protection against military reaction

[garrus]

I've finished reading up on the Spanish civil war, and how it was crushed by force.
So a few questions about the defense against military overthrow of a revolution:
1. Should influencing the soldiers and officers be a major part of pre-revolutionary struggle, to ensure that a sizeable chunk will be on the workers' side ?
2. Should , in a sizable revolutionary organization , revolutionaries educate themselves in warfare , defence, handling weapons etc systematically?
3. Should a revolutionary movement / political party make steps to warm up relations with potential foreign ally states to ensure support in case of a civil war?
4. How should one , post-revolution , defend against the "fifth column" non-NKVD style?
5. Would you agree on temporary military-related measures of increasing discipline , organization and efficiency? For example i read up that soldiers on the front in Spain would call it a day at will, to return to their homes.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I've finished reading up on the Spanish civil war, and how it was crushed by force.
So a few questions about the defense against military overthrow of a revolution:
1. Should influencing the soldiers and officers be a major part of pre-revolutionary struggle, to ensure that a sizeable chunk will be on the workers' side ?
2. Should , in a sizable revolutionary organization , revolutionaries educate themselves in warfare , defence, handling weapons etc systematically?
3. Should a revolutionary movement / political party make steps to warm up relations with potential foreign ally states to ensure support in case of a civil war?
4. How should one , post-revolution , defend against the "fifth column" non-NKVD style?
5. Would you agree on temporary military-related measures of increasing discipline , organization and efficiency? For example i read up that soldiers on the front in Spain would call it a day at will, to return to their homes.All of these would be pretty impossible to know in advance and would have to depend on the conditions at hand and the character of the revolutionary worker's movement itself.

I'd say in general the task of revolutionaries today is not to build an army or training for a conflict that vast numbers of workers currently don't believe is really an intractable conflict (labor and capital), and if they do may not think we can do anything about it (except defensivly) let alone win.

Personally I think the process of workers building an independant class movement will begin to create some of the capacity for workers to defend themselves from direct force. If workers are organized and consious, then it's likely that workers (like in the past) will have experience in defending their gains. The kind of heightened class struggle that might create such a movement and the possibility for revolution will probably also have created some smaller (though large from our perspective) skirmishes where workers may have had to organize defense networks against fascists or against company goons and the police. These can develop into more community and city-wide defense if there is a polarized situation of class struggle.

But the main thing for this to even be a possibility is for tons of workers to be confident (consious) and organized to actually begin to rally their own power. If worker's are not convinced of the need to struggle on a class basis, then likely, they will become demoralized by court injunctions and "normal" repression by police and the struggle won't get much further.

By organizing our own movement and creating our own sort of class gravitational pull, a worker's movement can begin to pull in allies from other classes as well as some GI soldiers which can breakdown military dicipline if soldiers are sent against mass strikes or factory occupations (we saw a little taste of this with the Egyptian army where the generals were afraid that ordering repression would break apart the military and the low-ranking soldiers would refuse those orders). Also unfortunately there will always be wars in capitalism which means that a hegemonic working class movement would also be able to attract working class vets who can then use their military training to train other workers in armed resistance, if necissary.

For Spain, their real power wasn't in the militias alone (although the militias were necissary). The militias had force because the cities were organized and there were networks of people who could both defend the cities (which stopped Franco's initial march and wouldn't have happened if it was up to the Popular Front and not the revolutionaries and radical unions). If it were the militias alone, it probably could have only been a war of attritian, it was the worker's movement in conjunction with some of the militia forces that made it a revolution.

[Blake's Baby]

I've finished reading up on the Spanish civil war, and how it was crushed by force.
So a few questions about the defense against military overthrow of a revolution:
1. Should influencing the soldiers and officers be a major part of pre-revolutionary struggle, to ensure that a sizeable chunk will be on the workers' side ?...

Depends on the exact context here of 'pre-revolutionary' and 'sizeble chunk' here - but the short answer is yes, we must try to politically neutralise the armed forces as we can't defeat them militarily.


2. Should , in a sizable revolutionary organization , revolutionaries educate themselves in warfare , defence, handling weapons etc systematically?...

Workers should, and revolutionaries are workers. I'm not a supporter of 'party' armies, the militia should be under the control of the workers' councils


3. Should a revolutionary movement / political party make steps to warm up relations with potential foreign ally states to ensure support in case of a civil war?...

How can there be 'potential foreign ally states'? I don't see how such a thing could exist. States that want their own working class to overthrow them?


4. How should one , post-revolution , defend against the "fifth column" non-NKVD style?...

Not sure one can. But the equivalent of the Cheka should be under the control of the workers' councils not the party.


5. Would you agree on temporary military-related measures of increasing discipline , organization and efficiency? For example i read up that soldiers on the front in Spain would call it a day at will, to return to their homes.

I think that's mostly lies put about by the Stalinists to justify the suppression of the militias that weren't under its control. Mostly I think they knew if they did, they wouldn't have homes to go to. It was the militia that stopped the Fascist advances.