Financing the revolution

[cleef]

Posted this in the anarchist section but it didnt get a serious response so hopefully someone here can help (unless of course this is a stupid question and the reason for the jokes...)

im wondering how some of histories revolutionaries managed to fund themselves in the early days of starting out and how they managed to procure enough weapons and food etc to feed an entire army?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I've heard of a few methods:
Ice cream shop (Goldman/Berkman)
Musical success (Me)
Armed robbery (Fucking everyone)

[Nuvem]

If you don't have a wealthy supporter of any kind, the usual method is large-scale bank robbery. Otherwise there's the raiding technique, such as Fidel's attack on the Moncada barracks (botched).

But this definitely depends on what sort of revolution is occurring. The two most distinctly different kinds of revolution are the nucleus approach where a trained vanguard of guerrillas starting in far-off parts of the country start to liberate bits and pieces of the country bit by bit before taking on the characteristics of a regular army and storming the major cities and the urban uprising, which is more like what we saw in the revolution of 1917 wherein a large percentage of the military has joined the revolutionaries and therefore weapons are readily available and the revolution instead begins in the large cities and spreads to the countryside. In this case political power is established much more quickly and so there may not be so much need for theft, though seizing the assets of the Bourgeoisie is a given.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Beg, steal, borrow.

[communard71]

Expropriation all the way. It’s ours anyways!:laugh:

[Lolshevik]

I'm sure the bolshevik party's members paid dues...

[The Idler]

Conspiracy theorists say Jacob Schiff financed the Bolsheviks.