Peacefull or armed revolution

[Redhead]

Do you believe communism could be introduced peacefully trough elections and slowly introducing socialism which works up to a communist society, or do you believe the only way is an armed revolution?
Personally i think the latter, but i know some communists who think elections is the way to go.

[exeexe]

You can do an armed revolution but you cant bring communism through violence. To bring communism you must get out there and do some real work

[Sinister Intents]

I'm going to be short in my reply because I've to get ready for school. The bourgeois class won't give up power peacefully. In the communist manifesto it states that certain elements of the bourgeoisie will support and join the proletarian struggle. The revolution will be bloody, but hopefully not disgustingly so. As few deaths as possible

[Comrade Strong]

There is a theory amongst some groups that a communist society can be built peacefully through the participation and expansion of communes, syndicates and worker councils in the shell of a bourgeois state.

However to truly destroy the state is one of the biggest problems that communism faces. Taking control? Immediate transition through armed revolution?

Personally I believe that communism should be built in the shell of the state which, when ready, is overthrown by spontaneous revolution. This way it will be harder for anyone or group to reestablish the state, as a system of communism will already be in place and everyone can get on with it.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

If peaceful revolution is possible, then I would have no problem with it.

But I fear that is a pipe dream. The revolution will be violent, and it will be bloody. Not because its desirable, but because it's inevitable.

[DOOM]

I'm really all in for peace and love, but then again I'm a realist and not a Hippie.

[Remus Bleys]

The streets will be rivers of blood, the sky black with ashes, the roads covered in organs, eviscerated corpses shall line the party buildings, the workers will hang their bosses and the bureaucrats will be defecated on.
BUT THATS JUST MY OPINION MAN
pic related
https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/q71/s720x720/10154554_443739029093347_34627409_n.jpg

[Stained_Class]

Historically, armed revolutions have been more successful. Not only do elected radicals have to deal with the constraints of the bourgeoisie state (assuming that they remain radical after elections), but there is also a high likelihood of military intervention by other countries. For example, Allende.

[The Idler]

To what extent should socialists try peaceful revolution?

[Loony Le Fist]

I'm really all in for peace and love, but then again I'm a realist and not a Hippie.

Yep. I would prefer non-violent non-compliance working. The trouble is that when you stop complying the state will act aggressively on behalf of the controlling elite to encourage compliance.


If peaceful revolution is possible, then I would have no problem with it.

But I fear that is a pipe dream. The revolution will be violent, and it will be bloody. Not because its desirable, but because it's inevitable.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about it, too. Violence is inevitable, because the state will instigate it. History has a pretty airtight case here.


I'm going to be short in my reply because I've to get ready for school. The bourgeois class won't give up power peacefully. In the communist manifesto it states that certain elements of the bourgeoisie will support and join the proletarian struggle. The revolution will be bloody, but hopefully not disgustingly so. As few deaths as possible

Exactly. States have rarely given up power peacefully with no bloodshed. One could always hope for a situation like the GDR, where the military refused to follow orders. In the US I really don't see something like that happening, however.


Do you believe communism could be introduced peacefully trough elections and slowly introducing socialism which works up to a communist society, or do you believe the only way is an armed revolution?
Personally i think the latter, but i know some communists who think elections is the way to go.

Well reformism can provide alleviation to working people (to not use the more precise Marxian definitions here), but it will never emancipate them. This is a conclusion that not only I draw based on my observations on history, but it is the same conclusion that much smarter individuals like Rosa Luxemburg drew as well. If you believe that elections alone will fix the problem, then you aren't pro-revolutionary.

This is not to say that I think pro-revolutionary leftists shouldn't participate in the political process. We should do everything in our power to help alleviate the problems that working class people deal with. If that means that voting on a particular reform will help, so be it. However, this does not mean that reforms alone will fix the problem. Without revolution, or at least the threat of it, reforms will not stick. This is the primary issue with working within the system to change it, instead of working towards fundamental revolutionary change. There is no reason we cannot work within the political process alongside working outside of it.

