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When is the time for violent revolution?
November 6, 2010 - 2:10am
Given the lefts failure to effect any positive change in the past few decades when exactly should the left advocate for violent revolution?
The question is fairly simple, anyone able to address it?
Things have gotten so bad that its not worth just whining anymore, when is the time to take control back from people that do not have our best interests in mind?
When the great depression hit people were smart enough to protest and change things for the better, ushering in the new deal, today as things get worse those in charge, the corporations, banks and crooked government, are actually convincing the stupid populous to help destroy itself.
The failure of the left, as sad as it seems, is clear, so when are we going to actually change things?
Violent revolution seems to me like a bit of a stretch, given the inability of "the left" to motivate people to vote.
If a poll was taken asking a sample of Canadians if they felt it was time for violent revolution, what percent of people do you think would say yes? What percentage do you think would be needed for such a violent revolution to be successful?
Well, we just saw a lot of people down here in the States advocating violent right-wing revolution.
They probably SCARED at least some people into voting Republican.
Still, that tactic wouldn't work for the left.
We have no way of getting enough guns.
The other side would always have MORE guns.
And it's almost impossible to make an effective case for violent actions, given the total inability of groups like the Weather Underground and other groups like them to make coherent cases for the things THEY did in any part of the public discourse.
Also, the majority of the people in the groups that would have to support a violent left uprising in North America are not as yet in a condition in which they feel taking up the gun is their only hope.
The answer to 'when is the time' would be, in my opinion, almost never. WZ above made some good points - if you can't even get the people to vote for you, why would you think they're going to pick up a gun or pitchfork and die for you?
- almost every violent revolution in history has just been one group of those-who-want-power against another similar group - the peasants have usually not gained anything at all. Obviously the revolutionary 'leaders' are more than capable of serious violence - violence which can be used, with a large peasant army, to overthrow an existing structure - and which can then be used to subdue the peasants back into their normal state, except with a new, and more often than not more brutal, master.
We do not need violent revolution here in Canada - we simply need to awake enough people to what is really going on, so they use the actual democratic means available to them to take back what should be *their* democracy. Not an easy task, to be sure - but far, far easier and better than trying to turn them into some new peasant army.
Final short point - a violent revolution today would have almost no chance of succeeding - the rulers have massive power in every way if anyone ever did 'take up arms' against them.
Maybe in a hundred or two hundred years some critical mass of the people of Canada will be as desperate as the French peasants of the late 1700s or the Russian peasnts a hundred-odd years later - but for now, I think the idea of violent revolution is just a complete dead end street, and such talk not to be encouraged, as it just takes time and energy away from what we really need to be doing. Sure, over a few beers some night for a break from the real work - but not as anything anyone should be taking serioiusly right now.
Spontaneous violent "revolution" is not the answer. Protracted, organized class struggle on explicitly political questions is, which requires not vote-getting machines, but mass party-movements. With this, eventually workers won't need to storm the Bastille in bloodshed, because the state power will have collapsed right in front of them (1917-1918).
If one were to describe the solution using an adjective in front of "socialism," that adjective is not:
1) Evolutionary
2) "Democratic"
3) Revolutionary
That adjective can, however, be "participatory" and "class-strugglist."
The other thing is, if you're THINKING about starting a violent uprising, posting about it in an Internet message board might NOT be the best tactical move.
Kind of messes with that "element of surprise" thing that you need to pull off a successful armed struggle.
I think that upheaval is inevitable due to the political and economic ideology we have followed here in the wealthiest western countries. When the fossil fuels run out and the "peak oil" phenomenon begins to occur, the consequences will be a shock to those who believed that this way of life would go on forever. They may vote for increasingly rightwing governments who will "go and get it" for them, or what the fictional character Joe Turner was told about the American people by his adversarial friend in the CIA in" Three Days of the Condor." I think we're seeing it happen now. Canada supplies only 15% of the USA's natural gas imports, but it's half of Canadian production. That can't go on forever. In fact, they barely made it through the winter in the North-East last year by what I've read. Significant change is coming in our life times. And it will be very different from the American or even Canadian dream of the 1950s and 60s era.
