and has recently promoted the idea that “democratic socialism must be criminalized.”
They’ll all be killed. Democratic socialism is irresponsible because it leaves socialists defenseless when the state determines democracy must be prevented.
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects,
especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we
would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed
revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would
ask: “Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in
Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves,
and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR
who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined,
moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back
then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful,
democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by
people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate,
because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without
hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s
unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not
allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century
were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal
international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too
much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it
really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they
did.
I have been weighing reading this book but I am apprehensive that it is just going to be unrelentingly depressing with no further takeaway than “here is all the times the capitalist system won, and here are how many it killed”
Kind of? I found it more…not sure what the word is, filled me with a sense of “this is what they will do (the capitalists), there is no level they want stoop to, which means we have to stop them.” It more made me angry at capitalists than sad about failed revolutions.
But either way it’s important to read and educate yourself on why certain movements failed, in order to avoid making the same mistakes.
(And seeing your other comment, I’m in the same boat, weapons are borderline impossible to get in my country, but that doesn’t mean it’s truly impossible, it’s only impossible if you’re playing by the rules the capitalists set specifically to try and prevent you from defending yourself and others.)
Yeah, it isn’t something I look forward to, but I wouldn’t trust anyone who is eager for revolution. It’s going to be awful and bloody, but the capitalists leave us with no choice other than revolution or complete subjugation.
Allende won 3 elections in a row as a demsoc in Chile, what followed was the US sponsored Pinochet coup and the mass murder of 30,000 socialist organisers, setting back organising in the country by many decades.
Here is Allende’s last speech, given by radio while the airforce was bombing bridges in the capital, moments before he would be dead.
Bourgeois democracy is a myth. It is only allowed to exist so long as it serves the cause of the ruling class. When democracy no longer serves that cause they abandon it. If democratic socialists succeed they will be subjected to mass violence and their movement will be defenseless against it. Only revolutionary organising can achieve socialism because only revolutionary organising builds with the intent of socialists holding the weapons, organisations and power to defend themselves.
If you do not plan for violence as an inevitability, you are defenseless when the capitalists turn against democracy. If you want further reading on this, The Jakarta Method goes into detail on the same problem occurring in Indonesia where 1 million of us were killed because they did not arm themselves.
Democratic socialism is irresponsible and will get people killed. I do not hate these people, they are real socialists, but I very firmly believe that history shows this path gets people killed when it succeeds.
While I completely agree with everything you have written, I don’t have a gun, neither does anyone I know, neither does any organization I know. Guns are basically impossible to get where I am.
I understand that violence is an inevitability, what am I to do about it with no weapons and no source?
(This is not an invitation to fedpost lol)
I’m also curious about your opinion of my comment elsewhere in this thread, I’ll repost it here:
I have been weighing reading this book but I am apprehensive that it is just going to be unrelentingly depressing with no further takeaway than “here is all the times the capitalist system won, and here are how many it killed”
You’re an individual. It’s not the job of the individual to arm themselves.
The issue is not getting arms, those can be acquired by revolutionary organisations via smuggling and international comrades when the moment arrives. The issue is ensuring that people are mentally prepared to take up arms instead of rolling over for the fascist death squads. The demsoc method results in people being mentally unprepared and unwilling to take up arms. They roll over and die when the fascist death squads start their work. The revolutionary method prepares people to fight because they have always known that fighting is inevitable.
You say there is no source for weapons. What you really mean is “weapons are illegal”, which is correct but is a mentality flaw caused by democratic socialist ideology. The weapons can be brought in, illegally, via international smuggling and comrades. Tens of thousands of people travelled to Spain to participate in the revolution, tens of thousands travelled to Rojava to participate in their revolution (no matter how people feel about what happened in Syria). If revolutionary movements are significant and viable comrades will work to resolve these sourcing issues. The issue is not in where to get weapons, the issue is in making sure you and others are prepared and mentally willing to hold them when the time comes.
Really good post, but with one caveat, that it’s critical to begin physical preparations before there are fascist death squads in the streets. This is not an individual issue but something that your group/formation should be working on internally. I agree though that the mental and political issue is more important and that where there is a will, folks can find a way to acquire necessary armaments (and not through Internet forums!).
Again I agree with you 100%. But I don’t have it in me to assign blame to those who don’t have it in them to kill, and who would rather be killed than live with having killed.
I also think there are more long term benefits to the kind of organizing that is happening today around demsoc politicians, even if a demsoc elected is not a viable end goal.
I just don’t think the organization you’re describing as superior arrives from nowhere, but from laborious organizing, education, and radicalization over time. And people who come to those movements are largely aligned on political objectives. Personally I wouldn’t be where I am today politically without my previous electoral campaign work, even though I now see electoralism as the slightest brake on immiseration at best, and a total waste of time at worst. It took elections for me to see the charade of electoralism. (Although a plurality of people don’t vote, so I guess seeing that doesn’t necessarily align with a political ideology.)
