this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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The us situation is not uniquely fucked. I used the us because it's a clear example, but every country has a prison population, which is one of many examples of force being used to maintain the current system.
I think you think that this concept of force might be a qualifier of something bad - it isn't. A revolution would also take force, fighting against capitalists would also take force.
Converting "hearts and minds" is all well and good, but when the capitalists coup you (which they will) you're gonna need force to maintain your system
Read the bottom replies if you wanna argue this, I don't want to repeatedly type out the same stuff on a phone.
Ultimately if the workers are unified capitalist don't have the power to coup anyone unless you are a dictatorship with a strongman to coup but that's no better than the current system. The 1% of people will never be more powerful than a unified 99%, like if that is achieved I doubt you even need force but I do consider it to be acceptable to fulfill the will of the people. Force is not the primary, way or even secondary, that capitalism is maintained, it's division and diversion.
Get it thru your dense head: Division and diversion, arrests, lies all of these things can only be, because they are insured by the backbone of state-monopolized violence. How is this so hard to get? No one is saying that tanks are.out in the streets every day, the point is that there is an implicit knowledge that the oppressors can always turn to violence - or force - to maintain the status quo.
A force that is both puny and irrelevant in the face of the whole working class acting together.
I mean, no? The USSR had a successful revolution and was almost defeated by the white army. The Paris commune was crushed by the forces of capital, Salvador Allende was murdered by capital, Cuba barely survived its infancy or the fall of the Soviet Union, COINTELPRO has crushed many nascent movements as well as the BPP, the government of Iran was couped as well as many others.
Pretending line capital does not have immense power is silly. Pretending we do not exist in a society wherein left movements are routinely hinted, crushed, suppressed, destroyed or subverted is naive and silly.
Every single revolution was long and drawn out, the victories precarious and hard-won. It's not a cake-walk. And even then it is impressively idealistic to go "the people united are indivisible" because yeah sure, but that unity has never been available. Reactionaries are a thing, fifth columnists are a thing. The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks fought each other, the makhnovosts and soviets fought each other, China and Vietnam waged war against each other.
You gotta accept the reality of the world you're in, and work from there. I would suggest reading Engels "On Authority"
I have also brought up how having a dictator rule the working class with an iron fist is not a unified working class but an equally oppressed one. Having one strongman on top makes any country vulnerable.
All of that is irrelevant though without unity you have nothing but people shouting into the void of social media. No revolution or movement goes anywhere without unity and it's the only way to achieve socialism.