Catma
12th July 2011, 23:11
The situation with the kulaks sabotaging farmland had dire consequences in the Soviet Union. This was a case of bourgeois and petit bourgeois about to be dispossessed of their property and class privilege.
Sabotage is something any revolution must be prepared to deal with. Since I'm in America I wonder how this would play out in a revolution here. I don't think there are so many bourgeois in direct control of operations, in MOST industries, that their direct action would cause tremendous problems. On the other hand, what we do have plenty of is ideological fanatics and desperate people who will act as tools for the capitalists.
What could a fairly large pool of committed counterrevolutionaries accomplish in modern America during a revolution? Unfortunately I think the answer is a massively disproportionate amount of damage. Lots of the infrastructure that Americans consider essential is extremely vulnerable. Take for example the northeast blackout of 2003. I don't know what it takes exactly to cause a cascading failure in the aging power grid, but it can probably be accomplished by several hundred armed and coordinated goons. Combine that with persistent attacks on repair workers, and the heat of high summer, and you have a disaster of magnitude rarely seen in the US or anywhere. The economic damage would be catastrophic. There would be deaths among the weak and elderly. Fresh food, and in some cases, water, would become increasingly hard to come by.
And this is but one scenario. It is not hard to picture prolonged chaos and terrorism plaguing a revolution in the US (or any other modern state, really.)
What say you, comrades? Maybe at the point of revolution there would be so much popular support that the capitalists couldn't carry out such an operation? Could workers' militias be trained and organized enough to fight off this kind of tactic? I think there would be persistent resistance to any successful revolution today, especially in the US. This thought is especially bleak and has really ruined my day. Please tell me why I'm wrong!
Sabotage is something any revolution must be prepared to deal with. Since I'm in America I wonder how this would play out in a revolution here. I don't think there are so many bourgeois in direct control of operations, in MOST industries, that their direct action would cause tremendous problems. On the other hand, what we do have plenty of is ideological fanatics and desperate people who will act as tools for the capitalists.
What could a fairly large pool of committed counterrevolutionaries accomplish in modern America during a revolution? Unfortunately I think the answer is a massively disproportionate amount of damage. Lots of the infrastructure that Americans consider essential is extremely vulnerable. Take for example the northeast blackout of 2003. I don't know what it takes exactly to cause a cascading failure in the aging power grid, but it can probably be accomplished by several hundred armed and coordinated goons. Combine that with persistent attacks on repair workers, and the heat of high summer, and you have a disaster of magnitude rarely seen in the US or anywhere. The economic damage would be catastrophic. There would be deaths among the weak and elderly. Fresh food, and in some cases, water, would become increasingly hard to come by.
And this is but one scenario. It is not hard to picture prolonged chaos and terrorism plaguing a revolution in the US (or any other modern state, really.)
What say you, comrades? Maybe at the point of revolution there would be so much popular support that the capitalists couldn't carry out such an operation? Could workers' militias be trained and organized enough to fight off this kind of tactic? I think there would be persistent resistance to any successful revolution today, especially in the US. This thought is especially bleak and has really ruined my day. Please tell me why I'm wrong!