is not enough to have only good intentions in the practical movement.”

Our mass activists and those we select for development must be able to get along with people, avoid pettiness and spite, avoid sectarianism and arrogance, and generally be what most would call good, solid people.

Only through action and patient bridge-building can we lay the foundations of a future Party that is really connected to and a real part of the lives of the lowest and deepest masses, namely, the oppressed nationality proletariat, semi-proletariat, and certain strata of the lumpen/proletariat. This is how we combat manifestations of modern-day focoismo, the struggle of small, isolated groups relying on daring deeds and armed propaganda detached from the day-to-day struggle of the masses. To quote Taber: “When we speak of the guerilla fighter, we are speaking of the political partisan, an armed civilian whose principal weapon is not his rifle or his machete, but his relationship to the community, the nation, in and for which he fights.” Our fighters must hold a solid and respected role within the community and be known and respected by the masses, enough so that they will be able to receive shelter and the masses are not compelled to inform the bourgeois authorities of their existence or activities. We should keep in mind that the best security against being informed upon is not fear — you can strike fear into people but all they’ll do is organize when you leave to drive you out of their communities.

This was the mistake committed by the PCP-SL in the 1980s — acts of armed reprisal against civilians in communities like Lucanamarca (which Gonzalo himself admitted was a mistake) led to support for the formation of government backed rondas that were used as cannon fodder to attack PCP armed columns. If the masses are compelled to take up arms against you, you’ve fucked something up. Compare this to the situation in the Philippines where, despite government offers of amnesty, cash payments, and land to peasants and NPA soldiers in exchange for information and defection with weapons, very few take them up on these offers because the CPP/NPA provides real material benefits to the basic masses. The people do not inform on the NPA because the NPA is recognized as their army and the CPP administration is recognized as their government. This situation was stood on its head in Peru, peasants saw themselves as being pulled between the PCP-SL forces on one hand and the government on the other and saw both as being foreign. In the United States, armed struggle requires a situation like that experienced in urban neighborhoods where the Black Panther Party was active. Why did the BPP have such mass support? First, because it drew a clear line of demarcation through demonstrating that it was possible to struggle against the police, arms in hand, and win. Through their study of the law they effectively challenged the illegal police occupation and hegemony in the New Afrikan nation. Before the rise of the BPP, it was all too common for police to simply shoot New Afrikans for no reason, enter houses without warrants, and commit all sorts of heinous crimes. With law book in one hand and pistol or shotgun in the other, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and their comrades correctly demonstrated to the masses where political power comes from, what is needed to get it, and how you can turn the enemy’s own words against them. They also made correct use of sympathizers and contacts within the media and their own mass newspaper, The Black Panther, to build a base not just in their communities, but also secure for themselves steady infusions of funds through paper sales and connections with progressives in Hollywood and progressive institutions. This is a point missed by many ultra-lefts today who seem to believe that the less sympathizers you have, the less ins you have with the legal system, the media, and the progressive petit-bourgeoisie, the more revolutionary you are. We have to know lawyers, paralegals, professors, doctors, teachers, real estate agents, book publishers, CCW instructors, reporters, and others in every segment of society that can help us when comrades get arrested or injured or when we need office space or space for an event. Armed struggle and the construction of bases requires a myriad of skills and connections, and the more people we know, the better. We want people to respond to us like Aaron Dixon describes in his autobiography, My People Are Rising.

“The backyard was completely enclosed by ten foot high, thick, green bushes. There was no escape, and I could hear the voices getting louder, quickly coming my way. I pulled out my 9mm and braced for the worst. Just then, the back door of the house opened, and out stepped Mr. Melinson. He silently motioned me inside. I ran in with my piece in my hand just as the cops were entering the yard with guns drawn. Mr. Melinson drew me into the living room, where we sat in the darkness with his family, watching the action out the windows. We could see the cops frantically searching for me, under cars, behind buildings, yet I was nowhere to be found…I had observed Mr. Melinson for many years. He was a very light complexioned, conservative Texan who seldom smiled and was known for his strictness. He worked hard and sent all his kids to Catholic school. He was the last person I thought would risk his position and family to save a crazy young revolutionary, but he did, and he will forever remain in my heart.”