- actually, I think you could make a pretty strong argument that *real* "social democracy" (as opposed to any of the various faux-kinds we have around us these days) which I work for, is evolutionary, revolutionary and democratic ... we may be running into semantical things again, as there are probably as many definitions of 'socialism' as there are of any other controversial idea - including things like 'democracy' or even 'freedom' - the latter meaning completely contradictory things when defined by a capitalist (my freedom to dominate you) or a socialist (such as myself) - my freedom to NOT be dominated by you.
You also mention 'mass party movements' - something I have become very, very wary of - from the old Bolsheviks to various Communist parties to the Libs or Cons today - the general structure seems to be a leadership making decisions, and a large group of robotic party 'members' who fight without question for 'the cause' - adn are sacrificed without question by the leaders when they have become unproductive as workers or peasant-soldiers - there's nothing about the 'modern' demands for party-class-struggle that seems any different, to me.
Before the Comintern shit, recall from my works which you have that the Bolsheviks modelled themselves on the SPD model in Germany.
I was watching some videos of Noam Chomsky recently, one of his points is that if you are going to get violent then you have to make a very strong case for it ... now, I don't think you can make such a case without at least one or two others to bounce it around, there have been some actions in the UK, the Raython-9 and the B52-2 and some others, The Decommissioners, the Kingsnorth-6, I am surprised that these groups are not more talked about because actions with a very conscious and measured degree of violence (violence only against objects mind you) which end with aquittal in the courts ... well, this seems to me to be a game changer, maybe the pattern of including the number of defendants in these names has significance, comparable Canadian groups such as the Squamish-5 and the Mississauga-17 or even the FLQ do not seem to have thought things through so well, that old carpenter's adage - measure twice, cut once.
Social upheaval will come. Blood in the streets will probably be orchestrated by the political right as a way of justifying increased domestic security. They've been spying on the left since the 1950s. The NSA and CSIS don't care about foreign spies so much as homegrown anarchists and leftists and "reds" under their beds. I think 9/11 was just a test run. The people failed with flying colours. And I think it's an example of what's in store for the future if fascists back themselves into another corner.
Watching the degeneration of the Western world from the corporate revoloution of the past 25 years and witnessing the rapid descent of intolerance,racism,greed,selfishness,amorality and fascist tendencies,the time for direct action is NOW.
But motivating people to mobilize and take action is the trick...As it stands,you can't even get these people to a ballot box.
Perhaps the reason the ballot box isn't working is because the ballot box isn't the way to the solution. Or it's not perceived to be the way. Which I agree with.
If there is going to be mass (un)organized armed, violent or physical resistance, I highly doubt the organization of it, and the detailed discussion of it, will occur on an open, public discussion board.
My answer to the OP's question is, several years/decades ago.
My my. A rabble moderator apparently suggesting approval for violent revolution - but certainly, apparently, suggesting 'democracy', as defined by a vote, is not useful.
Could you expand on exactly how we take our country back from the capitalist overlords, if it's too late for violent revolution, but the ballot box is not the answer?
Living in Quebec,I perceive that the next provincial election (in 2013) will be a right vs left campaign.
When I read a few weeks back that Quebeckers were open to a 'new' party headed by Francois Legault and Joseph Fecal and that there was a Quebec chapter of the Tea Party North taking shape,I admit I was concerned.
But Quebec has some of the strongest unions in North America and to my delight,the unions want a new LEFT party...Union heads came out and said what I have been saying for years---right wing policies were erasing the middle class and have been a proven failure to your average working person,the poor,the ill and the aging populous.
There is such a huge wedge between the left and the right,that it looks like it's all going to inevitably come to a head.
