Revolution

Let's talk about revolution as a both a concept and possibility in reference to the modern world.

First off, is it even possible? In an age of mass surveillance and advanced military hardware, could a revolution really succeed?
Secondly, would it be worth it? Could we design and maintain a post-revolutionary system that both embodies our beliefs and maintains civil order?
Thirdly, would a revolution automatically trigger a three-way conflict between us, the state, and the radical right?
Discuss

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bump

1. it's not possible without the backing of at least a decent faction of the army of course, but militia still have their part to play

2. yes, it would be worth it, we are sleepwalking into disaster by doing nothing. war is hell but this one would actually achieve something.

3. the radical right would most likely just be subsumed into the state at that point, they're born bootlickers when you get down to it.

We need to make leftism cool again like punk rock did in the 80s and 90s and the hippies did in the 60s. Obviously these movements were incredibly flawed but this whole "conservatism is counter culture" maymay is attracting young people.

once a modern state falls into the cycle of unrest, repression and intensified unrest its days are pretty much numbered. State Repression tends to make people angrier, destroying state legitimacy. See what happened during the so called arab spring. Once the state collapses, large sectors of the armed forces will defect outright, swaths of the country will become lawless territory disputed by local militias. A rump government could remain, centred in major cities were support is still high, if only due to fear of hobbesian chaos. If a large, diverse country say, the united states collapses, it is likely we might end up in a 4th generation warfare/nonlinear war/ balkanisation scenario. I think you underestimate how incompetent the government and the armed forces can be and how divided they are. These are the same people who lost wars against vietnamese peasants and afghan pastoralists. tech and advanced weaponry aren't magic. The military industrial complex is notoriously inefficient. hi tech projects are often glorified subsidies to manufacturers that lack any practical combat utility. Remember those F35 jets? they have cost Uncle Sam over a trillion dollars so far, and they keep falling apart in their hangars.

A SDF like big tent model combined with a grassroots leftist movement could be a practical strategy. look into what the kurds have been doing in Rojava.

Why sage?

must've left my email in the email field by mistake.

What about the radical right libertarians who wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near the government?

I had a laugh.

But they exist

bumpu

How do we do that? Do we disassociate ourselves with idpolers and tout pro-working class rhetoric and scapegoat the elite?

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I find it amusing that young people think they're revolting against us when they're actually fighting classical liberalism

Violent revolution isn't possible in first world countries in this age. Revolution's gotta be a combination of elections, mutual aid, unionizing, activism, agorism, and strategic violence. You have to actively work to create a better system and not just expect it to appear after the old one is gone. Slowly create a vacuum, and slowly fill it.

Revolution is unachievable and undesirable for most people, as far as I see it. Take small steps, vote for more leftist parties. We'll get there eventually.

creasing at this post.

what about the threat of collapse? feels more like a race against time imo

Pretty sure people were saying the exact same thing, before WW1.

Currently things are too stable and people too satisfied with what they have. No chance for revolution under these circumstances.

We're on the verge of another recession and most western economies are poised to go the way of Japan in the absence of serious intervention.
Sooner or later the stable misery is going to take it's toll on people's psyches.

1. Yes, it’s still possible. Just look at the Huthies

2. Yes, If you don’t have power you can change nothing

3. Only if we’re to slow.

Does this mean an Independent, Socialist New England?

Obviously yes

When that happens is when the revolution starts.

In the absence of a weakening of state power in the face of environmental, social, and capitalist crisis, no. Fortunately the probability of all three occurring in the near future is almost certain.

Modern revolutionary movements will be possible, and likely take the form of localized revolts and popular movements which take hold in more peripheral areas of the capitalist world, create their own political and economic structures, and fight for some kind of autonomy from whatever nation state they are a part of. The success of these movements depends on how well they can form post-capitalist economic systems to sustain themselves, and if they can network together to form a unified movement or confederation of territories. Unfortunately the only really instructive examples of this aside from Rojava are groups like ISIS, which were able to form structures of dual power, hold territory and govern it, despite being abhorrent in nature.

Perhaps movements could be more integrated into existing state and party systems in smaller nations with more self-sufficient economies and no imperialist ambitions, like the Nordics, etc. Given the track record of "democratic socialism" I doubt it would be easy, though.

Yes. Virtual spyware can't tell you what's written on a piece of paper. Advanced targeting systems on a tank don't provide you with any benefit over a guy in a spider hole with an RPG.

Military technology especially has advanced with the goal of fighting other advanced militaries. The technological edge that a modern military has over an insurgency today would only be marginally greater than what the Americans had over the Vietcong, since most of the advancements since the 1960s have been in electronic warfare, targeting systems (which don't provide any real advantage over the kinds of tactics guerrillas use anyway), or else have been countered with weapons available to such a force (stronger armour is met with stronger handheld rockets, etc).

