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Having overthrown capitalism, the capitalists will organise their own resistance, they will call in their friends from abroad, and their enemies abroad will move in to take advantage of the situation. What to do here?


Here the revolution needs to defend itself against a most powerful enemy: International capitalism. Yes, it could organise non-violent resistance, but then, like the cops at Birmingham, the capitalists wont give a s**t and will employ violence. Workers will either resist the violence with force, or become disillusioned with all the death and suffering brought about by the reaction that they give up. So it [the revolution] needs to mobilise the forces of the country, and this includes the population. Now we can assume that the working class, having overthrown capitalism will be willing to fight against its restoration without too much compulsion. But what of the rest of society: The farmers, the shopkeepers, the intellectuals, the local capitalists who haven't been able (or were too cocky) to flee abroad?


Some among them will come over to the new order quickly enough, some will come over with reservations and will flee at the first sign of trouble, and others will actively oppose it, organising terrorism and insurrection and espionage for the counter-revolution.


So not only is the working class the only class with the ability and interest in overthrowing capitalism, it is the only class with the ability and interest to keep it overthrown. In enacting the most basic measures against these opponents of the new order, however, the working class is forced to overstep the bounds of pure democracy: Keep counter-revolutionaries out of the revolutionary militia, keep technical experts under constant watch, possibly the institution of hostages, forced requisitions of food from farmers which may support the revolution-but not that much-or outright oppose it, and at every moment the threat of a bullet in the face to anyone engaged in counter-revolutionary activities. What is this if not the dictatorship of the proletariat?


With the capitalists subdued, let us imagine on a world scale, the damage to the economy is immense. Factories lay dormant, even destroyed, railways have been dynamited and need repairing, mines are flooded, oil wells burnt, farms lay empty, starvation is rampant, the technical experts, mostly supporters of the old regime, are either dead or untrustworthy and are constantly working to increase their own privileges...


So now the world economy has actually been set back a few years, possibly decades. there is NO possibility of providing that 'decent life' for all now. So the task before the international union of the working class is to re-build the economy. This requires international planning, totally incompatible with the anarchist fetish for local communal independence, it also requires the strictest discipline, totally incompatible with the anarchist fetish for personal independence. It will be important to buy the allegiance of the pro-capitalist technical experts, so they will be granted special privileges in the form of higher wages, for a time at least. Populations will have to be moved around, peasants brought into the city, and possiby even entire cities moved.


There WILL be a reaction by the peasantry, and there will need to be military confrontations with them.


But over time, the economy improves, wages are increased, rations are replaced with market mechanisms so people can buy more if they wish, or buy different quantities to their taste, and as more is produced, prices go down, until prices don't even matter. When you go to the supermarket you don't pay, you don't swipe a labour card, you just swipe the item itself, registering that it has been taken from the general stockpile, allowing records to be kept, and planning for next year to be conducted accurately. As scarcity disappears, the need for compulsion will as well. Agriculture becomes industrialised, while the city spreads out, becoming thinner and slowly the separation between country and city is eliminated and, as is my favourite phrase, becomes a general mush. The workers state, the dictatorship of the proletariat will become less severe, the powers needed less often, until eventually they are but a distant, and unfortunate, memory.

This is something I wrote in response to a discussion about anarchism and communism, and so to show how meaningless anarchism is, I showed how consistent pacifist anarchism is forced to act Leninist in order to remain revolutionary. To the extent that they refuse this, they refuse revolution itself. This assumes that in every situation things go as well as we can hope for the anarchists, without being stupid about it.

I don't discount the existence of non-pacifist anarchism, however pacifism is both the strain that this post was specifically targeted at, it is rather popular at the moment as a form of lifestyle anarchism, and because I consider pacifism to be a logical extension of anarchist thought, specifically the idea of personal autonomy and opposition to coercion means that one has to be opposed to the violence of workers against the capitalists and their lackeys. Of course there are many anarchists who disagree, and say that while they are opposed to violence, counter-violence is both a different issue and necessary. While I feel that that position is fiddling with words in order to avoid that contradiction of anarchist thought, its not something I focus on because while I consider it contradictory, it is much less stupid than pacifism.

However while the comments about pacifism may not apply to you, the rest of the post, about the rise of a revolutionary state, does,so it would be cool if you wrote a response to that.

So now the world economy has actually been set back a few years, possibly decades. there is NO possibility of providing that 'decent life' for all now. So the task before the international union of the working class is to re-build the economy. This requires international planning, totally incompatible with the anarchist fetish for local communal independence, it also requires the strictest discipline, totally incompatible with the anarchist fetish for personal independence. It will be important to buy the allegiance of the pro-capitalist technical experts, so they will be granted special privileges in the form of higher wages, for a time at least. Populations will have to be moved around, peasants brought into the city, and possiby even entire cities moved.