The shit will hit the fan in the next couple years if this trend continues and there may well be a class war in the near future.
Whatever ends up taking place in Quebec in 2013 will influence what will happen in the ROC.
This could be good news for progressives or the kiss of death.
But clearly,there's no room for compromise...It's these conditions continue it will drive this country into a conflict that will ultimately culminate into revolution.
siamdave. Try to lay off the attempts at slander, okay?
Oka
Caledonia
Six Nations
Just because white men aren't directing certain movements doesn't mean that violent revolution isn't already going on in Canada right now.
And I don't speak for rabble.
Is there any historical example of citizens violently overthrowing an existing political system of a country where the people were as free to vote, as free to organize, and as free to speak as Canadians are?
I think the "violent" part of the question is a distraction. The first question to ask, I believe, is: When is the time for a revolution? Whether or not, or to what extent, it becomes "violent", depends on lots of factors - primarily, how far the rulers want to go in resisting the change.
It's pretty clear, for example, that a "revolution" took place in the Soviet Union and some of the Warsaw Pact countries over a period of years in the 1980s and 90s. There was some violence, but most of it didn't involve the "masses", but rather between cliques (like Boris Yeltsin shelling the parliament when it wasn't making the right decisions...).
So before talking about violence, we should talk about what "revolution" is. Your examples of FN struggles, Maysie, are certainly examples of violence - but not of "revolution", I wouldn't think. A defensive struggle against expropriation of one's land and rights could lead to a revolution, but in the instances you mentioned, I'm not sure that was even the aim of the insurgents, i.e., to change the underlying political power relationships.
Whatever revolution is, it's at least the wholesale transfer of political power (not just control or ownership of a piece of land, for instance) from one group in society to another. By "group", I don't think we can mean a party or a faction etc., because those kinds of violent coups and putsches happen in societies all the time without anyone even suggesting that a "revolution" has occurred.
There's a big difference between firm resistance and violent attack. They are not the same thing at all.
I think if the thought of the violent overthrow of our society makes your foot tap anxiously, your heart start racing, or gives you other similar physical reactions, you should probably find a better way to apply your talents. There is plenty of productive work not being done.
(edit)
Realizing that there are some situations where people are driven to it, I think violence equals failure.
Excellent post, Unionist.
Stopping the construction of the golf course at Oka was revolutionary for the people who live there.
- I suppose there's more semantics going on, but I don't think random acts of protest or violence actually constitute 'revolution'.
And what was the 'attempted slander'? Did I misinterpret something you said?
And if I am mistaken that you are a Babble mod, sorry. If I did not misinterpret it, maybe you should try to be a bit more clear about when you are and are not speaking as such.
Inquiring minds like to know.
There will never be an identifiable revolution in Canada. Certainly nothing orchestrated and led by anything that can be called "the left". The situation is far more complicated than A vs B.
The kind of clashes Maysie refers to will continue, as will demonstrations of various kind and size, all brutally squashed by an immense army of enforcers that we're paying for and supplying with more and more sophisticated weapons of mass control. There will be more prisons built and concentration camps; longer lists of suspects to arrest the night before anything goes down, of groups to intimidiate with home-searches, tax-audits and hard-drive-seizures. Incremental violence by the state against the citizen, long before there can be an uprising by the citizens.
We should be looking attentively to the south, where all this will happen sooner, and on a much larger scale. The gated communitied will hire more private security, and some of those communities will burn anyway. Food riots, cops-vs-homeless skirmishes, white supremacist gangs invading ethnic neighbourhoods; African and Hispanic youth forming militias of their own ... mass arrests, calling in of state and national guard; after a while, wholesale shootings in the street. No named and organized revolution, but maybe a new flare-up, or several, of the Civil War they never really stopped fighting.
However, there are at least two more factors, either of which can change the scenario in unpredictable ways.
