I was going to start a "robots take over the world and are impossible to kill" thread at first, but it kind of asks the same question, and that is: is it possible that the revolution can become impossible?

Or, rather, could the ruling class become so powerful that they would be able to prevent any uprising by the majority of the people?

Prevent? I don't know.

In my own city of 100k, we only have about 200 cops. Not many people out there challenging the status quo, right now.

Assuming that the 200 cops, all the State police within an hour, the NG at the airport and armory, at the State capitol a half hour away, and another 1k armed servants of power - the total enweaponed number of persons would be about 2.5k.

Assuming that each government man has a sidearm, a rifle or shot gun, 4 grenades - and doesn't miss a single shot, doesn't find himself removed from conflict, doesn't find himself separated from this theoretically perfect column of armed stooges, I think that this column of bastards could kill approximately 20k citizens.

Leaving 80k left to overwhelm them, with raw fisty labor.

Pretty good odds, right?

So why no revolution?

Because the outposts of control are not actually with or within the minority of people in exercise and possessoin of that control.

Steve Biko: The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressors is the mind of the oppressed.

The first space colonized is the mind.

In any society where the people cannot conceive of uprising, isn't revolution already impossible? Doesn't it have to do more with the "minds of the oppressed" than the controlling agencies of the ruling class?

I don't know, in all truth.

But, it seemed a good way to reply to your excellent question.

The ruling classes comprise perhaps... 5% of the world's population. The other 95% just needs to see and understand the need for revolution.

I have wondered about capitalists bombing cities that have revolted. The means of killing in the hands of the state ie the military have far greater means of destruction than ever before. Of course the military would likely split and join the proletariat but it would only take a few ruling class tools to drop bombs from planes. That said I will of course continue to organize nonetheless. What choice do we have.

Why would members of the military revolt? The same folks who routinely take money and obey orders, in order to kill off nearly a million Iraqis? The ones currently doing the dirty work of the Russian, US, British and French governments in half a hundred nations?

Did Russian conscript soldiers revolt when Putin crushed Chechnya under untold tonnage of explosives?

Did American working class, oppressed minority soldiers join the proletariat after the American war machine obliterated Fallujah? After Obama's professional cadre of leakers revealed his commitment to send 40k more of them into Afghanistan?

I don't think so. As Rise Like Lions the ruling class makes up a small minority of the worlds population. And the nature of Capitalism means they will always be a minute minority.

If you look at the current state of the US working class you might also think that it would never revolt either but you would be wrong. The contradictions of this system produce revolt. I am not saying that the military as a whole does not contain disgusting bigots, it does. I am saying that the military also contains thinking human beings who can break from what the official interpretation of events is and can become activists challenging a fucked up society. Their experience of being put in a position where they see the horrible consequences of their actions on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan can bring them to question what they are doing and stand up against it by going AWOL or refusing orders. I have met people myself who fit this description. Not only can soldiers fight against war but they can and do challenge class society as a whole, after all soldiers are exploited workers IMO. The military itself has class divisions with careerist officers sending troops on missions that get them killed so the higher rankers can get promotions. And many revolutions include soldiers refusing to fire upon their fellow workers. Of course we are not at this point now but this is a possibility. It should be noted that a GI revolt during the Vietnam war was a big part of why the US ended it.

Check out these links for more info,

Iraq Veterans Against the War
http://www.ivaw.org/

ISO articles from Socialist Worker
http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/3...promise-broken
http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/2...ber-resistance
http://socialistworker.org/2009/09/3...rs-of-the-army

GI resistance to Vietnam War
http://www.isreview.org/issues/09/soldiers_revolt.shtml

Numerous Books on GI movements past and present
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/produc...oducts_id=1773

http://www.haymarketbooks.org/produc...oducts_id=1613

http://www.haymarketbooks.org/produc...oducts_id=1614

http://www.haymarketbooks.org/produc...oducts_id=1597

http://www.haymarketbooks.org/produc...oducts_id=1606

This thread and its "answers" can only be based on personal opinions and assumptions, not facts.So there is really not the correct or wrong answer we can give you.
I do think though, that the power of the people, if it comes from the heart, and it uprises the masses ruling class dont has much chance.Without the people nothing works, so if they go against them, lots of there expensive high tech equipments will be useless.
So no, in my opinion revolution will always be possible.