[RedWorker]

There are many socialist, Marxist and communist groups who hold that a peaceful transition to socialism or communism is possible, desirable or even more effective than the alternative. (arguing, for example, that revolution by a minority is unlikely to or cannot actually result in communism but rather often devolves in state capitalist single-party states like the Soviet Union, etc.)

This may or may not be involved with electoral politics.


Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?

It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.

But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.

(source: Principles of Communism (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm))

[Rafiq]

No - the machinations of the state as it exists, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie even in the most politically diverse liberal democracy is sustained by gross violence. In the process of changing the social order of life through political means, this violence will inevitably be unleashed.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There is a theory amongst some groups that a communist society can be built peacefully through the participation and expansion of communes, syndicates and worker councils in the shell of a bourgeois state.I think these things are important, but in organizing people on an independant class basis in advance of a revolutionary crisis. Spain probably got as close to the above method as any group of workers/farmers... but they still got violently attacked by Franco and then the Stalinists and so they still had to arm the urban population and create militias.

If someone could develop a viable way to have a peacful revolution, I'd be all for it, but I don't think there's never been a real transfer of class power that didn't involve a big conflict/insurrection at some point. I do think, however, that the best way to minimize violence against us and our own need for defense is having seasoned and experienced and deeply rooted and popular class movements so that when revolutionary consiousness become more widespread due to a crisis of some kind, workers already have experience and networks and solidarity to draw on. This would allow revolutionary class forces to already be set to take swift initiative when a revolution or insurrection happens so that the forces of the old regime and of reaction are not as able to quickly and as easily organize repressive forces against workers.

[4thInter]

Depends, if your under an oppressive right-wing gov then violence is more than acceptable. But the youth of the USA is moving very left, signaling what could be the first step to communism, the transition to socialism.

[Goblin]

If it's peaceful it's not a revolution. That's reformism.

[4thInter]

Not in the USA maybe not, I say this due to our youth moving more and more left. Hence the transitional society.

[Sinister Intents]

If it's peaceful it's not a revolution. That's reformism.

Don't you think its possible certain areas will be peaceful in revolution, but others very violent. Like it'd be locational, with certain rural areas remaining peaceful.

[Comrade Strong]

Following a peaceful revolution of the mind, in which the people are educated about communist ideas and practice and begin to implement them in the shell of the bourgeois state. The most natural consequence is a spontaneous revolution that destroys the state and immediately frees the communist framework built during the initial phase.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

peacefully if possible, violently if when necessary

[#FF0000]

Dogmatic pacifism or dogmatic adherence to violence both seem like pretty terrible ideas to me.

[Sinister Intents]

Not in the USA maybe not, I say this due to our youth moving more and more left. Hence the transitional society.

How come I've not seen this increase in left wing youth? I meet many conservatives every day. I've met no socialists in my immediate area,

[ComradeOm]

There is a theory amongst some groups that a communist society can be built peacefully through the participation and expansion of communes, syndicates and worker councils in the shell of a bourgeois state. Myself and Preobrazhensky disagree (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2741766&postcount=13). Building the socialist mode of production within capitalism is not possible.

[Tim Cornelis]

If it's peaceful it's not a revolution. That's reformism.

A revolution, in the context we're talking about, refers to a social revolution: a (radical) transformation of the social institutions of society. This can, on paper, be done peacefully, so it's not reformism an sich. You're thinking of insurrection.

[Rafiq]

Myself and Preobrazhensky disagree (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2741766&postcount=13). Building the socialist mode of production within capitalism is not possible.

Moreover, capitalism arose as a result of a class fulfilling its material interest within feudalism. The proletariat as such has none within capitalism, only on a confused ideological level would they organize into communes or cooperatives within capitalism, not as a logical result of their immediate class interest. The proletariat can only seize political power, and even hypothetically if no blood is spilled, this is still a very violent act, as is the process of social change itself.

