The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the army

[papaspace]

According to Marxism, after establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, how will the proletariat fight the bourgeoisie and other enemies it might have?

Will it use an army? Will it employ conscription?
I know that in the The Civil War in France Marx praised the Commune for abolishing the standing army and replacing it with the National Guard which is akin to a people's militia, but I'm not sure if this is a deviation from an earlier position he had or what.

Please provide citations when possible.

Thanks,
papaspace

[Die Neue Zeit]

In admittedly very basic terms, all I know is that "abolition of the standing army" should be limited to the ground forces. It would be crazy to apply this to naval, air, air defense, and strategic rocket forces.

[papaspace]

Yeah, well, that's hardly relevant to Marx's views at his time, is it? :P

[Tower of Bebel]

It think this is a decent explanation of how Engels looked at the army and the DOTP: Proletarian military policy (http://boffyblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/proletarian-military-policy.html).

[Kamil]

An army is the tool of the state in war. In order to postulate the army of a workers state we must first define war and how it relates to capitalism and imperialism so that we can define the way in which a state devoid of capitalism and not engaged in imperialism would use its tool of war. Distinctions must be made to operate with clarity.

War as the locomotive of history in the capitalist-imperialist epoch:
If imperialsm is the highest stage in the contradictions of capitalism as Lenin pointed out, then Mao is correct in his assertion that war is the highest stage of societal contradictions. Class war is the summit of the contradictions within a society (defined here as a grouping of people interdependent upon one another as a unit, entered together in economic relationships to produce for both themselves and each other) and war between nation-states is the summit of contradictions between societies (when two groupings of people find the successfull continuity of their productive activity to be at the expense of one another). The dialectical interplay between classes is mimicked on the global political stage by nation-states through imperialism, the aggresor society is the collective capitalist which perceives the continuity of its succesfull productive acticity to be acheived in the exploitation of the colony, whose people are a collective worker, and who perceive the successful continuity of their productive activity to lay in the unravveling of the economic relationships composing the aggresor society, meaning there hope lays in the destruction of the bourgeosis state in the aggresor country. The working class of the aggresor state can only destroy capitalism if the lifeblood of the capitalists is cut off. A working class cannot truly establish a workers state if that society is still engaged in an exploitative relationship with another society; if a hypothetical nation-state acheived some form of basic economic socialism but still thrived off the colonization of another society the ruling caste of the imperialist state would be acting collectivly as a capitalist. In imperialism entire populations of nation-states act as the exploiting and exploited class.

Now that we have examined war in the capitalist-imperialist epoch we can define the quality of its means of existance, the quality of the military, in the capitalist-imperialist epoch:

War is the inevitable result of the capitalist-imperialist epoch and its very existance actively creates the conditions which allow capitalist and imperialism to continue. Because of this, the military has traditionally been the mainstay of reactionary currents within society. The military as the tool used to build the dynamic basis of the capitalist-imperialist epoch perfectly capitulates the structure if capitalist-imperialist society within itself; it is traditionally characterized by ruthless sexism, chauvenistic nationalism, rigid hierarchy and crushing conformity. The lower ranks of the army are often filled with the most deluded members of the exploited class, utterly blinded by the illusion of upward mobility and false class conciousness, who hold self-effacing reactionary beliefs whereas the upper ranks are traditionally composed of the wealthy and influential, the theorists and beneficiaries of reactionary thought, and in turn cromprise such a class within the organization of the military itself. Such is the quality of the tool and means of creating war under the conditions of the highest and current stage of capitalism:imperialism.

War and the quality of a Proletarian People's Liberation Army under the condition of socialism during the dictatorship of the proletariat:

