London would not strengthen this cause. Even under repressive regimes, where
political violence can be justified, terrorist-type violence, the killing of individuals
and, worse, civilian bystanders, can be counterproductive and lead to political
marginalisation.
What is problematic, however, is Lenin’s view that violence is normally necessary,
and raises no ethical dilemmas. To describe the Bolsheviks as the ‘Jacobins of
contemporary Social Democracy’ and to cite with approval Marx’s comment that
‘French political violence’ involved a settling of accounts with absolutism and
feudalism in a ‘plebian manner’ (Hoffman, 1984: 56) implies that violence is
acceptable in, it seems, almost any context. For Lenin, it is an integral part of politics
(see Chapter 1 on the State). To define a dictatorship – even the dictatorship of the
proletariat – as authority untrammelled by laws and based directly on force (Lenin,
1962: 246), is to condone the use of violence by the post-liberal state, and, it would
seem, even against the liberal state. Such violence would, in the analysis adopted
here, be regarded as terrorism.
It is surely revealing that Sorel, the French anarcho-syndicalist, at the end of his
Reflections on Violence (1961), has a hymn of praise to Lenin as a ‘true Muscovite’
because of his propensity to use violence (1961: 281). Sorel’s own rather mystical
deification of violence places him closer to the fascists (1961: 23), but it is instructive
that he was an admirer of Lenin. Rosa Luxemburg was to express her anxiety over
the dictatorial methods and ‘rule by terror’ which Lenin and Trotsky adopted after
the October Revolution.
Mao Zedong’s notion of guerrilla war draws upon classical Chinese writings and
stresses the need to attack an enemy (that is numerically superior) at its weakest
points (Schram, 1967: 156). What is new in Mao’s formulation is the emphasis
upon the need politically to win the confidence of the poor peasantry – a strategy
that appears to contradict the notorious Maoist formulation that political power
stems from the barrel of a gun. Mao’s execution of ‘enemies’ becomes problematic
in terms of the analysis here, when force was unleashed during his political
opponents particularly during the Cultural Revolution. It is only after the
establishment of state power that he can be regarded as not only a practitioner of
political violence but a terrorist rather than a freedom fighter.
What we have called the anti-liberal elements within Marxism – in particular the
notion of class war and revolution – create support for a political violence which
can become terrorist in character. It is true that Marxism does not support the view
(which Frantz Fanon, an Algerian revolutionary, endorsed), that violence is
somehow an ennobling and ‘cleansing’ process. Fanon argues that violence ‘frees
the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes
him fearless and restores his self-respect’ (1967: 74). This kind of view sees the
politically violent man or woman as a person without normal relationships: they
are wedded to the Struggle or Revolution, not to family and friends. This view is
inherent, it could be argued, in violence, and therefore on the surface of things
would seem opposed to Marxism’s methodology (Marxism speaks of individuals
entering into relations with one another). Nevertheless, Marxism does contain
aspects that facilitate the use of violence, and thus terrorism, in liberal and socialist
societies.454 Part 4 Contemporary ideas