[Doctor Hilarius]

A commitment to violence is a really narrow understanding of what it means to have power.

The problem is Enlightenment thought that encourages people to think of power as the ability to kill or maim. Power is a lot more complex, a lot more obscure and diffuse than that.

This misunderstanding of how power operates creates simplistic models of struggles based on "us" versus "them" when in reality what ends up happening is declaring ones opposition to an empty concept.

For example, classical anarchists will focus on the state as the enemy who wields power over them, but the state is not an actual entity. The state is a linguistic construct, and nothing more.

Really the revolution will begin as "I" versus "I", as we are all complicit in our own domination via oppressive discourses, the reproduction of ideology, constructing binary oppositions that only strengthen the "enemy", etc.

This is why "lifestyle anarchists" shouldn't be treated so poorly. They actually are on to something. The revolution starts in your head.

As for using violence, that is one way among many, but really, why use violence when there are so many other potential means?

[Atsumari]

After the failure of Occupy, anyone who believes that non-violence is still the way to go is naive in my opinion. However, anyone who believes that pacifism is siding with the enemy deserve a huge "fuck you."

[Queen Mab]

“Well, then, to carry out the principles of socialism do its believers advocate assassination and bloodshed?”

“No great movement,” Karl answered, “has ever been inaugurated Without Bloodshed.

“The independence of America was won by bloodshed, Napoleon captured France through a bloody process, and he was overthrown by the same means. Italy, England, Germany, and every other country gives proof of this, and as for assassination,” he went on to say, “it is not a new thing, I need scarcely say. Orsini tried to kill Napoleon; kings have killed more than anybody else; the Jesuits have killed; the Puritans killed at the time of Cromwell. These deeds were all done or attempted before socialism was born. Every attempt, however, now made upon a royal or state individual is attributed to socialism. The socialists would regret very much the death of the German Emperor at the present time. He is very useful where he is; and Bismarck has done more for the cause than any other statesman, by driving things to extremes.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/79_01_05.htm

[renalenin]

The IWW Preamble used to speak of building a new world in the shell of the old. However this industrialist Marxism did not prosper too well in places like the USA and Australia, where the state suppressed it. When Zinoviev called on the Industrialists to join emerging Marxist-Leninist parties in 1920 the futility of such thinking was highlighted. Capitalism will never give up without one hell of a fight. That is why so many of us are Leninists. :hammersickle::hammersickle::hammersickle:

[MarcusJuniusBrutus]

It has to be peacefully, though I would not rely on any solution coming from the existing power structure via elections. The system is designed to institutionalize class conflict, not to resolve it, and anyway the Randians have limitless resources and the ability to manipulate public opinion. The reason it must be peaceful is that the establishment controls overwhelming armed force. There is simply no way an ad hoc militia with AR15s is going to be able to prevail against an actual military with jet fighters, machine guns, foreign allies, satellites, prisons, etc. etc. etc. Plus the fact that every paranoid redneck with a private arsenal will be on the establishment's side.

No, what we need to do is to take a more direct route and appeal to the common humanity of everyone. The OWS people had the right idea. If a movement like that gets big enough it can simply replace the existing power structures. Using informal, decentralized communication can make a global OWS movement an illusive target. Suffice it to say that this kind of a project may take awhile.

[Nakidana]

Exactly. States have rarely given up power peacefully with no bloodshed. One could always hope for a situation like the GDR, where the military refused to follow orders. In the US I really don't see something like that happening, however.

For any revolution to be successful it would be an absolute necessity for large parts of the military to be on the side of the revolution. If that is not the case the revolution would be crushed before it ever took off. This is especially true in the US.

[Doctor Hilarius]

The cattle ranchers and militia members that got their cattle back last week is a good model for armed resistance.

Granted, they are right wing/racist etc.

But the action itself is a useful case study. Nobody fired a shot, because the discourse in America condemns violence, meaning that you can take advantage of this discourse in order to get the state to back down, since every action the state takes is going to be on trial in the court of public opinion (especially since the state is just all of us who tacitly create it by talking about it/reproducing it etc.)

