Letter to the Editor of the Hoosac Institute Journal

Jenny,

Please find enclosed documents pertaining to a board gaming framework I have been developing as a means by which small groups can study the principals of strategy and organization, particularly, with reference to military theory addressing the struggle between the insurgent and the counter-insurgent. Two books are included, the framework itself and a game derived from the framework, “the Battle of Pell’s Point.” I have been largely concerned with answering two questions: What are the principals and the strategies of consolidating of power in antagonistic struggle? What organizational forms are suited to the development of political-economic power? In extension to the abstract considerations of strategy and organization, I began to develop an interest in military theory. I hope that through the playing of this war board game we can begin to produce thought—something that we do latently in all sites of play. Before discussing anything further I must thank you—for both your teaching in the recent past and the opportunity to present this work. 

We are the beneficiaries of the military apparatus that has served as the primary counter-revolutionary force worldwide; it also seems apparent that the incredible violence of our society is inexorably intertwined with the state of continuous warfare that we have visited upon those with whom we have sought to intervene. It is indisputable that American imperialism, and in particular the role the Armed Forces have in its maintenance, has aided in the production of American life—symptoms of which can be seen in the political clout a well aimed appeal to the military may elicit, our absolute reliance on the economic benefits of imperialism, and the conservative ideologies that see the fulfillment of our national destiny in control over of the international arena, to list only three that immediately come to mind. 

Our lived experiences are largely segregated from the work of operating and maintaining our armies, especially as our wars grow smaller in scale, more diffuse, or even seemingly immaterial, and consciousness around our nation’s relation to imperialist violence has grown limited to the false split between support for our troops and abhorrence of all violence. The issue is not balanced on personal engagement; our society, the home front, is a militarized aggregate. I do not mean to say that the part, the segment of society that directly composes our military stands in a primary position in the social life of the whole, but rather the part holds primary standing as it related to the exercise of state power—the final authority and source of legitimacy for and unto the whole. Even in our everyday lives, is not support for the military an involuntary and constant matter, if only through the paying of taxes?

Further, it has long been noted that this military, a large portion of what Althusser names the “repressive state apparatus” is essential to the reproduction of the social whole, by this I mean that the military, police, and punitive legal system ensure the continuity of society. It is my hope that through studying the exercise of state power we will also be able to further clarify the relations between the military arts and social reproduction—and that this clarification will come from the ground up, in play. 

The framework finds its origin as a companion to a body of literature, as a device dedicated to study; I mean this both as method to produce thought, and as tool of interpretation, of the propositions indicated in the texts. I acknowledge that my theoretical studies are largely incomplete and thus, into the foreseeable future, the framework will happily remain under construction, pending review and alignment with superior understandings of the historical conditions we can investigate—also, pending the addition of the experiences of new players. Principally, I have looked to the United State’s Army’s FM—3.24 (Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies), David Galula’s “Counter Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice”, David Kilculin’s “Counterinsurgency”, the military and early philosophical writings of Mao Zedong, along with reviews of the military thought of Fredrick Engels and Leon Trotsky. Equally as important, I’ve begun the process of reviewing the experiences of the Soviet Partisan Movement of WWII, the PCP-SL’s war against the Peruvian state in the 1980s and 90s, the current insurgency being conducted by the PKK in Turkey, as well as the United States’ invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in the early and mid 2000s. Unfortunately, I’ve only dealt with the writings of Sir Robert Thompson (“Defeating Communist Insurgencies”) within secondary sources. I include this litany because I wish to invite any of your readers to challenge and correct my preliminary understandings.  

I need to clarify the meaning of a few key words: “insurgency”, “counter insurgency”, “revolution”, or “counter-revolution”. The terminology has been muddled by constant perspective driven revisions, but we can generally think of “insurgency” and “revolution” as holding a certain identity—as well as “counter insurgency” and “counter-revolution.” Divergence certainly exists however, for example, the French officer Galula distinguishes between the Orthodox (Communist) insurgent methodology and the Bourgeois Nationalist methodology (or lack there of). Nevertheless, I will lean on a few sources to offer introductory descriptions of our antagonistic forces:

“An insurgency is the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region. Insurgency can also refer to the group itself. Counterinsurgency is comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes. Warfare remains a clash of interests and will between organized groups characterized by the use of force. In conventional warfare, there are clear determinants of victory. However, achieving victory for an insurgent may depend less on defeating an armed opponent and more on a group’s ability to garner support for its political interests (often ideologically based) and to generate enough violence to achieve political consequences.”

