Weak Links?

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Dec 12 18:52:43 PST 2002


Todd Archer wrote:
>
> Armed revolution is one
> road to follow, one that I don't think will happen

Just a point of clarification. "Armed revolution" is not the same as insurrection. The Rusian and Spanish Revolutions were _not_ armed revolutions. The counter-revolution, not the revolution, was the instigator of military confrontation in those two cases.

Also "non-violent" and "peaceful" do not mean the same thing. The Iranian revolution was mostly peaceful, but it was not a non-violent revolution.

The example of Chile most dramatically shows that even an _electoral_ victory, if it is to lead to socialism, must immediately arm the people to protect against the inevitable counter-revolution.

Sweden and Cuba are both sports in some ways. Attempting to see them as models is utterly confusing.

Probably Iran is the closest approximation to what a revolution in a developed capitalist country would look like. (A very crude and distant approximation of what we can't actually envixion -- but at least it won't create the confusions that Sweden and Cuba create.)

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list