What the Vietcong have been conducting in South Vietnam is known variously as guerilla war, revolutionary war or subversive war.

The theory of it is partly Maoist, partly French and American. None of these names is quite satisfactory, because of the emotional overtones of words like "revolution" and "subversion"; but I shall adopt the term "revolutionary war" because the unique characteristic of this sort or war is that it is an attempt to conduct a social and political revolution by means of guerilla activity.

By "revolution" I mean simply the transformation of a social and political system, generally from within, by means not allowed for, or legitimate, in terms of the systems as it was before transformation.

Such non-legitimate means of political action are called "violent" in the technical sense in which that term is used by political scientists, and they are usually violent in the common-usage sense of the term as well—unless indeed they are non-violent, which doesn't arise in the present case.

Approval not implied

Some object to the use of the term "revolutionary war" because they doubt if what is being carried on in such cases is a revolution in the sense of a spontaneous popular movement of all or a majority of the inhabitants.

Those who use the terms "revolutionary war" and "revolution," with overtones of approval, always imply that it is such a popular movement that they are describing.

You'll have noticed that my definition of revolution contained no statement about its popular character at all. The reason is that in most cases, revolutionary circumstances—especially those in which revolutionary war is found— don't permit of one's ascertaining what the majority want; a majority opinion is a highly elaborate political convention, requiring highly elaborate political machinery to find it out.

It's unusual, if not quite unknown, to find revolutionary activity going on where such machinery really exists and operates; and nearly as usual to find a revolution which results in the creation of such machinery or of majority-minority government.

The normal outcome of revolution is some kind of populist— which means allegedly popular— dictatorship, by one man, a party or both.

Spontaneity not enough

Of course, if there was a spontaneous uprising by masses of people the means of distinguishing majority from minority wouldn't exist and wouldn't be necessary.

The inhabitants would declare what they wanted by the simple act of getting up and going after it—an idea which exercises a great fascination over some minds, which are always trying to reduce politics to a state where that is all that happens.

But, as Lenin pointed out as vigorously as anyone ever has, no revolution is carried through by spontaneous mass action and nothing else. You go through a phase—perhaps you never come out of it—in which there has to be conspiracy, co-ordination, organisation, leadership.

At this point the iron law of oligarchy comes into play. The leadership and the organisation have to be the work of some sort of co-ordinating elite—the commonest word for this is "party"— and the problem now arises of the relations between the elite and the masses.

If the organising party is the directing intelligence, popular action will become less spontaneous and more directed; popular action may become only such action as the party directs; the party decides what popular action shall be undertaken, and may even decide what is popular action and what is not. At this stage, nearly all revolutionary parties adopt a populist ideology of which Leninism is merely the best known and most effective.

Professor [unclear: J. G. A]. A Cock, of Canterbury

University, presented [unclear: aper] to the Vietnam teach-in on [unclear: "Cold] strategy and the domino theory."

Following the [unclear: collection] cole of the project to publish the teach-in [unclear: teach] speeches, Professor Pocock has permitted [unclear: client] to publish his paper.

This will be done in [unclear: deneio] parts "Revolution-ary War" and "[unclear: Regul]eglwar, deterrance, and negotiation."

Although written in [unclear: en] July 1965, this paper has a continuing [unclear: relence] to the Vietnam situation.

A populist ideology defines [unclear: an] entity called "the people" which is always defined as wanting certain things; it then defines a leadership—usually "the party"—which is defined as getting for the people the things it wants.

This solves the problem, at ideology level. The people want what the party wants; the people do what the party does, the party knows what the people want, and all that it does is done by the people.

Where West and East diverge

This actually is the point at which Western and Eastern concents of democracy diverge. If you take the view that different people want different things, that people who want the same things want them got in different ways and do not always want them got for them by the same agents, then the whole populist apparatus will appear to you a monstrous and [unclear: evi] impertinence, in which the same minority is perpetually telling everybody else what is good for them and what they really want.

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On the other hand there are [unclear: enty] of people in Western [unclear: society] deeply and passionately [unclear: atracted] by the idea that there [unclear: would] the only one People and only [unclear: be] Party—for others; the idea is [unclear: fact] a Western invention.

[unclear: But] to those who think in the [unclear: estern] pluralist tradition, these [unclear: people] appear either dangerous [unclear: fanatics] or bohemian romantics [unclear: no] poitical understanding. I [unclear: not] myself expect there to be [unclear: more] than two or three fanatics [unclear: this] hall, but I expect there to [unclear: plenty] of unpolitical romantics [unclear: and] they make my dog itch.

However, if the one-party [unclear: popular] state is a political evil—I [unclear: think] it is—it is not necessarily [unclear: greater] evil in a choice of [unclear: this]. That depends on [unclear: circumstances]; on the choice. But it [unclear: deny] you the choice if it can. [unclear: a] revolutionary war, at all [unclear: wants], the claim that party and [unclear: people] are one is put to a kind of [unclear: because] an attempt is made [unclear: make] it actual. The party, in [unclear: form] of a guerilla [unclear: organisa] invades or pervades society at [unclear: ss]-roots level, engages in [unclear: vio] action against the sub-[unclear: structure] of the authority system to be [unclear: otutionised] where it exists, and [unclear: to] substitute its own authority for that of the existing [unclear: systems] at all points.