Fuserg9

I wrote nothing of "never" I questioned your faith assertion.

Following Rosa, you have not demonstrated how the mysticism of "contradictions" (left vague, no less) "produces" of its own disjointed and allegedly independent existence, revolt.

This smacks of another faith assertion, namely that of determinism.

I mentioned nothing of bigotry. I only asked, to repeat,

We are discussing those people currently drawn from the laboring class, in large percentages, currently murdering others (most often then not, also of the same class, or the very poor) for the government dollar, pound, euro, ruble or renminbi.

These people, right now, enforce with real weapons, real funds and real laws, the mandates of the ruling class. This is not theoretical. It's happening as we type.

Okay. Are you now backtracking from this position, then?:[

QUOTE]Of course the military would likely split and join the proletariat but it would only take a few ruling class tools to drop bombs from planes./QUOTE]

Above, you suggest in rather broad terms that "the military [will] split and join the proletariat." The military. The whole lot of 'em.

This was the assertion, again one I think you made from faith, which I questioned, since it seems to me a deterministic, and therefore too hopeful, reading of the near future.

I do not doubt that some men and women (one once notable example being the former communist, Stan Goff) draw from their experiences of combat and occupation the direct import of their own actions, and the ends to which they murdered others.

Some. For reasons which I think are rather apparent (the several million Americans, as but one example, currently in US uniform, under arms who are not in revolt), the assertion that ruling class and government brutality will necessarily result in the splitting away of "the military" in order that they all might "join the proletariat," as if is a voluntary club, no less - well, I think this is hopeful, utopian, ridiculous hogwash.

I apologize for the harshness of phrase, but I really can think of no other which conveys how damaging this utopian determinism really is - it's dirty water fit only to wash factory swine, on their way to slaughter at the hands of their masters.

I'm not sure how the stories of a few uniformed dissenters conveys the truth of your assertion that:

I labor for that better tomorrow, and a better now. But I refuse to do it with any self-delusion. With that in mind, I cannot in honesty count on this utopian future you seem to assert by faith.

And when John Brown was caught trying to start a revolt of slaves in the US south, he was executed and only a handful of abolitionists mourned. 10 years later union soldiers sand "John Brown's Body" as they marched south and destroyed the plantation system.

Radical change is not a mechanical series of steps or ratios of guns to people. People have to be convinced that a strike, riot, rebellion, or revolution can actually happen in order for them to really begin to participate in large numbers. Most large movements from the French and Russian Revolutions to civil rights began with a few people challenging the system (usually with modest, not radical, aims - like a constitutional monarchy, the end of Tzarism in favor of parlementaryism, the end of segregation).

Marxism 101: the working class has the means of production and IF ORGANIZED COOPERATIVELY can take it into its own hands.

Imagine if militant and revolutionary workers in the electric companies and phone companies and transportation industries struck together - the entire country would be shut down. No good coming through ports, electricity and phones could be shut off.

It's not just speculation it has happened many times throughout the last century in many countries.

This is how workers can really win a revolution and why the working class is the only group that can pull it off. Charging cops, fighting the military may or may not win, but it doesn't do anything by itself to help workers win power.
Marx: the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class. Everything in our society is geared towards showing that the status-quo of business is the normal and best order for the world. It was the same in Feudalism where every priest, teacher, noble, sermon, public art, poem represented a view that god has put everyone in their right place from the worms to the kings.

... but this didn't stop the bourgeois from organizing and fighting because the old order was against their class interests.

I believe that unless the structure of society changes, there will always be rebellions and revolutions periodically - the real question for me is will the win and if so will we actually have the self-emancipation of the working class.

Well, there's your problem, no wonder you don't believe things change.

If you believe that things like exploitation (i.e. profit is made by paying workers less than their labor creates) are "mysticism", then why are you on this website?

