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As a Marxist do you think firearms should be decentralized?
Do you feel the police should have a monopoly on firearms and or do you feel they should be decentralized through out the population?
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Don't know what Marxists think but at least the anarchist stance is to oppose the state's monopoly of force.
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Don't know what Marxists think but at least the anarchist stance is to oppose the state's monopoly of force.
The concern from the Marxist camp is that anarchists tend to see *all* authority -- even any organized working-class authority, as into a possible workers state -- as being functionally *identical*. ('All authority is bad.')
This formulation is therefore formed on a basis of *idealism* since the *content* of 'bourgeois authority', versus that of 'working-class authority' is *ignored* -- both kinds of authority are treated as being functionally *equivalent*: 'bad'.
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Chris, your words mean absolute dick- don't try and agree with me that we ought to oppose the monopoly of force held by the current order but then try and lecture me about workers states being a legitimate monopoly of force
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organized working-class authority,
What gives them that identity? And furthermore, given the history of states proclaiming themselves as "workers states" then willfully and en masse destroying proletarians who disagree with them, why shouldn't anarchists destroy your precious state?
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Chris, your words mean absolute dick- don't try and agree with me that we ought to oppose the monopoly of force held by the current order but then try and lecture me about workers states being a legitimate monopoly of force
No worries, BIXX -- if you'll look again you'll see that I wasn't trying to agree with you.
(grin)
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What gives them that identity? And furthermore, given the history of states proclaiming themselves as "workers states" then willfully and en masse destroying proletarians who disagree with them, why shouldn't anarchists destroy your precious state?
It wouldn't be 'my' workers state, since that's an inherent contradiction between collectivism and individualism.
Ultimately I'd say that it all boils down to the *details*, or the real-world actualization of it -- a workers state, if necessary, could be done *well*, or it might emerge under *very* challenging, less-than-favorable conditions for its success, as we've seen from history.
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You're not answering the actual question though- what is it that gives any "worker's authority" its identity as a "worker's authority"? What grants it legitimacy?
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You're not answering the actual question though- what is it that gives any "worker's authority" its identity as a "worker's authority"? What grants it legitimacy?
I meant to indicate that it would be a matter of *composition*, and also of *surrounding context*. If something in politics is relatively uncontroversial -- such as the Rules of the Road for drivers -- then it's widely accepted as being sensible and effective, and is actively cooperated-with / practiced.
Of course any kind of conceivable 'workers authority' would have to enjoy bottom-up mass support from the working class, because it's essentially a procedural *shortcut*, relying on presumably-dedicated and presumably-correct personnel over a period of time instead of everyone looking at everything on a fully issue-by-issue basis for mass direct implementation -- the trade-off advantage would be *expediency* from this use of substitutionist hierarchy, as for a dictatorship-of-the-proletariat transitional period of upheaval against the bourgeoisie. (I'm not saying that such would be *necessarily* required, though, since so much would depend on actual socio-political conditions at that time, but I do think it would be *likely*.)
And, as we've seen from the Russian Revolution of the last century, the *conditions* for world revolution would have to be favorable, or else any revolutionary political initiative would just collapse and implode from *without*, due to prevailing, effective bourgeois opposition to it.
Here's an 'illustration':
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We can picture the diffusion of knowledge and expertise as being 'pyramid'-shaped, where the base indicates the *broadness* of scope covered -- as to many people -- with the height indicating *skill*, or 'mastery'.
[One] inclination is to argue for a 'higher' pyramid, at the expense of its base, while a more-*collectivist* approach is to argue for a *broader base*, bringing in more participation, even if it means that the 'heights' will be initially lower.
https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads...00#post2852800 -
Firearms should be almost completely unrestricted from public use. How else do you expect us to overthrow the capitalists?
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It depends, do you mean in capitalism and such? If so, the police shouldn't use firearms on others... Maybe themselves instead, sometimes. That would be a preference. Otherwise, of course guns being sold is also a problem. However, pacifying dissent by withdrawing guns could also be a problem.
