When you mention revolution, most people’s thoughts tend to scenarios that begin with pitchforks, proceed to guillotines, and end up in the Gulag. No doubt there are revolutions that have ended badly, betraying the people for whom they were putatively staged and directing violence at them rather than the overseers of the regime that made revolution necessary. Usually the blame is preemptively laid on those who recognized the need for revolution in the first place, while the pre-existing regime, its violence, and its long-term destruction escape responsibility, as do its aspirants and its dupes.

I rarely quote cold warriors for their valuable insight, but when John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”, he largely spoke the truth. (Not lost is the stunning irony that this statement came from a leader whose work was done on behalf of the capitalist imperialism that set off so many violent revolutions.) Regardless, when life becomes materially or spiritually intolerable while promising to get worse, when faith in institutions dies, and a large enough percentage of the people will have no more of it, the contemporary political and economic culture must go. Because Capital continually short-circuits and undermines the more peaceful means of revolution, like the major parties’ use of sham primaries, the method and sequelae of the current political and economic culture’s passing becomes not just more violent, but harder to predict and control.

Capital then lays blame on the revolutionaries.

I often imagine what revolution would look like in the United States and other sham democracies. In line with Chomsky’s famous dictum, we have the appearance of free debate and free elections, but it all exists within a narrow range that the mass media never allow us to exceed, one that protects Capital without remorse and takes great pains to paint alternatives as impossible, unworkable, and foolish. No one who threatens Capital will be allowed near the levers of power, not even a mild reformer and ostensible Social Democrat whose “political revolution” was nothing more than a return to a version of welfare state capitalism that hasn’t existed for decades.

We must also remember that while capitalism’s mass media are exercising their control of the acceptable range of opinion, capital also shifts its image in ways that create an easily digested narrative that presents Capital and its agents as progressive and fair--if we would only do capitalism right!--personified by both our current president and our inevitable Democratic nominee. For the lazy, the bought off, and the ignorant, it works like a charm. Amazingly, the notion of giving a Black or female presidential candidate the bludgeon capital uses to impoverish and kill countless women and people of color, both at home and abroad, represents progress to millions.

But to be successful, the coming revolution cannot be violent, despite the immense violence of the bourgeois government. I say this not as a pacifist, but as someone who recognizes that violent revolution against a nation state with the power of the US is impossible. To correct Kennedy’s formulation, making peaceful revolution impossible makes violent resistance inevitable, but successful revolution will depend, as always, on a accurate reading of the zeitgeist, successful organization, and the foolish assumption on the part of enemies that they are too smart and powerful to loose.

​There is much debate over the presence of guns in our society, and how, at least from a conservative and even a few leftist perspectives, guns protect us against possible tyranny. This point of view is unrealistic.

It's as simple as this: the flick of a proverbial switch will shut down the financial and transport systems; place roadblocks or lob a few bombs onto roads, bridges, runways, etc. No food. No gas. Our thin line of NRA patriots will be busy trying to keep the canned goods in their basement and the gas in their trucks from being stolen by other NRA types that there will be no time for revolution. Should armed revolutionaries gather and the government doesn’t want to get too violent too fast, there is an interesting sonic weapon known as the LRAD, designed to deafen anyone who approaches it. I'm told the LRAD itself won't kill you--not the common version--but it will damn sure make you think twice about showing up again. And it doesn't take a grain of gunpowder.

Then there's the Active Denial System, aka "heat ray", a putatively non-lethal device that will cook you like a microwave oven would, since it operates on the same principle. (It's non-lethal assuming you run away...and the operator doesn't want you to fry, assuming s/he knows what s/he's doing.

Again, no bullets, yet. Rest assured, the government has plenty when the LRAD and “heat ray” are not longer effective.

Did I mention the US Government has decided it has the power to say who is a terrorist, who is a threat, and that it has detained thousands of people without charge and murdered many of them?

To understand when and how revolution is possible, we must think in terms of what tactics are likely to work, and which tactics are strategically futile (but not always useless). This is where we encounter the necessity of planning and practicing peaceful revolution. We have no choice but to plan being non-violent, since violence would provoke an overwhelming and fatal response. All we do is effectively transparent to them. The Surveillance State was not built at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to resist a relatively small number of militants from abroad. It’s just too big. The reality is that domestic resistance is a far bigger threat to the ruling class and a far harder one to stop. The Security State was built to stop a popular uprising against the ever increasing impoverishment and the discontent of the middle class and the working poor, something that could be catalyzed dangerously by effective resistance from the poor as an example the ever more restive middle class might take to heart.

In my opinion, the only action that will alter the behavior of the plutocracy is civil disobedience on a scale that significantly disrupts corporate cash flow and promises to do for so long that it becomes worth it to them to make a deal. Even at that point, I see a 50% chance that the government will be "stimulated" by the same plutocracy (and please note this is the same state/corporate partnership that worked to destroy Occupy Wall Street and put elderly Quakers under surveillance) to declare martial law and use anti-terror laws to imprison the movement's leaders and as many other activists and protesters as possible for as long as possible.

How that civil disobedience could unfold and who is likely to participate will be my next piece.

Crossposted to GOS