The problem with this, however, is that it only works if those who are resisting state power are considered "right wing", "mainstream" and probably "white".

If a group similar to the Black Panthers did that in an urban area, it might have ended a lot differently.

Basically, if you want to take advantage of the discourse, you have to also be acknowledged as a human being in that discourse. This excludes marginalized peoples, since they could probably just be shot and nobody would care.

The left tends to focus on empowering groups that are dehumanized in our public discourse, which means that the left could probably not reproduce what the right wing cattle ranchers did. I think in this way the right wing in America has a better chance of successful armed resistance than the left does, and I think this is a good reason for the left to focus on non-violent revolution.

[RyeN]

Peace and Love everyone. The hippie movement was only a pop of a bubble in a boiling pot of love. It was suppressed by the emerging war on drugs, but the water is still boiling under the lid they put over it, and pressure is building. The whole idea was about expanding consciousness and understanding higher purpose. When your connected to a global mind there you understand the well being of all life on the planet and the relationship with the resources we have here. There is no need to lie, no need to hurt or exploit others, no need to hoard. Only this really nice organic groove and people being free to express themselves without fear. Ahhhh the heady days of the future will be great, however we cant live in the future and have to deal with the now. So how do we get there from here? Answer is we already are :) Everything is going according to plan. Our technology has provided us almost instantaneous access to the rest of the world. It has also made it small, portable, and available to many. We are changing our social consciousness through technological advances every day, and the trend is that people grasp after technology that gives them access to more. Each advance we take to bring people closer, to spread understanding and knowledge, to create with positive energy; the consciousness grows more in harmony. Eventually the equation balances to harmony.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Power does not come any more from the barrel of a gun than it comes from a ballot box. No revolution is peaceful, but its “military” dimension is never central. The question is not whether the proles finally decide to break into the armouries, but whether they unleash what they are; commodified beings who no longer want to exist as commodities, and whose revolt explodes capitalist logic. Barricades and machine guns flow from this “weapon”. The greater the change in social life, the less guns will be needed, and the less casualties there will be. A communist revolution will never resemble a slaughter: not from any nonviolent principle, but because revolution subverts more (soldiers included) than it actually destroys. - Gilles Dauvé

I think that's a good quote about violence and revolution. If revolution is truly proletarian and broad then violence will necessarily be kept to a minimum. Workers build tanks, load rockets onto launchers, fuel aircraft, feed armies, manufacture ammunition, push buttons, programme drones, etc etc... a proletarian revolution could subvert the military industrial complex with far more efficiency than an armed insurrection and in the process abolish the need for one to exist in the first place.

[BIXX]

After the failure of Occupy, anyone who believes that non-violence is still the way to go is naive in my opinion. However, anyone who believes that pacifism is siding with the enemy deserve a huge "fuck you."


I would argue it just protects the enemy.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I doubt there is one solution. As red says, pre-decided adherence to a doctrine of either pacifism or violence is pretty naive.

Material conditions will dictate the tactics and strategies required to overcome the bourgeois class when the time is right.

[Sabot Cat]

We will not be the first to shoot, but we will be the last.

[Loony Le Fist]

For any revolution to be successful it would be an absolute necessity for large parts of the military to be on the side of the revolution. If that is not the case the revolution would be crushed before it ever took off. This is especially true in the US.

I surely hope that when this is the case, that it will be leftists who have won over the military.

[motion denied]

The state is a linguistic construct, and nothing more.


Oh yeah, this "linguistic construct" is responsible for many barbarities for the sake of capital. Reality exists outside (and independently) of discourse, or any epistemological apprehension, that's basic materialism.

Are you going full Barthes on us, mate?

[Ele'ill]

I think the destruction of the economy and upheaval of society is a pretty violent thing. The hundreds of thousands (millions) of individual events that are a part of that in one way or another which arguably are already happening have involved and will continue to involve violence from the state trying to prevent it from happening. I have a hard time picturing how peace would protect or repel state efforts. I think those looking at peace as a strategy are actually seeing strategic avoidance and just not getting it.