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as a Marxist and Leninist i agree that guns should be in the hands of the proletariat. this is due in part that most Marxists don't believe that the military is necessary and that a peoples militia would suffice in the regards of kind of protector
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as someone who firmly believes in that the only successful form of revolutionary action against the capitalist state is one that is violent i believe that the proletariat should have access to firearms if the state has access, as if there was to be a violent revolution headed by unarmed proletariat against the state the proletariat would lose as the state would mobilise its repressive apparatus, the army and the police, to stop the revolution at all costs. So therefore in order to succeed in violent revolutionary action the proletariat needs firearms in order to even have a chance at succeeding.
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As a Marxist do you think firearms should be decentralized?
I think this question right now is pretty abstract and hypothetical. But ok.... If revolutionary movements in a real uprising can’t vertically split the military and win over troops to take over equipment and armories, any number of guns among the population wouldn’t be decisive in of itself.
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Jimmie I'd like to respectively disagree as i'd say that having access to firearms would help the revolutionaries combat on foot soldiers which may help the revolutionaries to capture some key points even if it was just a small building, like an office block, it would help contribute towards the revolutionary forces
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From an anarchist point of view, we need guns right now. If the revolution is to succeed, the revolutionary force needs to be armed as much as possible. After the revolution, in which people will have found the difference between ethical, and non-ethical use of guns, guns should be allowed.
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What revolutionary forces? Representing what power in society? Organized along what lines? What regions? What opposition forces?
It’s LARPing.
The only useful contemporary discussion for most revolutionaries in most parts of the world is if they need to arm themselves for personal or organizational self-defense.
And when it comes to revolution, this is a social upheaval. The number of guns probably isn’t even a secondary factor - the numbers, consciousness, and level of organization among radicalized workers is the primary. In terms of strategic importance, workers have much more power to control energy, communications, roads, etc than they do being individually armed. The question of arms is entirely tactical.
Fighting local cops or right-wingers? Then armed self-defense would be needed and could be effective. Against an unified military structure intent on preferring to see a city destroyed rather than become a modern Petrograd? Then individual weapons don’t matter, neutralizing the military by splitting it would be the strategically important factor.
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I think the conversation about gun control in the USA should be linked more to disarming right-wing militia movements, border patrol vigilantes, etc. Most of the private citizens stockpiling guns in the USA are white male déclassés with very reactionary political views. These are basically fascist paramilitary forces and have the potential to develop into a more organized fascist paramilitary force (which would likely be even harder to regulate and hold accountable than regular police/military). In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that that's already happening; it may just be hard to gauge because a lot of fascists advocate "lone wolf" tactics.
Marxism implies a combination of both legal and illegal methods, so demanding gun control in order to weaken the fascist movement doesn't mean morally chastising left/antifascist social movements that break the law when doing so is justified (that is civil disobedience, in a nutshell), but by entering a de facto alliance with white supremacists (who clearly stand to lose the most from gun control) in defense of the US Constitution's 2nd amendment, you imply that the same capitalist state whose military-industrial complex is responsible for saturating gun markets for counterrevolutionary buyers can be relied upon to ensure favorable legal conditions for revolutionary struggle, which is absurd.
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I think the conversation about gun control in the USA should be linked more to disarming right-wing militia movements, border patrol vigilantes, etc. Most of the private citizens stockpiling guns in the USA are white male déclassés with very reactionary political views. These are basically fascist paramilitary forces and have the potential to develop into a more organized fascist paramilitary force (which would likely be even harder to regulate and hold accountable than regular police/military). In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that that's already happening; it may just be hard to gauge because a lot of fascists advocate "lone wolf" tactics.
Marxism implies a combination of both legal and illegal methods, so demanding gun control in order to weaken the fascist movement doesn't mean morally chastising left/antifascist social movements that break the law when doing so is justified (that is civil disobedience, in a nutshell), but by entering a de facto alliance with white supremacists (who clearly stand to lose the most from gun control) in defense of the US Constitution's 2nd amendment, you imply that the same capitalist state whose military-industrial complex is responsible for saturating gun markets for counterrevolutionary buyers can be relied upon to ensure favorable legal conditions for revolutionary struggle, which is absurd.
