>>2612081You raise an interesting example when you bring up the case of the Haitian Revolution, as that would be, in my opinion, an example of the need for strategic violence trumping the need for "morality". The class interest of the white settler population of Haiti was always going to run against that of the oppressed majority, specifically due to the racialized nature of class society under French colonization. As a result, the liquidation of the white population would be a valid strategic choice, with moral concerns being of secondary-to-marginal concern. This is doubly so the case when we also note the unreasonable nature of expecting the emerging Haitian state to somehow find a way of re-educating this reactionary population, especially within the historical early industrial period.
I would argue that the Peruvian case is quite different. The Peruvian peasantry is not a fundamentally reactionary class as is the case with the settler-colonial population of Haiti, and is, if anything, the revolutionary subject within Peru. So when the PCP carries out an indiscriminate massacre of men, women and children in a peasant community as a reprisal action for past hostilities, this does not count as a valid strategic action. Targeted reprisals against known ronderos would have counted as a valid strategic action. Going so far as killing any military-aged men in the village who _might_ have been one would have been highly morally dubious, but undeniably carry strategic value. The killing of women and children merely for the crime of living in a village where reactionaries operate carries no strategic value whatsoever, and if anything serves to alienate the working class from the party and the armed struggle in particular.
You're right in saying that revolution is in many ways a brutal, horrific affair, it is after all impossible to "make a revolution in white gloves". Yet this does not mean that we should freely indulge in the worst elements of revolution without a care in the world. The fact that atrocities are inevitable in revolution does not constitute a carte blanche to actually go out and commit them. This is why I take objection to Gonzalo's take on the Lucanamarca affair. He tries to relativize the incident as merely an acceptable excess, with the prospect of "restricting the masses" being a worse outcome. This does not strike me as very convincing when this action contributed a net loss in strategic value and was also as chiefly perpetrated against individuals who were themselves of a working-class background. Gonzalo advises against restricting the revolutionary rage of the working class, but I don't think that "don't kill a working class toddler who happens to be born in a village with reactionaries in it" is so grave a restriction as to pose a serious strategic hindrance in the revolutionary struggle.
Most damning, in my opinion, is that Gonzalo seems to imply that no punitive measures whatsoever were laid against the perpetrators of the massacre. Excesses are expected in revolution, true, but this does not mean that we have to let them go unpunished. Contrary to what bourgeois propaganda claims, soldiers in the Red Army who committed rape were not turned a blind eye to or even encouraged, they were executed by a military tribunal. Why should the Communist Party of Peru tolerate in their ranks men who kill toddlers, who do so while representing the Party in the armed struggle no less?
The whole approach Gonzalo takes to this issue is thus very revelatory to me. He relativizes a morally objectionable action with no strategic value as permissible if excessive, with no punitive action being necessary against the perpetrators. The action in question is the indiscriminate murder of men, women and children, largely of a working class background. The fact that he not only believes this but is willing to openly state it proves to me that he was not only a man of dubious moral character (which is perhaps undesirable but not by no means a disqualifying feature if the individual in question is an effective revolutionary), but was also fundamentally incompetent in strategic matters (which made his leadership directly detrimental to the Peruvian class struggle) and therefore unfit to lead a vanguard party.