In short, if people like Mr. Melinson won’t shelter you without you having to point a gun at their heads, you are not going to succeed in Protracted People’s War on American terrain. There are a myriad of social institutions and movers/shakers in ON communities other than ourselves that we must learn how to identify and navigate among like a fish in the ocean if we are to have any hope of turning these areas into red bases. We must develop a base of contacts and make ourselves useful to the masses of these communities, respect, develop, and be developed by those who already exist and work in these communities, and build our new Communists from within these communities in the course of class struggle. You can’t simply bogart your way into a community with an already existing community life with weapons, especially if you’re a settler and not from the area, and expect to take it over. This isn’t Peru, everybody in America has guns.

Also, a minor point of criticism — in the Maoist sense, we don’t see people’s army fighters (Mao avoided the use of the term soldiers because this implies a bourgeois piece of cannon fodder for scanty pay and worse rations — in the United States these are mainly the worst dregs of the settler lumpen along with PMCs — we are partisans and fighters in the highest stage of class warfare) as “armed civilians”. When you are in the people’s army you are under the direct leadership of the Communist Party and hold combatant status — you are directly struggling for power against the bourgeoisie. This is why the NPA/CPP in the Philippines is adamant that its fighters are not simply civilians who have grabbed weapons and run off to the jungles and mountains, but revolutionary class fighters in an army, led by a Party and a revolutionary State that administers territory, collects taxes, disburses benefits to the masses and generally carries out all the functions of a government anywhere in the world throughout history. Our partisans, our militias, our cadres and our People’s Army fighters are agents of a revolutionary new State, a New Power, and we must be adamant about this and secure for them the protections afforded legal belligerents.

We can also learn from the experience of the Black Guards, which were the armed youth wing of the Revolutionary Action Movement, the direct predecessor of the Black Panther Party and in which both Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams were ideological and political leadership. Maxwell Stanford’s 1986 thesis on RAM includes several extremely interesting primary source documents regarding the organization of this formation. Of particular interest are the adamant opposition to “Uncle Toms” and comprador elements within the New Afrikan community, which in the mid 1960s could be taken to include people like Whitney Young and the rightist elements within the NAACP, people like Thurgood Marshall who was referred to by Fred Hampton as NoGood Marshall. The modern day versions of these people would include people like Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, DeRay McKesson, and the like. Anyone who promotes a pro-cop, pro-capitalist, pro-integration with white supremacy, pro-respectability politics political line is a potential or current counterrevolutionary as is more often than not displayed by their actions behind the scenes taken to isolate, slander, shut out and wreck the work of revolutionaries. Yet, these elements more often than not have the ear of a substantial element of the intermediate population, hence the war of the flea approach must be used with them. There is going to be no American equivalent of the NPA’s sparrow squads going around burning down black owned businesses, assassinating black preachers and cultural nationalists that promote horrible things for our people, or burning down their churches. The racial dynamics and optics of this would be terrible for the overwhelmingly white Communist movement and these elements would not hesitate to appeal to their blackness and rally the masses around them. What must be done is to isolate them from their mass base through out-organizing them or winning them over by winning over their mass base. Noone wants to be isolated or shut off from community life, this is something that we can effectively use. We must keep in mind what I mentioned earlier, which is that we need everybody and nobody should be considered isolated for good provided they genuinely rectify and serve the people’s movement heart and soul and avoid splitting, wrecking united fronts, informing on comrades, or working behind the scenes to undermine the revolutionary movement.

