We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing the mask of the preceding scene, … - Régis Debray

All decisive revolutionary processes must begin and have begun with certain missteps for the reason that we have mentioned: because the existing points of departure are those left by the preceding historical period, and they are used, even if unconsciously.

In Vietnam above all, and also in China, armed self defense of the peasants, organized in militias, has played an important role as the foundation stone of the structure of the armed forces of liberation-but self-defense extended to zones already militarily liberated or semi-liberated; in no way did it bring autonomous zones into being. These territories of self defense were viable only because total war was being carried out on other fronts, with the regular and mobile forces of the Vietminh. They permitted the integration of the entire population into the war without resting the principal weight of the struggle upon it. By dispersing the French expeditionary force, these zones lightened the task of the regular and semi-regular forces and permitted them to concentrate a maximum of troops on battle fronts chosen in accordance with the strategic plans of the General Staff. Even less than in Vietnam can self-defense be self-sufficing in Latin America-at least not if one aims to avoid the elimination of the civilian population.

Condemned to exist in the present within the categories of the past, Trotskyism withers on the vine.