The military is the tool of the state in war. Under capitalism the state was the means for the overall oppresion of the working class by the bourgeosis. Therefore the wars that the bourgeosis state made and its military are reflections of reactionary ideology in practice, imperialist wars and the aggresor militaries are all aspects of the suprestructure arising from a capitalist base in society. The control of the state by the workers party in the name of the people is a workers state, the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat is the means for the overall oppression of the bourgeosis by the proletariat. Thus, the wars waged by a workers state and its military would be reflections of radical ideology in practice, the wars waged and military would be the aspects of the superstructure arising from socialism. Within society the new class war would be that of the proletarian crushing the former exploiters, the military would be used to supress bourgeosis beliefs, behaviours, and political organization. In relation to other societies war would be directed specifically at the bourgeosis of imperialist-capitalist states. Once the bourgeosis of all nation-states have been overthrown the drama of class war will cease to exist on the higher and collective level and there will be world communism. Thus, the proper goal behind all militaristic activity in true workers states would be the building of socialism and total emancipation of all humanity, i.e. the acheivment of world communism. The structure of a proletarian army would similarily have to be founded on the ideology of the working class and reflect its sole purpose. In order to have a classless society one must first have a society in which all humans are working class, therefore all people within that society will be considered working class, therefore the soliders will be considered working class. The structure of the military must be re-evaluated through the paradigm of workplace deomcracy, regiments will be patterend after soviets. The soldier-voters will elect decision-making councils and be educated with propaganda focusing on selfless heroicism, trust in each other, and loyalty to the people, the vanguard, and decision making councils. The members of the decision-making councils must periodically go up for re-election and must be educated with propaganda focusing on faith in the massess and soldiers, loyalty to the party line of the vanguard and the idea that being in a leadership position is to be in a position of slavery. The notion of guidance as an activity of servitude is needed to counterbalance the effects of the actual work the elected must do, society operate under the pretense that guides or leaders, who can be thought of as being above or outside the rest (and thus a new class, meaning multiple classess, meaning uncommunisitic) are instead viewed as the servants of the masses and as working FOR them. This attitude works to keep the relationship dynamic between people egalitarian, thus keeping the overall superstructure of society egalitarian. The work-relationship between the decree-issueing councils and the soldiers will be based on the guiding principle of democratic centralism so that wartime efficiancy can be maintained without the loss of truly democratic measures. The military of a worker's state must have no unequal or discriminatory policies as reagards to race,gender, or sexuality. Even the style of warfare used by a Proletarian Army must be a manifestation of socialist ideology because the the behavior of all people in a socialist society must manifest the spirit of the revolution for the revolution to be complete. The soldiers in a Proletarian Army enter into relationships with eachother based on proper socialist ideology through the election of leaders, the leader as slave idea, and through education; they enter into relationship with the enemy army through the style of guerilla warfare. Instead of monolithic battles that mimick the clash of classes within society and the monolithic clash of peoples and cultures in imperial wars, the revolutionary war is fought in the style of guerrilla warefare which mimicks the insurrection of the working class against the bourgeosis during the socialist revolution. Guerrilla battles are of the same style and format as the strikes and uprisings of the workers against the capitalists and the government of the bourgeosis state. During a revolutionary war, which is a war waged by any true workers state against a non-workers state, borders are forgotten. The working class of the world become one class and the bourgeosis of the world all become one class. The army of the people direct their forces soley against the ruling caste of the other society and not its working class. This is in stark contrast to imperialist wars in which one army seeks to inflict maximu damage on the enemy as a whole.

The Peoples Army as executive of the collective revolutionary will of the proletariat:
A Proletarian Army would be a part of the working class, organized according to workers-self managemnt and democratic centralism, waging guerrilla style warfare against a specific strata of an imperialist-capitalist nation-state for the express purpose of acheiving world communism. Once all nation sate borders have evaporated and the world's working class reaches the highest level of class conciousness which is the realization of oneness by the entire proletariat there is no state or class remaining. Class war is the locomotive of the development of society towards socialism within the confines of fixed borders, and it is mimicked on a grander scale by the wars between nation states which is locamotive of history towards communism. The realization is needed that revolutionary war is not bourgeosis inter-state war, but class war on a larger level. On a global scale, the people's army is the revolutionary class. The vanguard party, the people's army, and the massess msut accordingly act in singular unity with mutual and interdependent trust and loyalty built and maintained through self-criticism by the party and army, and consent and by the masses. During the revolution the workers rise up and by their rising up they in effect become the military, because they have become the tools of the new workers state. It is the masses who compose the vanguard party, and it is the vanguard party which seizes the state, and the military is the tool of the that state making the people who have made the revolution the military. The military is composed of the people and is an organ of the vanguard which is the head of the people, as the executor of the workers state in conflict against the capitalists it is the executive of the revolutionary will of the massess and the leading force in the total emancipation of humanity.