[Dagoth Ur]

The simple truth is that the base cannot be changed without massive upheaval. How this could be described as anything short of violent I don't understand. History is your friend.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It has to be peacefully, though I would not rely on any solution coming from the existing power structure via elections. The system is designed to institutionalize class conflict, not to resolve it, and anyway the Randians have limitless resources and the ability to manipulate public opinion. The reason it must be peaceful is that the establishment controls overwhelming armed force. There is simply no way an ad hoc militia with AR15s is going to be able to prevail against an actual military with jet fighters, machine guns, foreign allies, satellites, prisons, etc. etc. etc. Plus the fact that every paranoid redneck with a private arsenal will be on the establishment's side.i agree in terms of a gurellia or direct confrontation type strategy. I don't think a worker insurrection stands a chance unless the military has be neutralized ... Probably meaning the forces themselves are polarized to the point that the generals risk loosing control if they use force. This implies to me that a certain degree of class hegemony and social weight as "a class for itself" would have to exist. An independent class movement could then, as you suggest, appeal to the common aspirations and problems of all people suffering under this oppressive and dysfunctional society.

Even then however, I think it's also still likely in this case that secons of the military may remain intact or there could be a sort of fricorps situation, reactionary militias. People would need to defend themselves, as we saw in microcosm in tahrir, and if the reactionary forces are coordinated, I think we too would need to pool our resources, harmonize our tactics, etc.


No, what we need to do is to take a more direct route and appeal to the common humanity of everyone. The OWS people had the right idea. If a movement like that gets big enough it can simply replace the existing power structures. Using informal, decentralized communication can make a global OWS movement an illusive target. Suffice it to say that this kind of a project may take awhile.as much as occupy is the highlight of my experience with movements - let's hope only so far - from before I was a revolutionary at my first protests in the anti globalization movement to today I have only seen illusive organization and decentralized forces fairly quickly and easily get outmanuvered, out propagandized, corralled, and smashed by centralized and coordinated state forces. The occupy camps were swept up in a week after mayors all met with Obama. And outmanuvered both in terms of force, like police etc, but also politically... Sections getting cooped, splintering, loosing initial popular support, etc.

I'm not saying that we need a monolithic movement or a glorious egalitarian militia of liberation from above - I don't think a real class revolution that could actually contend for rule of society could even possibly look like that. But as a diverse class that atomized and stratified and forced to compete over crumbs in capitalism, I think workers need some kind of way to rally and coordinate. The ruling class use their power and hierarchy to accomplish this and establish their hegemonic gravity in society. I think workers would need to be able to establish their own version of this, but as a huge diverse mass of people (whose potential power would come from their mutual cooperation, not hierarchy) how this would be put together would necessarily be much different.

[ashtonh]

The revolution could start peacefully protest and the like, but it is inevitable that the state will use violence. When they use violence we will have to in order to keep the revolution going.

[John Lennin]

"Peacfull" and "Violent" are both defined by bourgeois morality.
From a bourgeois perspective every possible act of transition towards socialism/communism will be perceived as an act of violence.
So "peacefull" can only mean one thing: no change at all!

[Dagoth Ur]

That's a really good point. Most western nations claim the "Right to Private Property" is a human right (which is within their rights as they have the monopoly on what is/isn't human rights), so violating that even peacefully could easily be called violence. The October Revolution was nearly bloodless and is still called an "orgy of violence" by many western academics/politicians.

[Rottenfruit]

Do you believe communism could be introduced peacefully trough elections and slowly introducing socialism which works up to a communist society, or do you believe the only way is an armed revolution?
Personally i think the latter, but i know some communists who think elections is the way to go.
Political power flows from the barrel of a gun



Mao Zedong

[Klaatu]

I am 100% in favor of a peaceful revolution as opposed to insurrection. I think the way to start this process is to completely remove all money out of politics. Especially private "donations." Also, require that Marxist theory be taught in schools. It seems that many college professors only teach (favor) the so-called "Austrian-School" of economics (at least from what I have seen)

Most people don't realize there is a much better alternative to "Laissez-Faire Capitalism."