I’m curious, what do you see as the alternate organizing centerpiece, aside from electoral campaigns and founding a political party, that can realistically pull in a critical mass of regular people? Or do you see the objective as totally different? How does the organization you describe arise?
Edit: you’re welcome to point me to reading as well
As a seemingly nascent group in the heart of capitalist empire, a place where the term socialist had (and still mostly has) no meaning, SocDem electoralism can do exactly what you described: bring people towards the left, and some continue on by reading, doing work, and analyzing failure.
The danger is when those same SocDem groups then face a disciplined and more correct left formation. They reflexively fight against it and proclaim as loud as they can that only their way works and wins, just go knock more doors and get more people elected. They say, “don’t listen to the tankies”. Their critics must be wrong for their electoral rot to be considered prime.
You will find that among the SocDems, and the higher in their ranks you search, are some of those most dishonest people you will ever meet. This may be surprising, as they seem to agree with you 90% of the time (30% of that is just words to them). But the moment you fall out of line and challenge them from the left, actually challenge their proximity to power or careers (or sometimes just their egos), and you will suddenly feel like you just criticized Mr. President (D) in a group of Dem party operatives. Meal ticket under threat, you are now every epithet they can think of and tokenize themselves to throw at you.
Fun examples:
“Your” suggestion of being antizionist is a threat to growing the organization and we will use dishonesty and parliamentary procedure to silence you and not allow the issue to be decided.
Defunding of the police is no longer relevant and when we are in charge we will want them.
We can’t speak out against this Democrat Rep warmonger and provider of genocidal arms because we might need them to say nice things about us in the future.
Imperialist weapons contractors are workers, too. Where is your “just transition” (theirs is just not thinking about this at all)?
The fact is that change will not happen without organized violence. The most elementary formation in which organized violence can be wielded is the paramilitary. Anything else is not build on anything. What would happen if the NYPD simply shoot Mamdani in the head? Mamdani doesn’t have a paramilitary to protect him nor conduct reprisal hits on members of the NYPD. Should Mamdani’s continued existence incur a higher political cost than getting rid of him by any means necessary, he will simply be liquidated, perhaps in a dramatic fashion to make an example out of him.
Of course, a paramilitary is just an ever-diminishing group of people with guns if they don’t have support from the local community that they can recruit fallen members from. Usually, there would need to be a political apparatus that onboard, vet, and ideologically train potential recruits so you don’t just hand a loose cannon an assault rifle. It’s also there so the paramilitary doesn’t devolve into a bunch of marauders with some charismatic warlord leading the pack. The political apparatus can be divided between mass orgs that target normal people with looser org discipline and a party where there’s an strict expectation of party discipline and ideological agreement over the party programme among cadre.
Consequently, counterinsurgency is deployed by the state to make sure that these elements never coalesce together. Armed militant groups are manipulated to be nothing more than gangsters warring against one another instead of united against the state. Mass orgs are manipulated to be tailist and not push back against the reactionary tendencies of the masses. Political parties are manipulated to be out of touch with the masses and allergic towards violence.
Democratic socialists as they exist in the West are that last sentence. They tend to act like activists who do not see a place for violence, especially organized violence. At best, you will have a rowdy protest where stuff gets thrown at cops. But if you read police counterinsurgency manuals, they absolutely treat even the most benign protest as an insurgency action. Those nonviolence protests are just seen as an insurgency action where the insurgents are too stupid and cowardly to fight back. That is how cops see nonviolent protests.
Again I agree with you 100%. But I don’t have it in me to assign blame to those who don’t have it in them to kill, and who would rather be killed than live with having killed.
I’m not interested in assigning blame, but if someone would literally rather be tortured to death than shoot an active pogromist because of potential guilt over the death of the pogromist, we don’t necessarily need to treat that as an essential element of their nature, and I would argue that such a totalizing aversion to defending yourself and your whole community is probably the less healthy attitude.
Do not call DemSuccs “us” please. They are not real socialists they are imperialist dogs who only want free healthcare because they want specifically themselves not to die and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone in the global south that they have spent their entire lives subjugating by reaping the benefits of imperialism. Stalin recognized them as the moderate wing of fascism for a reason.
Distinction without a difference. They are fools who refuse to embrace the necessity of authoritarian socialism because it would make them personally uncomfortable and cling to the bourgois lie of democracy. No love.
the other does not but has the wrong approach to ending it
Which means they prop up capitalism. Again, these are comfortable first worlders who don’t want too much change to happen too fast lest their own standard of living is impacted, when a real socialist analysis would reveal the plain truth that the living standard of the first world MUST be decreased.
