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You are listing examples of effective guerrilla warfare being waged, not popular revolutions.
Besides, I don't think setting ourselves up for civil war is a particularly good tactic. Revolutions can and have happened without a protracted war or civil conflict. In fact, i'd argue that any transition between modes of production will not happen overnight, and will not be a 'war' but a process, involving but not characterised by violence but rather by an attrition in the power of the ruling class.
Every popular revolution has been followed by counter-revolutions by the bourgeoisie. Take Chile in 1973, if the alternative to civil-war is mass graves then we have nothing to lose by a civil-war and the revolutionary army defeating counter-revolutionaries like Pinochet in battle is the only winning scenario.
Chile wasn't really a revolution, though, as Allende was an elected bourgeois politician.
But yes, you are right, it will be necessary to organise some sort of army/militia. But this has nothing to do with arming the general populace.
I'm split on this. On one hand everyone owning a pistol or a stripped down rifle isn't going to come close to guaranteeing a victory against a standing army, however the conception of first world armies being these behemoths with unimaginable technological superiority is a myth perpetuated by those armies and primarily the defense companies that provide the technology to them. Don't be so quick to buy into the marketing campaigns coming out of DC, a great deal of that tech only works in theory or in controlled testing environments.
A agree but it is not like the CIA would have acted differently if it was.
Armed in general population makes defence easier and the USSR was able grind down the Wehrmacht by also arming partisans in occupied territories plus the arming the masses in Leingrad allowed Leingrad to hold out as the Red Army in Leningrad by itself lacked manpower and this was simply solved by Red Army officers in Leningrad drafting the masses in Leningrad on the spot, shoving a rifle into hands and sending them to front with bare minimal training (in this cause the masses of Leningrad having previous firearm training would have helped make this tactic more effective).Originally Posted by The Boss
Yes, I would. Your friend is right.
yeah the red guards were rolled over by the german army, during the actual revolution though the red guards were invaluable, and that organization is what "arming the workers," i'd say has more to do with then the red army which was much more of a conventional fighting force, not quite a bourgeois army though. It had to adopt bourgeois military tactics though, on top of creating its own, but the necessity of an army that big is a glaring hole in the theory of SioC.
For student organizing in california, join this group!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1036
http://socialistorganizer.org/
"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
The NRA Terrorists (NRATs) have helped to kill 1.3 million people in the United States, including thousands of children, over the last 50 years. It is the objective of the fascist NRATS to keep the ownership of guns in private bourgeois hands.
It should be the position of all Marxists and Marxist-Leninists to take guns out of the hands of private citizens. This serves both the immediate and long range interests and the genuine needs of the working-class and the public.
Marxist-Leninists using absurd, twisted pseudo logic who support the NRATs and oppose gun control make themselves into jokes and fools.
The policy of any true workingclass organization should be that no private citizen has a right to own any gun whatsoever. Public control over the manufacture, distribution and use of guns is a fundamental principle of socialism/communism.
The failure to see the differences between Russia in 1913 and the United States in 2013
is a monumental failure of reasoning.
What about the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence, they formed militias to defend black communities from police and at first it worked as the police needed the FBI to not get pinned effortlessly by the BPP that used basic US Army infantry tactics to suppress police learned from black Vietnam vets.
The US government is not publicly controlled, niether is production or distribution.
Then tell me how to make a revolution and defend ourselves from counterrevolution without weapons. I'm all ears.
Para los pueblos de todo el mundo, que luchan por la paz, la democracia y el socialismo, el leninismo es como el sol que trae consigo una vida alegre. - Ho Chi Minh
Comunes el sol y el viento, común ha de ser la tierra, que vuelva común al pueblo, lo que del pueblo saliera
Maoism is (...) Marxism Leninism on cocaine - Rafiq
Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté - Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
El marxismo conlleva muchos principios que en últimas instancias se compendian en una sola frase: “es justo rebelarse contra los reaccionarios" - Mao Tse-Tung
Die Barrikaden schließen der Strasse aber geöffnet der Weg.
Democracy.
Changing the fundamental social relations in society.
Refusing to work.
The possibilities really are endless, yet you choose to limit them to bloodletting. Why? Because some revolutions in the 21st century that failed were violent??
