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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 1. 1966.

[introduction]

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.