If someone has proven through deeds to be useful to the revolutionary movement, accepting of the nascent dictatorship of the revolutionary forces, and contributing to the development of alternative structures in the base area, they are a part of the people. If they work with the police, attack genuine revolutionaries (genuine meaning determined by the people, not ourselves — we all would like to think that we’re genuine revolutionaries but the people often think otherwise, think we’re assholes, or don’t know who we are), oppose the New Power, and generally prove to be useless, they are enemies of the people, objectively. Nobody should lightly be labeled an enemy of the people and nobody should be labeled an enemy of the people based on a personal vendetta or grudge. This is liberalism in the extreme and makes those engaging in it at risk for becoming enemies of the movement. In the future, diehard enemies of the people will of course be selectively annihilated, but right now, the left is not killing anybody, is under heavy surveillance and repression particularly the Black left, and acting like we are not somehow facing real threats from fascists and the State is the pinnacle of stupidity and hubris. Initiating open and physical threats, harassment, stalking, etc. of other activists with whom you have personal or ideological disagreements or ridiculous, idle, machismo-laden calls to “engage in physical combat” with other left formations or individuals should be taken to be the actions of people who are not really serious about building a base from which actual armed struggle can hypothetically be launched in the future, toxic masculinity water carriers who have no business organizing in the first place, white people for whom state repression is not a real, tangible thing, who have daddy’s money to bail them out of jail for LARPING and cosplaying, and who apparently think making threats on the internet will not bring the police or a police informant to their front door, or organizations who have already been infiltrated by the police and are being guided towards self-destructive activity to warrant the construction of criminal cases for the State. Read Heavy Radicals, Black Against Empire, and Threat of the First Magnitude for accounts of how police and FBI informants took advantage of and promoted sectarian behavior on the US Left during the last revolutionary surge and look for signs of similar behavior today. There is no room for drama queens and kings, scandal-mongerers, factionalists, hyper-sectarians, and other such people on the battlefield or in a real Communist Party that has given leadership to millions. Heed Stalin’s warning to the American Communist Party:

“Weeks and months are wasted lying in ambush for the factional enemy, trying to entrap him, trying to dig up something in the personal life of the factional enemy, or, if nothing can be found, inventing some fiction about him. It is obvious that positive work must suffer in such an atmosphere, the life of the Party becomes petty, the authority of the Party declines and the workers, the best, the revolutionary-minded workers, who want action and not scandal-mongering, are forced to leave the Party…That, fundamentally, is the evil of factionalism in the ranks of a Communist Party.”

Repression. Taber talks about how repression and atrocities committed by the Black and Tans during the revolutionary surge of the centuries long struggle of the Irish people for their national liberation helped the Irish cause.

“The report was duly denied, but it made little difference. It might as well have been true: There was sufficient truth in it to make it credible, and that was what counted. It was all of a piece with accounts that told of lorry loads of Black and Tans roaring through village streets ‘firing their rifles at random to the peril of anyone who happened to be in the way’ and singing ‘We are the boys of the R.I.C., as happy as happy can be’. Whether the Tans actually sang such a ditty on their forays is of little importance. What was important was the reputation they created for themselves, and the effects of it. Singing or not singing, they did sufficient irresponsible killing, burning, dynamiting of houses, and drunken pillaging to create a scandal in England, and that scandal aided the Irish cause”.

This is similar to how the Communist Party of the Philippines described the Marcos regime as “the greatest recruiter for the NPA”. Maoists, and revolutionaries in general, have realized that repression by the forces of the enemy is both a bad thing and a good thing. When you are attacked by the enemy, or the masses are attacked by the enemy, whether it be threats of eviction, attacks, arrests, etc., these are propaganda and recruitment opportunities. Communists must be, in Lenin’s words, tribunes of the people, with our thumb constantly on the pulse of the lowest and deepest masses and able to sense nearly instinctively what the most advanced masses are prepared to do. We must base all of our agitation and propaganda activity on what the actual mood of the most advanced masses and push the envelope a bit further in all of our materials. We can use social media to great effect for propaganda and agitation, this is good work for comrades who for whatever reason can not afford to be active “in the streets”. (many people are physically disabled, have social anxiety, have sensitive jobs, are younger or older, or are parents — they should not be shamed or made to feel unwelcome in revolutionary spaces — instead, keeping in mind our standard that everybody has a role in the struggle — they should be put to work designing, spreading, and tweaking our online presence and propaganda). Sison writes in “Roles of the Youth and Tasks of Anakbayan:

“Do your best in attracting and enlightening the Filipino youth on the line of the national democratic revolution. Ignite their emotions and raise the level of their consciousness through different methods of agitation, propaganda and education. On every issue, you should immediately reach a large number of the youth through agitation and propaganda. You should widely circulate the pamphlet of the Constitution and Program and Q & A which help in the quick understanding of the contents, especially among the youth who do not have a high level of formal education. Find out from the youth of various oppressed classes, strata and sectors about their conditions, grievances and needs. Thus, you can draw from them the correct slogans and ideas to be spread among them. Thus, Anakbayan chapters can more easily and more deeply take root among the youth. In your actions, confront the problems of the students while building a chapter in schools, the problems of young workers in factories, the problems of young peasants in the countryside, the problems of the urban poor youth in their communities, and the problems of young professionals among the ranks of the professionals. Use the traditional methods of agitation, propaganda and education that will never disappear, such as speeches, writings, printed publications, flyers, wall slogans, posters, songs, poems, plays and cultural presentations. Also use modern methods from electronic technology, such as e-mail, websites, blogging, social media, videos, texting, twitter, etc. By these means, the work of agitation, propaganda and education should be far quicker than ever before. During my youth, it was very hard to find revolutionary literature as it was banned by the American imperialists and the puppet reactionaries in accordance to the Anti-Subversion Act. Now, various kinds of material for studying the national democratic revolution and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism can be found on the internet. Revolutionary ideas should now spread quickly and it should be easier than before to inflame the passion and raise the consciousness of the Filipino youth and people. Do your best in organizing the youth. It will be a waste if you do not recruit a big number of those who are reached by the agitation and propaganda and join in mass mobilizations. It is a basic task of each member to recruit new members in the daily course of mass work and in the occasional mass gatherings. Recruit from the ranks of students, workers, fisherfolk, urban poor, peasants, farm workers, professionals and the urban petty bourgeoisie. It is also possible to recruit members of Anakbayan from various types of organizations and from the members and volunteers of the electoral youth party. Make recruitment, simple, systematic and fast. First, use the tried and tested combination of OD and ED, especially in places where there are still no chapters of Anakbayan. The OD cadre is responsible for holding the meeting for recruitment, accepting applications and the swearing-in of new members before the meeting ends. The ED cadre is responsible for explaining the most important points in the constitution and program of Anakbayan. Second, the existing chapter and the OD and ED cadres must take initiative in inviting applicants and holding a meeting every week or setting a part of the meeting for recruitment. Third, each member of Anakbayan can gather any number of applicants anytime and anywhere that she/he can reach as long as the clear process of recruitment is followed.”

We should also keep in mind that things such as Facebook and Twitter are enemy terrain — don’t make a habit of discussing the nuts and bolts of less than legal activity on these platforms or the open internet in general. The internet is a good tool for discovering recent outrages committed against the basic masses by landlords, police, and other agents of capital — Facebook live videos have captured many a police shooting or lying landlord. These should be spread, the recorders should be contacted, and real life, concrete action should be taken and organized as soon as possible with as broad a coalition of groups as possible. Demands should be drafted with the active participation of the victim and if there is a small victory as a result there should be recruitment of all who took part including and especially those who were the most militant and on the front line into mass organizations. Ad hoc coalitions built around single issue things should be broadened, given official points of unity drafted by militants, and formalized. There should be development of social media pages and phone numbers to serve as points of contact for all coalition and solidarity network type activity. All of these things are not for their own sake but for the purpose of actually developing a concrete base from which armed struggle can effectively be launched. The role of the guerilla, Taber points out, is not to win territory, but to win people. Without people, hundreds of people turning into tens of thousands of people turning into hundreds of thousands of people that engage with our organizations, attend our demonstrations, attend our study groups, and take active roles in our work, there is no hope of any prayer of an armed struggle that can topple the United States. The war of the flea is waged by multiplying hundreds of thousands of these organisms on the dog’s body and slowly nibbling away at the edges. This is what we must consistently and constantly remind ourselves of. Knives lead to pistols. Pistols lead to rifles. Rifles lead to howitzers. Howitzers lead to tanks. Tanks lead to jets. It starts small, and grows from there, going through innumerable twists and turns but ultimately coming out victorious.