Did anyone here say that rebellion is always guaranteed? the only one making a deterministic argument appears to be you when you suggest that outnumbering cops is all that stands in the way of Revolution.
The other comrade was clearly saying that, yes, some individual workers or GIs have fully bought into ruling class ideas and are probably never going to align with the working class. Come on, the point was pretty clear - you seem to be trying to nitpick or make some kind of straw-man argument about dialectics or economic determinism or something.

And what magical substance makes the class interest of workers in past revolts different than the interests of people living under the same basic set-up today? The Russian and German soldiers bought into patriotism and killed plenty of workers - yet after a few years they were mutinying and turning their guns on their officers and many joined full-on revolts.



Okay. Are you now backtracking from this position, then?:[

QUOTE]Of course the military would likely split and join the proletariat but it would only take a few ruling class tools to drop bombs from planes./QUOTE]

It would be ridiculous to count on this happening totally spontaneously. When there have been the kind of revolts we are talking about it's been in the context of a larger revolt in society so that soldiers were aware that there are alternatives to the status quo.

Funny, I feel the same way about strawman arguments. Clearly you have no interest in the actual history and politics being discussed here - you want to rant about some philosophical position that isn't even part of this discussion.

You are deluded with an impressionistic view of how history works. People revolted in the past and will continue to do so - it doesn't happen on the timetables we desire, but it will happen.

What strikes me here is this idealist look at the statistics of how much of the population is the bourgeois = we can all outnumber them and that's the end. What I'm concerned with as being the main obstacles in the way of a communist revolution is the overwhelming power of the state (think how police respond to protests, how the FBI treated the BPP, police breaking picket lines, etc) and the false ideological apparatuses that prop up their legitimacy, and how us communists haven't really found an effective way to communicate our ideas to the masses. I think those are the fundamental contradictions that need to be solved for a revolution to take place.

Yes, the irony is that the ruling class of this system makes the system worse for the other classes, so sooner or later we would expect a revolution.

However, we can not dismiss the point that society develops new technology. 100 years ago, stopping a crowd with the power of sound or other some such weaponry was not possible, today it is. Chemical weaponry and other "invisible" weapons are possible too.

To clarify, laws have for as long as recorded been in place much because society believed they worked, and while they have been enforced, enough "people power" have been able to break, change, or end those laws. Guns made it harder, but also to the enemy. But now we have tracking devices, sound waves, pilotless airplanes, and so on. In a short while, you wouldn't even have soldiers to do all the fighting, machines could be enough. This is more the concern I am meaning.

Good points. I think technology in production - under capitalism - has not really changed the structure of the system, just the way we relate to that structure or to production. In some ways this makes things more difficult to organize while in other ways it gives us better opportunities.

So I guess in short, I think it's true that there have been many changes since the turn of the century (the one before 2000, that is) and we need to be flexible and open to organizing in new ways - we can't organize workers on a line in a auto plant the same way we might organize coffee shop workers, for example - but the underlying problems and conflicts of capitalism are the sames as in 1848, 1917, 1968, and 2009.

Well, going back to the idea of organizing GIs - this is why it's important to find out where the fault lines within the military are and rip them right open. In Vietnam, the revolt began with black GIs who - because of the civil rights experience - were more prepared to resist and protest and already knew that the US government didn't care about them or their freedom. After this more enlisted GIs began rebelling and a few officers. But at the height of both the bombing and the GI resistance, officers in the airforce and navy actually refused orders.

As Brecht said, your tank is big and powerful, but it has one problem it needs a solider to operate it and soldiers have a mind of their own.

As radicals, it's our job to create a resistance so that workers and soldiers have a traddition to look to and the political space to follow their own interests and know that when they are court-marshalled or fired, there are militants who have their back and won't let the bosses and officers get away with it.

I think the fact that suicides in the military are higher than ever and there have been a few flip-out of soldiers this year (including at Fort Hood) demonstrates that soldiers even in the US empire are not brainwashed pro-empire killers. If there was a larger anti-war movement, then soldiers would feel safer going AWOL and knowing there were networks set-up to help them out; they would be able to organize resistance withhin if there was a big movement for financial and political support.