A canard I used to hear a lot from Murkans is that the American "Revolution" didn't end in a messy dictatorship because he revolution itself was rather placid. Armies were relatively civilized (despite the Murkans bringing in several innovations that would had the British calling them terrorists if the word already existed lel), and the scale of the battles was minuscule. Materially, it was more of a jamboree than a revolution. Only a little later the French showed the world how you make a real revolution, and that and the ensuing wars reinforce the canard about the American revolution.

I think it's a bit too simplistic, but there might be some philosophy worth developing there. Logically, if you create a system that rewards amorality and ruthlessness, you shouldn't be surprised if it becomes stuffed with psychopaths. A brutal system favors brutal men. The best example being Stalin's communist party. Lenin created a big authoritarian framework arguably for winning the revolution, and so the legend goes, he would dismantle it later. Stalin took it and really put it to good use. As we all know, he imprinted his personality on the party, and built his power base by promoting merciless but craven men, little copies of himself minus his balls. With a party-government like that, it was inevitable that the Soviet experiment wouldn't be what it should have been.

So then, a desperate and violent situation would generate a desperate and violent revolution would generate a desperate and violent society. Again, seems simplistic, but also seems to make sense. Socialist revolutions seem to rely on times of utter catastrophe in order to be born or succeed, i.e. WW1, WW2, so it's possible that socialist revolutions are doomed to beget authoritarian States.

inb4 you can't judge Stalin, he had to fight Hitler etc.


If there is an independent, anti-establishment leftist faction, the State will ally with the far right.


Has any such neo-revolution ever happened?


Yemen is a utterly miserable country that barely had a government to begin with. If it wasn't this, they would have found another reason to keep a long, dragging war going. It's a whole different scenario from developing or developed countries.

pmub

the question isn't, has it ever happened?, but, how can we make it happen? the muh end of history narrative, ie. nothing is gonna happen ever again, is crumbling before our very eyes. The sense of an eternal present only took hold in the west after WWII. and its grasp has always been fragile.

Just asking because hey, if it happened once, odds are higher that it will happen a second time. And there would be material about it for me to read.

Regardless, I agree 1st world countries will never see a violent revolution, but I think it won't see the one you mentioned either. Material comfort doesn't make people only disinclined towards violence, but disinclined towards change in general. Not to mention the further pacification caused by shit like alienation, mass media, propaganda etc.

b

banal platitudes such as 'this can never happen', are grounded on a frozen concept of history. 'material comfort' has been plummeting since the end of the postwar golden years. the concept of the 1st world is meaningless in a deindustrialising post cold war era. is Greece '1st world'? doesn't a massive potential for violence slumber in the unconscious of American normality? Your faith in 'progress' and its liberal agents is naive. Revolution might be the only way to avert total catastrophe.

See, that's one of those extremely important things that are nearly impossible to write down. How does one measure comfort? Same with happiness, overall life quality and such. In fact, I'd say that the smooth running of capitalism actually depends on the continued non-existence of such figures. Do you know of a good measure for material comfort? Because the only ones I can think of are real income and real prices of goods.

I think of 1st world in terms of sheer wealth and of gretly reducing basic social ills like misery, illiteracy, homelessness etc. I'd say that there is potential for slumber even in the middle class masses of the 1st world, but sadly not in service of socialism. The middle class isn't a revolutionary one, because they want to keep whatever wealth it has, and fears socialism will worsen their lot. Remember, the situation in Russia had to get positively apocalyptic for the masses to finally take the plunge, and unlike their diminutive middle class, they didn't even have much to lose in the first place.

I don't have faith in progress so much as curiosity for what the other comr8 said. Seeing as I don't think rich countries will ever rise up, I'd have to hope for this neo-revolution he mentioned, because like you say, it might be the only way to avert catastrophe.

my comrade

Revolutions can only go as planned if revolutionary power structures are built beforehand which coexist and compete with the bourgeois, colonial, or feudal state. Otherwise there is a vacuum of power, which usually leads to a civil war, eventually resulting in a military dictatorship. The French and Chinese revolutions are examples of this.

Since labor unions are on the decline, and workers councils exist pretty much nowhere, there isn´t much use talking about revolution in the developed world until there is a resurge in workers organization, or until we find a new way to build dual power (prefigurative cybernetics anyone?).

The first world means superpowers–imperialist nations–not just fully developed countries. Japan, Canada and most of Europe are all fully developed, and many of them, but they are still not first world.

I think we have different definitions of first world then. I would call most of the OCDE first world.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Worlds_Theory

I think our only real option is to spread socialistic ideas through the populace, maybe even on an individual basis over time and remove the stupid stigma on the word and its concepts

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