[Ele'ill]

I am 100% in favor of a peaceful revolution as opposed to insurrection. I think the way to start this process is to completely remove all money out of politics. Especially private "donations." Also, require that Marxist theory be taught in schools. It seems that many college professors only teach (favor) the so-called "Austrian-School" of economics (at least from what I have seen)

Most people don't realize there is a much better alternative to "Laissez-Faire Capitalism."


does being 100% in favor of a peaceful revolution mean you don't think violence would be necessary and how would you define 'violence'

[BIXX]

I am 100% in favor of a peaceful revolution as opposed to insurrection. I think the way to start this process is to completely remove all money out of politics. Especially private "donations." Also, require that Marxist theory be taught in schools. It seems that many college professors only teach (favor) the so-called "Austrian-School" of economics (at least from what I have seen)

Most people don't realize there is a much better alternative to "Laissez-Faire Capitalism."


Kind of echoing what Mari3L said, is it just that this is your ideal or that you think this is possible/you'd be opposed to all violence?

[Max]

Hopefully, there will be no violence. A bloodless revolution would be much better than a bloody one. But, if it is necessary to use limited violence, then that is fine as well. No massive amounts of killing.

[Comrade #138672]

I think it is most important how organized you are. The necessary actions then organically follow from that organization.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[ComradeBilly]

Armed because there's no way we could have a revolution peacefully.Violence will be inevitable.

[Klaatu]

"does being 100% in favor of a peaceful revolution mean you don't think violence would be necessary and how would you define 'violence' "

To have a successful revolution, the people must want one. And they must take part. But I don't think it
would be necessary to purposefully incite violence to foster revolution. On the contrary, I think revolution
can happen over a period of time, by means of an informed and activist populace. You see, the way things
are right now, the vast majority of people truly believe that a Capitalist-economic system is in their best interest.
This is what they have been told. This is what they are led to believe. This is how they think. They do not
realize that Capitalism is really a system based entirely upon theft, lies, and injustice.

In time, as more and more people come to realize that they are being taken advantage of and are being
exploited solely for the benefit of the rich man, the more disillusioned and upset they will become about the
fact that the rich man has been robbing them all of these years of what is rightfully their own.

This is why it is vital that Marxist theory be taught in schools, from grade school on up. Children need to be
educated that they have the right to be free from slavery (wage-slavery, that is; no one has a right to exploit
others' labor) and that they are equal in every way to everyone else, especially income-equality-wise (society's
goal of total elimination of "class.")

In answer to your question as to whether violence and insurrection will ensue during this process of change,
I can only say that it depends entirely upon how the "haves" will react to the "have-not's" demands for change
and equality. Some have said that the wealthy will not give up their money and power without a fight. So then
it's really up to them, not us; will there be a good peaceful change or not?

As far as "violence" is concerned, it may be that it is the wealth-class's armies and their (already-established)
police state that will be dishing out most of the head-bashing, not us! But these bullies will ultimately lose.

Think of Martin Luther King's methods of non-violence. This will be our best successful modus operandi
on the road toward Socialism.

[Ritzy Cat]

To revolt against a government will inherently result in them attempting to peacefully suppress it. When that does not work, it will lead to violent suppression.

Therefore, a revolution will be violent. It's not our choice, but its simply the price to pay if we are to emancipate the working class.

[Brutus]

We need the army on our side or we'll be crushed. If we have the majority of the army on our side, then minimum blood can be shed. The violence bit comes after the revolution, when we ruthlessly suppress any counter-revolutionary groups with the proletarian state.

[Blake's Baby]

No, the violence is already happening, as the capitalist state uses any means it can to suppress the working class's ability to fight against capitalism and the state.