Logical,

Do you think capitalism came into being non-violently?

Do you think the millions of people who made up the ‘original’ working class of Europe left the land by which they sustained themselves of their own free will? Do you think millions of them just up and decided that they would leave the land which they were entitled under Feudal society to work, and their homes, to go and be propertyless labourers in industrial capitals, living in slums with no guarantee of an income, a roof over their heads and food on their table?

No - they were driven from their land by force. And to this day they remain separated from the land, and the means of production to sustain themselves, which they are still rightly entitled to as human beings, by state force. The means of production of the entire world are privately held in the hands of a small section of society. The only way this can ultimately be maintained is by the threat of violence, and the actual use of violence.

They are not going to give it up “peacefully” through voting or anything else. They have put in place the “democracy” which works to serve them. They own the media which propagates the ideas that they are entitled to private property and the poor have only themselves to blame. They decide which political parties are acceptable and deny the rest media coverage. They control the education system which propagates their version of society and history. They control the police and the armies, the courts and the “institutions”. They will use all the ‘democratic’ tricks they can muster – “social-democracy” is one of those tricks, and if that fails they will use violence.

In ‘Their Morals and Ours’ Leon Trotsky pointed out that “history has different yardsticks for the cruelty” of the oppressed and the oppressor. “A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!”

You, in your “committed” civil libertarianism, could probably see that the only way a man could have become a slave is through a denial of his “civil liberties”, through violence, or threat of violence – a slave wouldn’t willingly be shackled. And the only way he could remain a slave is by the propagation of “ideas” that he is somehow inferior to a non-slave, and that the slave holder is therefore justified in “owning” a sub-human being like an animal. And the ultimate way of keeping him in slavery is through violence or the threat of violence, and the lack of any other options (i.e. society considers slave-holding legitimate and will use collective violence in the maintenance of the slave system, making a ‘freed’ slave a marked man).

Would you begrudge a slave using whatever means necessary to free himself? Would you “condone” his use of violence? Or would you tell him he should submit to the “legitimate” authority of the slave-holder and the slave-holder’s ‘laws’ and ‘morality’? Would you tell him to use books and words, when books were denied him and dissenting words were punished with a whipping.

Indeed the end to slavery in the US was won through the ‘violence’ of civil war, even though a ‘democracy’ existed. Do you think the northerner’s shouldn’t have used violence? Should they have only used ‘peaceful’ means against systematized violence?

The acknowledgement that violence is sometimes necessary is not the same as advocating violence. And using violence to free oneself from oppression is an entirely different thing than using it oppress.

The Russian Revolution spontaneously began by people – women actually - taking to the streets demanding bread (you know – to eat), an end to autocracy, and an end to war. Reasonable requests, and hardly ‘violent’ - “legitimate expectations of the average man” I would have thought. And the movement grew from there.

But violence was used against them – in an effort to deny their demands for bread, an end to autocracy, and an end to war. How do you explain and justify that?

Tao. Your paranoia about all our institutions is showing through.I have not excluded the possibility that violence can occasionally be morally justified. However I have a strong preference for the ballot box, reasoned argument and civil disobedience. The latter actually work in democratic states. They do not exist or work in dictatorships where dissent is ruthlessly and routinely supressed.
You have repeatedly refused to explain what features your revolution would have that would stop it morphing into yet another totalitarian state.
At this juncture I intend to leave this thread. Feel free to interpret this as admission of defeat if that helps your ego. I can only hope that if others have being silently following this thread they will adopt evolution over revolution. In the mean time you remain free, in this wonderful democracy, to support actions that would pull it asunder.

Logical,

Of course, you are free to leave this thread. Free to end “reasoned argument” in which you have failed to offer detailed analysis of why social democracy has resulted in a redistribution of wealth towards the rich. Free to end reasoned argument as to why social democracy voted for war, and why it turned on workers. Free to end reasoned argument about why the first revolution in which the working class took power was defeated through violence with the aid of social democracy. These things are not unrelated, and require extensive study and elaboration, but you choose not to do so.