No man. Every single person on the planet who isn’t part of your specific ideological tendency is not “propping up capitalism”. This is not a useful attitude, they are not enemies whereas the socdems are.
They’ll all be killed. Democratic socialism is irresponsible because it leaves socialists defenseless when the state determines democracy must be prevented.
Can you expand on this idea?
—Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method
I have been weighing reading this book but I am apprehensive that it is just going to be unrelentingly depressing with no further takeaway than “here is all the times the capitalist system won, and here are how many it killed”
Am I off base?
Kind of? I found it more…not sure what the word is, filled me with a sense of “this is what they will do (the capitalists), there is no level they want stoop to, which means we have to stop them.” It more made me angry at capitalists than sad about failed revolutions.
But either way it’s important to read and educate yourself on why certain movements failed, in order to avoid making the same mistakes.
(And seeing your other comment, I’m in the same boat, weapons are borderline impossible to get in my country, but that doesn’t mean it’s truly impossible, it’s only impossible if you’re playing by the rules the capitalists set specifically to try and prevent you from defending yourself and others.)
Me facing federal weapons charges:
Jk thank u for your perspective
Yeah, it isn’t something I look forward to, but I wouldn’t trust anyone who is eager for revolution. It’s going to be awful and bloody, but the capitalists leave us with no choice other than revolution or complete subjugation.
I mean you can still take away important information from all the times capitalism won
Can I do it for 300 pages without wanting to turn the first weapon I see on myself? That’s the question lol
Oh yeah, yourself will be the last person you want to be pointing a weapon at.
Allende won 3 elections in a row as a demsoc in Chile, what followed was the US sponsored Pinochet coup and the mass murder of 30,000 socialist organisers, setting back organising in the country by many decades.
Here is Allende’s last speech, given by radio while the airforce was bombing bridges in the capital, moments before he would be dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZVWOWA2Hpk
Bourgeois democracy is a myth. It is only allowed to exist so long as it serves the cause of the ruling class. When democracy no longer serves that cause they abandon it. If democratic socialists succeed they will be subjected to mass violence and their movement will be defenseless against it. Only revolutionary organising can achieve socialism because only revolutionary organising builds with the intent of socialists holding the weapons, organisations and power to defend themselves.
If you do not plan for violence as an inevitability, you are defenseless when the capitalists turn against democracy. If you want further reading on this, The Jakarta Method goes into detail on the same problem occurring in Indonesia where 1 million of us were killed because they did not arm themselves.
Democratic socialism is irresponsible and will get people killed. I do not hate these people, they are real socialists, but I very firmly believe that history shows this path gets people killed when it succeeds.
While I completely agree with everything you have written, I don’t have a gun, neither does anyone I know, neither does any organization I know. Guns are basically impossible to get where I am.
I understand that violence is an inevitability, what am I to do about it with no weapons and no source?
(This is not an invitation to fedpost lol)
I’m also curious about your opinion of my comment elsewhere in this thread, I’ll repost it here:
I have been weighing reading this book but I am apprehensive that it is just going to be unrelentingly depressing with no further takeaway than “here is all the times the capitalist system won, and here are how many it killed”
Am I off base?
You’re an individual. It’s not the job of the individual to arm themselves.
The issue is not getting arms, those can be acquired by revolutionary organisations via smuggling and international comrades when the moment arrives. The issue is ensuring that people are mentally prepared to take up arms instead of rolling over for the fascist death squads. The demsoc method results in people being mentally unprepared and unwilling to take up arms. They roll over and die when the fascist death squads start their work. The revolutionary method prepares people to fight because they have always known that fighting is inevitable.
You say there is no source for weapons. What you really mean is “weapons are illegal”, which is correct but is a mentality flaw caused by democratic socialist ideology. The weapons can be brought in, illegally, via international smuggling and comrades. Tens of thousands of people travelled to Spain to participate in the revolution, tens of thousands travelled to Rojava to participate in their revolution (no matter how people feel about what happened in Syria). If revolutionary movements are significant and viable comrades will work to resolve these sourcing issues. The issue is not in where to get weapons, the issue is in making sure you and others are prepared and mentally willing to hold them when the time comes.
Really good post, but with one caveat, that it’s critical to begin physical preparations before there are fascist death squads in the streets. This is not an individual issue but something that your group/formation should be working on internally. I agree though that the mental and political issue is more important and that where there is a will, folks can find a way to acquire necessary armaments (and not through Internet forums!).
Again I agree with you 100%. But I don’t have it in me to assign blame to those who don’t have it in them to kill, and who would rather be killed than live with having killed.
I also think there are more long term benefits to the kind of organizing that is happening today around demsoc politicians, even if a demsoc elected is not a viable end goal.
Longterm benefits like what? When the demsocs start succeeding, everyone gets killed and the movement is reset.
