Quote Originally Posted by infidel818
You are saying that in order to have a revolution there needs to be blood shed because thats how its been in the past. One significant thing history tells us is to not repeat its tragedies. Guns do not do anything but kill people.
Well, sorry to tell you, but guns are here for good. There's no getting rid of them. And as long as there are governments with organized militaries they will be used in brutal wars for money, power and conquest. The only way to stop the cycle of war is to get rid of the social conditions which allow for war.
Now you tell me, if you wanted to start a revolution with guns galore...how long would you last? Especially against the government? The civilians are extremely underpowered.
Quite the contrary. The civilians are all that is keeping the government in place. Where would the government be without the consent of ordinary people like taxpayers, manual laborers and soldiers? If enough of these people decide they no longer want to support the government, the government will be powerless. The point is not to get a few people together to go on a shootout with the military—it is to convince the masses to take their lives into their own hands. It's not all about "guns galore", but the revolution does have to be able to defend itself.
Dont you see what is happening? People think war is the answer to getting what they want, but there are other ways. If you start a war and shoot the enemy, they will just come shoot back, and it will keep going untill everyone is dead. Its sad to think that people need to kill another in order to gain something. If you have that state of mind, you are only supporting the wars that have been fought, and the war thats being fought right now. Nowadays, we can not afford to FIGHT, we need to focus on surviving! Because this whole fucking planet is going to shit! and if we keep having a fighting mentality, sooner or later there will be nothing left, and we'll be fighting with sticks and stones.
I'm not saying violence is desirable. I'm just saying it's inevitable. Non-violence just doesn't work against tyrants. The revolution is not about destruction, it is about the restructuring of social relationships. We want people to be equal, but to abolish inequality we realize we may have to fight some people who wish to retain their power over others and are willing to die for that. Alexander Berkman put it better than I ever could:
Most people have very confused notions about revolution. To them it means just fighting, smashing things, destroying. It is the same as if rolling up your sleeves for work should be considered as the work itself that you have to do. The fighting part of revolution is merely the rolling up of your sleeves. The real, actual task is ahead.

What is that task?

"The destruction of the existing conditions," you reply.

True. But conditions are not destroyed by breaking and smashing things. You can't destroy wage slavery by wrecking the machinery in mills and factories, can you? You won't destroy government by setting fire to the White House.

To think of revolution in terms of violence and destruction is to misinterpret and falsify the whole idea of it. In practical application such a conception is bound to lead to disastrous results.

When a great thinker, like the famous Anarchist Bakunin, speaks of revolution as destruction, he has in mind the ideas of authority and obedience which are to be destroyed. It is for this reason that he said that destruction means construction, for to destroy a false belief is indeed most constructive work.

But the average man, and too often even the revolutionist, thoughtlessly talks of revolution as being exclusively destructive in the physical sense of the word. That is a wrong and dangerous view. The sooner we get rid of it the better.

Revolution, and particularly the social revolution, is not destruction but construction. This cannot be sufficiently emphasized, and unless we clearly realize it, revolution will remain only destructive and thereby always a failure. Naturally revolution is accompanied by violence, but you might as well say that building a new house in place of an old one is destructive because you have first to tear down the old one. Revolution is the culminating point of a certain evolutionary process: it begins with a violent upheaval. It is the rolling up of your sleeves preparatory to starting the actual work.