I on the other hand, you require me to provide simplistic answers to a question that is extremely complex:

“You-have-repeatedly-refused-to-explain-what-features-your-revolution-would-have-that-would-stop-it-morphing-into-yet-another-totalitarian-state.”

On the contrary, I have explained to you reasonably, that such a guarantee cannot be made, but that, as in all human endeavours, we have to learn from past experiences, and that a setback is no reason to give up and accept the massive social inequality that exists in, and is perpetuated by the capitalist system. I have also provided examples of things that affected the course of a revolution, which are out of the control of those who carry it out.

You somehow think that I can, in the course of a few days, with a limit of 1400 words per day, sum up all of the problems faced by the working class in the 20th century, and how they can avoid the traps in the future.

Perhaps that is the method by which Social Democrats operate with a few trite slogans “its time” and “no child will live in poverty by 1990”, “the ladder of opportunity” and “a bridge too far, but not far enough”. However, Marxists engage in much more in depth study of events and examine more than their superficial appearance and then as Lenin insisted, “patiently explain”.

Given that I have had to spend much of my word limit refuting the most basic errors in your (and Col’s) conceptions, assumptions, and simplistic statements (another demonstration follows below), I have hardly had the space to elaborate on anything else. But by all means, feel free to leave now and end our “reasoned debate”.

“However-I-have-a-strong-preference-for-the-ballot-box,-reasoned-argument-and-civil-disobedience.-The-latter-actually-work-in-democratic-states.”

Really? Before the start of the Iraq war, millions took to the streets all over the world (in civil disobedience) against the war. Did it work?

Reasoned argument was obliterated with lies and fabricated “intelligence” and simplistic cries of good versus evil. Did it work?

Recently, the US people came out to vote against the war, but both parties (including the equivalent of social democracy) in their “democracy” are now preparing to escalate the war. Did the ballot box work?

What option do the American people, and indeed the world’s people, have now? No doubt you will (if you bother to stay on this thread) come up with some more excuses for bourgeois democracy, which will need refuting. At the very least they must build a new mass party of the international working class.

“I-have-not-excluded-the-possibility-that-violence-can-occasionally-be-morally-justified.”--“In-other-words-you-condone-the-use-of-violence-to-achieve-your-ends-while-condemning-those-who-use-violence-to-perpetuate-their-capitalist-ends.”

Actually Logical, you appear to condone the use of violence (by cowardly ignoring and avoiding discussion of it) by capitalists as “morally justified”, but condemn those who use it to free themselves.

And hopefully anyone who has been “silently following this thread” studies Marxists, particularly Trotsky, who unswervingly struggled against Stalinism and for Marxism until the end of his life (killed by Stalin’s henchman). Hopefully, at the very least, if they find themselves in a revolutionary situation, they remember to look below the surface of what is said by social democratic politicians to what they actually do.

So by all means, escape this thread and end our “reasoned debate”. “Feel-free-to-interpret-this-as-admission-of-defeat-if-that-helps-your-ego”. No, I don’t interpret it as an admission of defeat. More like a cowardly withdrawal in the face of possible defeat (a la Whitlam), something social democrats do all too well.

Tao “Before the start of the Iraq war, millions took to the streets all over the world (in civil disobedience) against the war. Did it work?”

No but hundreds of millions, who supported the governments did not “take to the streets”

And those who did “take to the streets” - they were disobeying the capitalist governments which they participated in elections to govern.

Did the capitalist governments open up with guns and shoot them?

Did their government send in tanks and crush them?

I recall

Beijing 1989, the communist government crushed people with tanks.

I recall Hungary 1956, the communist government of Russia crushed people with tanks.

I recall the anti-communist uprisings in Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and a dozen more, where people took to the streets and the communists regimes collapsed.

Why did the communist regimes, with their secret police, fail in the face of public protest and the capitalist regime, without the same “offices of oppression”, sustain the dissent of what you claim were the “millions took to the streets all over the world (in civil disobedience) “ ?

I look forward to seeing your answer to that tao.

Seems to me, tao, you have a very limited and selective memory regarding social revolutions.