This quote is taken from one of the opening pages of a United States Army field manual and is used as an epigraph to the rulebook for the Framework. The emphasis here is on political and military power; without further elaboration, this corresponds to the Marxist theorist Louis Althusser’s description of a revolution in the “weak sense”—that being, a revolution that has no bearing on relations of production, state power and its apparatuses. Contrast this to the language Althusser uses in his book “On the Reproduction of Capitalism”.

“In the strong sense, consequently, a social revolution consists in dispossessing the dominant class of state power—that is, of control over the state apparatuses that ensure the reproduction of the prevailing relations of production—and establishing new relations of production, the reproduction of which is ensured by the destruction of the old state apparatuses and the (long and difficult) construction of new ones.”

Two overlapping goals are presented—a transfer of possession of state power, and a complete reconstruction of political institutions and the relations of production. This same holds for Galula’s Orthodox insurgency: it is not enough to be against the state and to see oneself as a viable alternative to the current dominate forces, rather the victorious must undertake to conduct a totalizing rupture with the prior state. In short, we can generally think of an insurgency as an attempt through the use of armed forces to conduct either a weak or strong revolution—counter insurgency, of course, being the method to defeat the would-be usurpers and simultaneously reinforce the state.

Essentially I’ve attempted to incorporate four lessons from the literature into the framework:

• Revolutionary/Counter insurgency warfare is a competition to establish legitimacy or illegitimacy in the eyes of civil society.

• Two different wars are being fought; the experiences of the combatants are decisively asymmetrical, presenting non-overlapping primary objectives.

• The conflict is, in many ways, a competition over hearts and minds—popular support or at least acceptance. The activation of supporters will allow the forces to navigate the “water” of the population, yielding control over invaluable information networks. The armed forces and the civilian administrations will have a reciprocal relationship, exchanging patronage, resources, security, and promises.

• Success for the counter insurgent will be obtained when ties between the population and the revolutionaries are entirely severed; old supporters will be forced into passivity and government control established enough that the population can make the choice to acquiesce to the law without fear of reprisal.

Success for the revolutionaries relies on the war-hardened movement successfully trigging an administrative capitulation that will reinforce their counter-hegemony as solely legitimate in the face of the state’s bankruptcy. Growth of the insurgent force will allow for a transition to movement warfare and a direct confrontation with a state weakened by years of low-intensity conflict, toward the end of the seizure of state power.

This is, of course, a limited view. The framework is a theoretical model constructed from books. How do we investigate issues of strategy and military theory from within the civilian population? 

With respect to the needs that have been laid out before us, it would be prudent to consider two further questions: How do we build and test knowledge? What relations will our game have to the process of knowledge construction? Toward the end of addressing these I will make some indications toward Mao’s philosophical writings, which serve as basic introductions to the Dialectical-Materialist theory of knowledge. Mao summarizes his conception of the formation of knowledge in the passage “Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?” from his 1963 “Draft Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Certain Problems in Our Present Rural Work”. 

“At first, knowledge is perceptual. The leap to conceptual knowledge, i.e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading from objective matter to subjective consciousness from existence to ideas. Whether or not one’s consciousness or ideas (including theories, policies, plans or measures) do correctly reflect the laws of the objective external world is not yet proved at this stage, in which it is not yet possible to ascertain whether they are correct or not. Then comes the second stage in the process of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to matter, from ideas back to existence, in which the knowledge gained in the first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether the theories, policies, plans or measures meet with the anticipated success. Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are incorrect…”

Essentially, in the development of an idea we can label as correct, or true—acknowledging the historically contingent, concrete (temporally located and closed) nature of truth—we pass through three chambers of understanding. 

First, we perceive the world—rigorous investigations are conducted and information is compiled. Once we have sufficiently observed the object of our consideration we can begin to consciously form ideas about said object. Theoretical knowledge is used to aid in conceptualizing, or composing, the fragmented perceptual information in an organized manner. Theory, matched to and selected in reference to phenomena, allows for a conceptualization of reality ultimately leading toward associated practical actions that may be applied to change reality. The primary purpose of thought is always this leading into practice—in fact we should think of the concept and the action as of a single whole. Practices that produce successful outcomes have good conceptual backing, while unsuccessful outcomes are due to incorrect ideas. Dialectical materialism sees as essential to this process a praxis that finds identity with and service to the working class.

So how will the framework relate to this process? Modulating game scenarios allow for a shifting ground on which thought may be tested. The knowledge used in a game while similar to social practice is less rigorous or subject to the whims of chance. However, the thought involved in a strategic game is basically identical in form, though in a synthetic environment. What a game represents to me is a low-stakes competitive environment where we mimic the high-intensity competitions of the daily life, a laboratory where we may find subtle indications worth pursuing outside of our tiny conflicts.

Respectfully,

Julian Hudson Mayfield II
Brooklyn, New York

JHMayfield00@gmail.com