I just don’t think the organization you’re describing as superior arrives from nowhere, but from laborious organizing, education, and radicalization over time. And people who come to those movements are largely aligned on political objectives. Personally I wouldn’t be where I am today politically without my previous electoral campaign work, even though I now see electoralism as the slightest brake on immiseration at best, and a total waste of time at worst. It took elections for me to see the charade of electoralism. (Although a plurality of people don’t vote, so I guess seeing that doesn’t necessarily align with a political ideology.)
I’m curious, what do you see as the alternate organizing centerpiece, aside from electoral campaigns and founding a political party, that can realistically pull in a critical mass of regular people? Or do you see the objective as totally different? How does the organization you describe arise?
Edit: you’re welcome to point me to reading as well
As a seemingly nascent group in the heart of capitalist empire, a place where the term socialist had (and still mostly has) no meaning, SocDem electoralism can do exactly what you described: bring people towards the left, and some continue on by reading, doing work, and analyzing failure.
The danger is when those same SocDem groups then face a disciplined and more correct left formation. They reflexively fight against it and proclaim as loud as they can that only their way works and wins, just go knock more doors and get more people elected. They say, “don’t listen to the tankies”. Their critics must be wrong for their electoral rot to be considered prime.
You will find that among the SocDems, and the higher in their ranks you search, are some of those most dishonest people you will ever meet. This may be surprising, as they seem to agree with you 90% of the time (30% of that is just words to them). But the moment you fall out of line and challenge them from the left, actually challenge their proximity to power or careers (or sometimes just their egos), and you will suddenly feel like you just criticized Mr. President (D) in a group of Dem party operatives. Meal ticket under threat, you are now every epithet they can think of and tokenize themselves to throw at you.
Fun examples:
The fact is that change will not happen without organized violence. The most elementary formation in which organized violence can be wielded is the paramilitary. Anything else is not build on anything. What would happen if the NYPD simply shoot Mamdani in the head? Mamdani doesn’t have a paramilitary to protect him nor conduct reprisal hits on members of the NYPD. Should Mamdani’s continued existence incur a higher political cost than getting rid of him by any means necessary, he will simply be liquidated, perhaps in a dramatic fashion to make an example out of him.
Of course, a paramilitary is just an ever-diminishing group of people with guns if they don’t have support from the local community that they can recruit fallen members from. Usually, there would need to be a political apparatus that onboard, vet, and ideologically train potential recruits so you don’t just hand a loose cannon an assault rifle. It’s also there so the paramilitary doesn’t devolve into a bunch of marauders with some charismatic warlord leading the pack. The political apparatus can be divided between mass orgs that target normal people with looser org discipline and a party where there’s an strict expectation of party discipline and ideological agreement over the party programme among cadre.
Consequently, counterinsurgency is deployed by the state to make sure that these elements never coalesce together. Armed militant groups are manipulated to be nothing more than gangsters warring against one another instead of united against the state. Mass orgs are manipulated to be tailist and not push back against the reactionary tendencies of the masses. Political parties are manipulated to be out of touch with the masses and allergic towards violence.
Democratic socialists as they exist in the West are that last sentence. They tend to act like activists who do not see a place for violence, especially organized violence. At best, you will have a rowdy protest where stuff gets thrown at cops. But if you read police counterinsurgency manuals, they absolutely treat even the most benign protest as an insurgency action. Those nonviolence protests are just seen as an insurgency action where the insurgents are too stupid and cowardly to fight back. That is how cops see nonviolent protests.
I’m not interested in assigning blame, but if someone would literally rather be tortured to death than shoot an active pogromist because of potential guilt over the death of the pogromist, we don’t necessarily need to treat that as an essential element of their nature, and I would argue that such a totalizing aversion to defending yourself and your whole community is probably the less healthy attitude.
Do not call DemSuccs “us” please. They are not real socialists they are imperialist dogs who only want free healthcare because they want specifically themselves not to die and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone in the global south that they have spent their entire lives subjugating by reaping the benefits of imperialism. Stalin recognized them as the moderate wing of fascism for a reason.
Socdems are not the same thing as demsocs.
Distinction without a difference. They are fools who refuse to embrace the necessity of authoritarian socialism because it would make them personally uncomfortable and cling to the bourgois lie of democracy. No love.
There is a very clear distinction. One supports capitalism and the other does not but has the wrong approach to ending it.
Which means they prop up capitalism. Again, these are comfortable first worlders who don’t want too much change to happen too fast lest their own standard of living is impacted, when a real socialist analysis would reveal the plain truth that the living standard of the first world MUST be decreased.
No man. Every single person on the planet who isn’t part of your specific ideological tendency is not “propping up capitalism”. This is not a useful attitude, they are not enemies whereas the socdems are.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Chile, 1973
Jamie, pull up the Wikipedia page for Indonesia
all of latin american history