The question of violence

[RedKobra]

I asked this in the SPGB thread but will move it into a new thread as it was sort of off topic.

What ever party's program I read, no matter how much I agree with their aims & principles, the thing that always stops me in my tracks is when it comes to the question of violence.

We all know and seemingly unanimously agree that it is simply not in the character of capitalists to surrender the means of production without a savage fight, using every means available to the bourgeois state.

Some groups advocate armed working class insurrection, others advocate a self defense only policy, some argue for Ghandiesque pacifist resistance. Which ever you personally prefer its really hard not to see a massacre of the working class. The Capitalists have guns, grenades, rockets, tanks, helicopters, jets, highly trained uber-bastards in kevlar.

What specifically gives you reason to think we can win?

[Blake's Baby]

I agree, the process of the revolution is likely to involve a large degree of violence. The reason this really isn't appropriate on the SPGB thread I think is that they, almost alone, see the process as proceding relatively (or completely?) peacefully.

The proletariat cannot defeat the state militarily. The state - ue to the overwhelming superiority of firepower that it has - will win in all-out military confrontations. So we can't take it on all-out military confrontations.

The proletariat will have to rely on subversion of the state's ability to wage war. It will, I suspect, need to use sabotage, blockades and strikes more than direct battles, and it will have to keep a constant propaganda war against the bourgeoisie's troops. Many of them of have come from the working class and will have family members on the other side of the barricades - though I'm sure the state (as it has aways done) will be able to call on the 'officer corps' and some depraved professionals to form death-squads.

[Futility Personified]

Like Blake's Baby mentioned, a lot of the soldiers will have family who are going to be the victims of state repression. It's easy to turn off to ideology, much harder to turn off causing your family immense suffering.

But of course, it also depends on that good ol' stockphrase, the material conditions. Where is this uprising taking place? Where is this passive resistance taking place? What is the culture of this place?

[The Feral Underclass]

I think the argument assumes that a traditional revolution as we've seen in history is what is going to herald in the possibility of communism. That's not necessarily the case.

But let's accept for argument's sake that this traditional way is what will happen, I think Blake is largely correct, but there are limitations to what he is proposing. Sooner or later what is left of the bourgeois state is going to send in their security forces and mercenaries to violently put down strikes and blockades, as well as brutally repress any infrastructure and organisation of the class. This is especially true if soldiers begin to desert, which fortunately for us, they historically have done (although we have to remember that many of those armies were conscription armies, where as modern Western armies are made up of career soldiers). At this point open military confrontation is inevitable.


What specifically gives you reason to think we can win?

As soon as the class refuse to operate the means of production and indeed re-appropriate them for their own use, capitalism will collapse. The power for change is not in how many guns you have, since those guns require supplies of ammunition, just as soldiers need supplies of food and equipment. Without the means and labour to produce those things, their abilities to maintain control is ultimately finite. While military conflict is likely inevitable, ultimate power over society resides in control of the economy. Nothing else. That's why we have to defend our domain over it and with brute force if necessary.