Economic collapse. What happens when there is no viable currency to pay the mercenaries and police forces? What happens when a huge standing army is stranded in foreign lands, without money or transport? How do the soldiers who do make it home react to finding their families homeless and hungry? What happens when there are no goods produced or imported to buy with worthless paper? What happens when China calls in the loans?
Climate change. No matter how high a wall is built around Texas, when the equatorial regions turn to desert, people will migrate. No matter what or who is in the way. They will eventually be coming here, but only after fighting through a lot of Americans, and pushing a lot more Americans ahead of them. Neither their government nor ours will be prepared to deal with this problem, because they're still deep in denial.
I can't speak about the other examples but in the case of Caledonia it was and still is based on changing the underlying political power relationships both within the particular community and outside of it.
What I meant, Maysie and ElizaQ, is that I'm unaware of any First Nations that are fighting, violently or peacefully, to eliminate the current state power (i.e. the federal government) as a whole over their communities and replace it by another one. That's what I think most people mean by "revolution". Of course every struggle is aimed at changing power relationships - even a struggle by workers for (e.g.) the 8-hour day or the right to unionize. Such struggles can be huge, violent, lead to governmental change, etc. - they can be called "revolutionary" by both sides and by journalists - but they rarely involve a "revolution".
I'd rather not get involved in semantics. If the OP wanted to ask, "when is the time for violent struggle and protest?", then that's an entirely different question.
Maybe we need two very different threads.
I know of no violent revolution which ended up improving the lot of the populace. And no, Cuba is not an example
It has nothing to do with semantics. It does have something to do with awareness though which is why I commented. At the root of the Caledonia conflict was and is exactly as you suggest--- a struggle to over throw the current state governments power over their community both within it and without. Internally it took the form of some very intense power struggles between the traditional governance structure of the Confederacy (and supporters) vs imposed Indian Act governance. It was and still is a struggle related to sovereignty and in the Caledonia case, the Confederacy as a sovereign entity vs the Canadian state and it's political tenticles. One of the main demands and reasons behind the conflict, which was actually won to a certain extent, was to force not just the wider Canadian state to recognize the Confederacy as more then just a ceremonial power but within the community as well. It wasn't the Indian Act government that initially ended up in lead control of Six Nations side of the negotiation tables but the Confederacy. For a time the Canadian state and many on elected council including the elected chief at the time did everything in their power to keep that from happening but it was pushed by the people who stood up and forced the issue. While it might seem like a small thing to those on the outside or perhaps just don't know much about it this was a very big deal and sent waves throughout Turtle Island when it happened. The state of Canada lost that battle and is currently doing everything in their power to right (from their perspective) that loss. It was and still is quite revolutionary. Outside sources painted the conflict mostly as just the protesters demanding something from the Canadian state. In reality it was much more complex then that and still is. At it's heart is most definitely and conflict between traditionally derived political power and the political power imposed from the outside.
At one point the disputed land was even declared as sovereign territory under the auspices of the wider Confederacy. This occurred with representatives from all over Confederacy lands as well as from the Lakota territories as traditionally one sovereign nation is needed to recognize another. Yes perhaps largely symbolic but it speaks to the heart and minds of the people involved and to reasons it started in the first place.
Whether and how those initial successes will end up playing out remains to be seen. That's the problem with these sorts of things once you get through the initial oomph (rise up revolution part) the details of where to go next get messy and conflicted.
Almost no Canadians would say its time.
So for those that know better, should part of their responsibility be to help save the rest of Canada from itself?
Or should we be teaching our kids how to suck up to people for poor paying work, to grift and steal, seeing as their future looks rather bleak
I wasent think a revolution would scare people to vote, I was wondering when it would be ok to overthrow a government, violently if need be.
How many more decades should we wait?
It appears that Canadians arent catching on, so should we suffer in silence for 30 more years? maybe a generation or three?
Dont the better people of our society have a responsibility to the stupid?