This is done by grass-roots [unclear: bilisation] of popular support; [unclear: revolutionaries] are trying to [unclear: stitue] new forms of political [unclear: social] organisation for old, to [unclear: histroy] the old forms partly by [unclear: people] violence and partly by [unclear: act] the obedience and [unclear: allegi] of the inhabitants for new [unclear: aims].

Voteless election

A struggle between such an [unclear: anisation] for popular obedience; [unclear: is], far more than the Stalinist [unclear: ges] to which the term was [unclear: originally] applied a totalitarian [unclear: eral] election—with the all-[unclear: important] difference that what is [unclear: decided] is not which group [unclear: exercise] authority within a [unclear: and] its rules, but what form [unclear: system] and its rules shall take. [unclear: onsequently] the contest for [unclear: ular] support is subject to no [unclear: at] all; it is a war; carried on [unclear: recently]; and since it is possible [unclear: acqutre] popular support through [unclear: cion] as well as through [unclear: con] it would clearly be a mistake [unclear: expect] such a contest to [unclear: be] to either of these methods. [unclear: This] is the point at which [unclear: ob] constantly get misled. The [unclear: ggle] for popular support is [unclear: on] by all means, by bene[unclear: ent] activity such as building [unclear: ools] and clinics and so forth, [unclear: by] violent and terroristic [unclear: activity], such as shooting [unclear: recalcitits] and violently repressing [unclear: ular] activities if these are [unclear: ged] to benefit the enemy [unclear: em].

We tend to think that these two [unclear: of] method are incompatible so we tend to deny that they found together; if we can see the benevolence we deny the terrorism, if we can see the terrorism we deny the benevolence, and our sympathies tend to determine which we see first.

But in reality there is nothing to stop both methods being practised simultaneously. This applies to both sides, because the contest for popular support is a war, which has no rules and is fought by all methods.

In addition, the revolutionary is an idealist, who genuinely desires to do people good but is fanatically certain that he knows what is good fur people and even knows what they want.

It comes very naturally to him to coerce people who don't want what he wants to give them, on the grounds that these people are enemies of 'the people, who do want it by definition.

He can very easily be found, as it were, building a school for the children and then shooting the parents for not sending their children to it. If his opponent is less of an idealist, he may waver between outbursts of excessive brutality and periods of loss of faith in his own benevolence; but the revolutionary is always sure he's right.

Since we are not revolutionaries we always tend to be more denunciatory of what is done in our name than of what is done by the revolutionaries. That, paradoxically, is a good reason for being on our side and against the revolutionaries.

Revolutionary war is horror

A revolutionary war is, like other kinds of war, a horrible business. Nearly all underground organisations—even those, like the French Resistance, receiving a great deal of legitimation from an existing national system—kill more of those they are claiming to liberate than of the organised enemies who are trying to kill them.

The reason is that they have to assert their authority; they have to disrupt habits of behaviour which they judge incompatible with their authority; they have to eliminate those whom they think enemies, rivals or even indifferents; and they have to judge who to kill and and what to destroy on their own responsibility, with no system of law to help or control them.

The French Resistance executed some ten thousand Frenchmen and women at the time of the Liberation. There may well have been ten thousand people in France at the time who richly deserved to be shot, but how many of these were among the ten thousand who were?

Suppose you could eliminate private vendettas from a process like this; suppose you could eliminate the ideological genocide who shoots people for belonging to the wrong social or ethnic group you would still be up against the consideration that sincere and high minded idealists are the wrong people to be carrying out executions, because they execute people for idealistic reasons—and obviously one should prefer the public hangman, who executes no body until he's told to by an elaborately cautious and slow moving legal system.

The photograph at top right is by Salient reporter John Harlow, who was recently working as a reporter in South Vietnam. The photograph at bottom left is an American Government release.

A system of legality is obviously preferable to a revolutionary dictatorship, if there happens to be one; but not every government under revolutionary attack is a system of legality, and, if it is, the revolutionaries will, of course, try to prevent it functioning as one.

To provoke the would be just into behaving unjustly is a well known revolutionary technique. A grass-roots struggle for popular support may be defined as two systems of benevolence in violent competition.

The benevolent use the techniques of violence, both against those who might be objects of their benevolence and against each other.

Use of violence

It was pointed out by a participant in the war in Algeria that if your opponent in this sort of struggle is a popular and efficient administrator, he is a greater danger to you than if he's a brutal and corrupt thug You will therefore try to shoot the nice chap and let the nasty chap go on damaging his own side; and a revolutionary war can therefore become a struggle in which the nice chaps kill the nice chaps and get nastier while they're doing it.

I am emphasising all the horrible features of a war of this kind because the obvious danger for the Western observer is that he tends to become starry-eyed about one side or the other; and I want to paint the picture of a war in which, as in all other wars, horrible things will be done by both sides.

Does what I am saying point to a posture of moral neutrality?

Well, an all out struggle at the grass-roots is clearly a good thing to stay out of if you can; you should only get into it if you feel your own interests are vitally affected by the outcome, or if you have better reasons for sympathising with one side or the other than I've so far indicated.

These reasons will be determined by your long term political beliefs, which had better be more carefully worked out than those of the naive left-winger or the naive anti-communist.

The best reason I know for taking the non-revolutionary side is that, other things being equal, the non-revolutionary is more likely to admit that his atrocities are atrocities than the revolutionary, whose besetting sin is his self righteousness—and may therefore stop committing them sooner.

If anti-communists think communists are devils, one reason is that communists insist that they are angels—a mistake Americans never make: they have too much political sense as well as too much sense of guilt.

To Be Concluded