You can't 'solve' them because they would be part of a pretty revolutionary wave, most times nowdays the police don't need to breakup picket lines; the unions do it for them. When they did have to, the times were usually a lot more revolutionary.

The way the police respond to protests is outmaneuverable too, look at seattle 1999 and the overwhelming work between peaceful and non-peaceful direct action protestors, it can all be done tbh.

No they don't; they produce antagonism, which may or may not lead to revolt, submission or civil suicide.

Don't kid yourself. The majority of the working class' is very much in the thrall of capitalism. It's like when you really love a person despite their many betrayals; Time after time you forgive 'em and grant them "just one more chance" only to be disappointed anew.

Ah, the power of misdirected love!

of course its possible for the revolution to become impossible. capitalism's death is inevitable. our victory is not.

You are right, there is nothing automatic in the way class antagonisms express themselves.

However, the working class is not in love with capitalism even in an unhealthy and abusive way. If the majority of the working class was really enthralled with capitalism, the majority of the working class wouldn't play lotto, dream of being a sports of film or music state, or fool themselves into thinking one day they will finally start that business or invent that widget that will send their ship sailing on in. If workers were really enthralled with the system, there wouldn't be the levels of sabotage and stealing that we see at work (at my job a IT person tried to blackmail the management by changing all the passwords - additionally we have monthly memos about cracking down on alcohol or food and even furniture "disappearing").

A better description would be that, if anything, the working class currently has Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to the system. The ruling class has pushed with all its might the idea that there is no alternative to the system (and the particularly brutal neoliberal form at that). If people don't think there is any better alternative, they are not going to fight, they are going to do their best to adapt to the situation.

If people would have asked a black person in the jim-crow south what they though of jim-crow, they probably would have said it was necessary - evil, but "the way it is". Early black civil rights activists often faced hostility from other black people and groups who feared a confrontation with the racist codes of the South. But at a certain point, there was no going back and the civil rights movement exploded and gained a lot more support because people saw that jim-crow could be confronted and beaten.

This is why I think we need to fight for strike victories and small reforms that help the working class because it builds expectations that collective action by the working class people can win and that radical politics can help build a better world.

You misunderstand what I'm saying. Not so much as "solved" but "defeated". The ideological constructs that legitimate state violence need to be shown as having no clothes. I think you focused on the one part of my post you could argue with as well, rather than the whole argument.

While I endorse the WTO protests, predominantly petty-bourgeois protesters =/= the working masses.

The only way that revolution would become possible, in my opinion, necessarily includes significant improvements in the income of the working class.
There is no better way to pacify the disenfranchised, the marginalised and the exploited than money. That is, if by "revolution" we mean not only the redistribution of wealth, but also that workers themselves own the means of production and control its ends, as well as the disintegration of the State into a network of voluntary associations.
It may seem cynical of me, but buying people off proved a formidable method in maintaining status quo.
On the other hand, the myth making ideological discourse and its apparatus seems well aware of the crippling general "atmosphere" - of despair, apathy and complete lack of vision - and thus taking great advantage from it. It may be that the greatest problem is that most men and women are not capable of imagining a different vision of social bonds, economic practices and political action, and above all - a different vision of freedom. History offers nothing but bankrupt examples (I expect that so called authoritarian revolutionaries will get fairly pissed off by such a claim), if we should follow someone else's footsteps blindly. However, if we are to learn and extrapolate valuable lessons and general modes of action which could serve as a guiding light from such examples, the role of history would be very significant.

And what do you suggest. Just propaganda?

Obviously we need unified organs (mass parties or federations or the more loosely defined 'parties') for class-struggle, but the only way we can truly communicate our ideas to the masses is by working in the working-class as working-class militants (yes petty-bourgeois are generally not welcome in this part at all) and agitating (and educating although I don't like that word as it implies workers are stupid) for socialism.

That is just an unfounded sectarian smear in all fairness. All protests nowdays are covered in petty-bourgeois, it doesn't somehow mean they outnumber or indeed outdo the working-class people at protests though. Obviously, I'm talking about the first-world ones in general, but yeah some are obviously a lot better than others. I would say the WTO ones were one of the better ones for sure.