I believe that due to the inherent contradictions of capitalism a revolution is inevitable, and necessary, but it's still not something that is easily palatable. Revolution is certainly romanticized, yet I still question every day whether or not I would be willing to die for my beliefs. My question to my fellow comrades is do you think non-violent form of revolution is possible, or will the state and reactionaries always crack down? I know that in the past those with power and prestige have been reluctant to give it up.
I’m going to pause my guerrilla war in the music sub for a moment:
We can absolutely beat the American military using a protracted people’s war.
Think bigger. Think smaller. Think dialectics and change and transformation and the metaphor of the spark that sets an entire prairie ablaze. The winds are beginning to blow in your favor.
The American military loses every battle after a few years. This is going to apply even moreso inside America.
Think how much recruiting is going to be fucked up when populist guerrillas, who have done their homework and developed base areas of support, start harassing soldiers during training and on the streets? What happens to morale and unit cohesion when Americans are violently harassing soldiers on training?
What if those Americans are also “BLM” and “ANTIFA” and use popular fronts to do popular things like staging liberations of pharmacies and redistributing medicine, liberating apartment blocks by unionizing tenants, preventing police from performing evictions, and so on?
We can do this for a long period of time and still have ever-growing mass support. Mass support is necessary. Maybe we know what we’re doing here.
We have to outlast them with only a few years of escalating antagonism and harassment. That’s it. Protracted. Peoples. War.
Stop thinking of it as primarily a set-piece battle between the rebels and the empire, it’s not, and those thoughts are leading people to the wrong conclusions (counter-revolutionary positions)
Hahaha this is actually a hilarious, succinct, and kind of spot-on counter-point to the argument 'americans could never defeat the american army, because it's the biggest army history has ever seen'.
Counterpoint: what war has the american army ever actually won hahahaha
To be pedantic, but the civil war, and the genocidal war against indigenous Americans. And we can question the various things the US had going for it that led to those victories, but at that point, how can we assign victory to any war by any force, and I'm already doing that by leaving out the war of 1812 and some other ones. Granted the US army hasn't won large series of battles (though it hasn't fought many battles like that since Korea either) that ended in enemy surrender since world war 2 (though there hasn't been a war within the US since the end of the native american wars, so that's a mixed sign.
Pedantic is good. ‘America always loses wars’ is one of those things that’s funny because it’s pretty true, but also couldn’t possibly be wholly true.
You’ve a good point about ‘no war on american soil’. I genuinely fear the american response if there’s ever a war on american soil. I mean, look at how people responded to 9/11. On the global scale, not the hugest thing; more americans were dying every day of covid than died there. But the response was... well, on a global scale.
Imagine if they got properly invaded, right? It’s a nation of, largely, hobbyist soldiers. Everyone’s armed to the teeth, looking for a fight, and extremely fragile. It would be explosive, fast, and very bloody, I fear.
Also, it’s not terribly fair to frame america as having been particularly helpful in WWII imo, which I know is a tired line haha. But, really, it’s like that douchebag in smash bros who turtles all game, only to come in with fresh legs and full stocks, and sweep people at the end, and then claim responsibility and dominance hahaha it’s a bit rich, frankly :P ;)
True regarding WW2, of course there are battles we could pick and say look in this battle resources were this and strategy was that, and it demonstrates victory or whatever, but again it's kinda pointless to debate war like that at point. I think it's unlikely there will be large scale war within the country no matter what, like if there's a revolution in the US either via some collapse of the country or democratic party collapse etc. I think it will be extremely quick. I think it's more likely that happens and sections of the country that resist balkanize, though who knows it could be nationwide or worldwide at that point.
Ya, I think I agree. At a certain point, I think that people, especially in rich places, are... moving beyond war? Which feels absurd to say about america, but I think makes a kind of sense.
As ideas like Human Rights become increasingly entrenched in culture, and as people continue to become, generally, less violent and more... content? I think we’ll see a much lower tolerance for total war. If some states seceded, I don’t think we’d see Civil War II: Baby Come Backaloo. Even as unlikely as seccession is at this point, I think it’s even less likely that it would come as war, if it did.
This is also assuming that many members of the military can't be convinced to defect to our cause, which simply makes things even easier for us.
How would we get to this point, though? I have a hard time imagining a future where a majority of the country doesn't (a) openly support whatever military dictator we're talking about, or (b) at least go along with it. Where would this popular resistance come from, especially with how easy it is to demonize any left-wing political group that engages in even minor violence?
Can I just slide this question and tell you the abstract truth sparing the messy details?
We’re already out there working on agitation. We have underground Red Guards and front orgs and everything. Perhaps you saw how we shut down capital in Canada for months by blockading rail traffic? Hi!
The Maoists and the masses are working on it. For real. Out there in radical orgs right now. Did you see the national approval rating for torching a police precinct? We’ll absolutely have the people on our side, all the way.
We’re moving further by organizing and trying to get as many people on the left side of the barricade as possible. Theory and praxis, same as ever.
There's a massive difference between supporting property destruction from afar and personally going out there with a gun to either shoot someone or get shot. I want to believe you, I just don't see a lot of evidence for it right now.
Also, those pipeline blockades failed. Like they got the MOU signed but I don't think it was really that substancial. The maoist groups fuckthepaintup's referring to are miniscule and not growing, and frankly often the ire of other left groups in the regions they are active in going off statements various indigenous left groups in canada have made towards the ones I know they're referring too, and they were not the spearheads of those blockades to begin with btw. And those railroad blockades resulted in large temporary layoffs for thousands of rail workers, and that lost them support. 65 percent of Canada supported the government forcibly removing them, and more than that had negative approvals of them by the end.