RE: FW: a violent revolution? (fwd)

elson wrote:

>Unless the dictionary has changed since the
>last time I looked, "revolution" is not quite the same thing as
>"violence."
>Indeed, there can be revolutions without violence.  We have the example
>of
>the Glorious English [bourgeois] Revolution of 1688-89.  (But again, is
>seizing state power really part of "revolutionary" change?  I don't think
>so, nor do many Marxists these days.)

i do not know which marxists you have in mind these days, but "seizing
state power" is "part" of revolutionary change. if not, what is it? a
myth? here is the example of lenin, mao and others. marx's communist
manifesto suggests a similar line of perspective when marx argues that the
working classes "will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees,all
capital from  bourgeois, to centralise all instruments of production in
the hands of the state, ie., of the proleteriat organized as the ruling
class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as
possible". the revolutions without violence were not complete revolutions
(bourgeois) because they did not bring an end to relations of domination
and oppression. bourgeois revolutions were half revolutions in the sense
that they only replaced feudal property rights in favor of bourgeois
rights. they did not attempt at a radical rupture with property relations 
in favor of oppressed classes. the rich became richer and richer, and the
poor, poorer and poorer. none of those bourgeois revolutions were
revolutions par excellence(transformative in a socialist sense). 

thinking about a revolution without violence or seizure of state power
is a revisionist/bourgeois interpretation of revolutions. moreover, Marx
criticizes such a perspective in his critique of "the possibility of
non-violent revolution" (Tucker ed., Marx-engels reader, p.522) and says:
"someday  the worker must seize political power in order to build up the
new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which
sustain the old institutions". marx was not a crude economic determinist
as the text-book interpretations of his analysis of capitalism writes.
(see kautsky versus lenin dabate). he believed in both _contingency_ and
_inevitability_. capitalism is doomed to death because it is not a
self-sustaining system and it leads to huge disparities of wealth, whereas
it also needs the politization of working classes, party and seizure of
state power to realize and facilitate the transition from captalism to
socialism. two go hand in hand, in a dialectical way. neither is mutually
exclusive of the other. at the moment,seizure of state power is
especially necessary in third world countries where the struggle is
against both the indegenous capitalism and core countries. as Lenin also
reminded many moons ago that the seizure of state power is crucial in
countries where the productive forces have not fully developed (or in a
stage of agrarian capitalism), so that the revolution can bring about an
emancipation from feudalism and capitalism at the same time. my bottom
line is that violent revolution is necessary for practical and ideological
purposes if overthrow of the system is targeted. if not, this is 
another problem worth discussion..   


Mine
phd, politics
SUNY/Albany