Historical

What is the importance of this? Communist theory culminates in a revolution, the violent transformation of the political system within which the revolutionary war goes on.

Now of the wars I have mentioned only two, those fought by Mao in China and by Castro and Guevara in Cuba, were fought simply against a native ruling system. All the others were fought against the armies of foreign countries, having bases and controlled by political systems elsewhere, and present in the land where the struggle went on to exercise colonial or mandatory or interventory authority.

Now when such armies suffer defeat, even in revolutionary war, it is not because they have suffered revolutionary transformation or liquidation, or because they have been defeated in the field in the classic sense. They are defeated when the political system that controls them, perhaps thousands of miles away, becomes unwilling to support them any longer: and this happens when the price in men, money, embarrassment or danger becomes heavier than that system is willing to pay.

The British sought a truce with the Irish in 1921 because the alternative was military government of the whole of Ireland and they didn't want to do that: the French quit Algeria in 1962 because to remain would have giver the army too loud a [unclear: voice] French politics, and they didn't want that to happen.

Revolutionary war helped [unclear: tr] bring that situation about, but the decision in each case [unclear: w] taken within a political system which the revolutionaries could only affect externally and marginally.