This argument is a guilt by association fallacy. It's no different to arguing that universal healthcare is bad because Nazis supported it. Also 'private' hands aren't necessary 'bourgeois' hands. Opposition to private property doesn't mean not allowing individuals to own things. Gun factories definitely need to be collectively owned but that does not mean the products of such factories cannot be divided amongst people.
Opposing gun control does not equal lending general support for any particular political ideology or organisation.
Public control over the manufacture and distribution of all products is a fundamental principle of socialism/communism. That does not mean an individual cannot possess a product. How exactly can we have collective control over the use of products designed for one person (e.g. clothes, food, guns, etc.)? I don't think this is a principle of socialism.
In relation to some of the other issues brought up in this thread.
Guns don't guarantee victory for the revolutionary proletariat, but they certainly help. If the US government did unleash its full military capacity (tanks, fighter planes, etc.) on its own citizens (which is unlikely given the level of public condemnation such as action would receive both from the American public and internationally) it would still be better for the workers to have guns than for them to not have guns. They could, for example, be used to capture tanks. In any case, I think it can be savely said that guns in the hands of the revolutionary proletariat won't hinter the revolutionary cause.
The problem however is that if guns became more freely available right now, there would be far more reactionaries, libertarians and ultra-macho assholes rushing out to buy guns than left-wing revolutionary. For now I think the struggle for socialism needs to be fought on an ideological level with members of the working class. We should save the struggle for gun ownership for when socialists have gained more support from the working class.
I also don't see a problem with better enforcing restrictions against mentally ill people (who's illnesses make them prone to violence) owning guns. Most of the mass shootings which are used to justify gun control are carried out by such people after all, not by the average legal purchaser of guns. One third of Americans own guns, yet one third of Americans aren't out shooting people for no good reason.
Last edited by RedAtheist; 29th January 2013 at 06:25.
Stalin got it wrong. A million deaths under socialism is an atrocity. A million deaths under capitalism is a statistic.
'Trotsky explained that a nationalised planned economy needs democracy as the human body needs oxygen.' Alan Woods in a summary of The Revolution Betrayed
I'm pretty sure Philosopher Jay is being sarcastic.
The vast majority of firearm owners in the United States would be, if anything, counter-revolutionaries.
Face facts though - There won't be a revolution in the USA. At least not anytime soon. However, there will be many gun murders that take place in the time that you're waiting for one. It's sensible to advocate tight gun laws to reduce the homicide rate, which is three times as much as similar industrialised countries.
I very much agree.
And when and where in history has this happened? Where on earth have the ruling class relinquish its power peacefully? Every social change in hystory has been brought by violence, and I'm afraid it will continue like it for a long time.
Para los pueblos de todo el mundo, que luchan por la paz, la democracia y el socialismo, el leninismo es como el sol que trae consigo una vida alegre. - Ho Chi Minh
Comunes el sol y el viento, común ha de ser la tierra, que vuelva común al pueblo, lo que del pueblo saliera
Maoism is (...) Marxism Leninism on cocaine - Rafiq
Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté - Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
El marxismo conlleva muchos principios que en últimas instancias se compendian en una sola frase: “es justo rebelarse contra los reaccionarios" - Mao Tse-Tung
Die Barrikaden schließen der Strasse aber geöffnet der Weg.
Hi Psy;2562947,
I believe the person who first proposed the armed self-defence line and procured the first weapons for the Black Panther Party turned out to be a police informant. It was a disastrous strategy that just got a lot of courageous people killed and jailed.
The fact is that people in their communities were getting beaten and killed by police violence already. Their public showing of arms was public under state law, and having an armed wing in some form is not inherently dangerous. Considering all the right wing militias that shoot Latinos indiscriminately along the border, urban police and vigilante killings against people of color, tea party nuts with guns, etc., any respectable leftist social movement that arises anytime soon wouldn't be stupid to try it. Publicly celebrating and emphasizing the possession of arms is one thing, but given the history of bourgeois violence against popular dissent, I'd feel more comfortable working in an office with an armed guard.
There is violence and then there is violence.
Violence is inevitable in some form or other - violence at protests, demonstrations and so on. Of course.
But planning for civil war, conflict, guerrilla conflict is altogether different.
It seems like a lot of bloggers have borrowed heavily from this piece, Three Positions on Gun Control...
