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.
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.
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.