Yup -- it's ironic (or not) that the very issue of gun availability has not been *politicized*, as into left-and-right wings. So, consequently, the Democratic Party is all over the non-issue aspect of this topic so that people new to politics can feel like they've done something, without actually addressing the *politics* itself.
In other words the Democrats subtly impute a sense of *technological determinism* into the mix, as though the proper control of weapons -- the technology alone -- can be achieved, when that's not really the issue to *begin* with. The political issue of gun availability is *who* (what political-spectrum *position*) does it actually *benefit*, since politics is not one big wading pool that 'unifies' all political positions, no matter how horrendous the real-world events may be that precipitated this kind of weak-ass (liberal) politics and recent mobilizations.
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As a Marxist do you think firearms should be decentralized?
I also think that the left is correct to criticize a patrol-based gun regulation. Gun control/NRA dynamic in the US seems to just allow paranoid white middle class people to buy mini-stockpiles at gun shows while gun laws just allow cops a pretext to search cars of black or Latino folks they pull over.
But I don’t think the answer is to echo disingenuous NRA propaganda about stopping tyrannical governments (the NRA would not support an open-carry self-defense wing of Black Lives Matter, for example). As was said well above, we should take this discussion out of abstractions and talk about it from the position of who actually gets “gun rights” and what that politics is all about.
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I think the conversation about gun control in the USA should be linked more to disarming right-wing militia movements, border patrol vigilantes, etc. Most of the private citizens stockpiling guns in the USA are white male déclassés with very reactionary political views. These are basically fascist paramilitary forces and have the potential to develop into a more organized fascist paramilitary force (which would likely be even harder to regulate and hold accountable than regular police/military). In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that that's already happening; it may just be hard to gauge because a lot of fascists advocate "lone wolf" tactics.
Marxism implies a combination of both legal and illegal methods, so demanding gun control in order to weaken the fascist movement doesn't mean morally chastising left/antifascist social movements that break the law when doing so is justified (that is civil disobedience, in a nutshell), but by entering a de facto alliance with white supremacists (who clearly stand to lose the most from gun control) in defense of the US Constitution's 2nd amendment, you imply that the same capitalist state whose military-industrial complex is responsible for saturating gun markets for counterrevolutionary buyers can be relied upon to ensure favorable legal conditions for revolutionary struggle, which is absurd.
I think this is a thought provoking comment. All the same, it is not true that white supremacists "clearly stand to lose the most" from gun control. Today, in the USA white supremacists are intertwined with the police departments and military forces. I know for a fact that gun regulations in heavy regulated states typically have a "police officer" exemption. And even if they don't, the "thin blue line" guarantees certain "professional courtesies", a wink-wink corruption which I have seen with my own eyes. The end result is that under the current order, the far right is guaranteed to lose the least from gun control.
The cat is already out of the bag. There are more guns than people in the USA. Whenever a new regulation is put forward, existing examples of the regulated classes of firearms are "grandfathered" in. Thats why fully automatic machine guns are tens of thousands of dollars on the market today. And, as you say the far-right has them. Its just plain idiotic to crystallize the current disparity of forces.
Finally, gun regulations, like drug laws, are enforced unevenly. The correct line on this is simple. We should oppose any laws that could *conceivably* be used as an instrument of repression against the militant left, on the principle of self-preservation.
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What about demands for regulations on weapon manufacturers as opposed to a consumer-regulation/patrol type police based regulation?
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What about demands for regulations on weapon manufacturers as opposed to a consumer-regulation/patrol type police based regulation?
Depends on what you mean. In general, it is a sophistic distinction. Guns are not like seat belts or cigarettes, insofar as a guns *intended* purpose is to kill something. Call me a cynic, but I don't think that even those hypocrite liberal politicians (you know, the ones with big houses in safe neighbourhoods with police protection and impossible-to-obtain concealed carry permits) believe the BS they spew about magazine capacity or bump stocks or whatever.