monty

If you are reading this article, you are almost certainly a communist or a sympathizer. An important divide within the communist movement is between those who see a revolution as the only path to socialism and those who believe it to be achievable under the current liberal system via reform. This article assumes you believe a revolution to be necessary and there will be no arguments against social democracy in it. Go read State and Revolution. There is a bad habit among western, particularly North American, leftists. We seem obsessed with ceaselessly antagonizing and alienating soldiers. This comes from a weird hubristic belief that our goals are achievable without them. That simply is not true. There will be no revolution without their support, and the current leftist instinct serves the interests of counterrevolution. The goal of this article is to dismiss any naive delusion that a revolution can occur solely by the rising of the proletariat or peasantry. Organization needs to be done to appeal to the soldiering class or the armed forces need to be outright infiltrated and steered toward the end of achieving socialism.

Case Studies

Socialism is a scientific ideology. In pursuit of our goals, we should consider the material evidence of past successes and failures. Altogether, the evidence is overwhelming: the likelihood of a successful revolution without the support of a significant portion of the nation's soldiery is nearly impossible. Let's examine case studies together and see what we can learn from them. For the purposes of this article, we shall narrow down our list of revolutions with two criteria. Firstly, we shall not examine revolutions occurring before the invention of the modern military structure. Before the 17th century, there was no class of professional soldiers in significant number. The 17th century saw the rise of two dominant military structures: mercenary armies and national armies. Before this, militaries were entirely reliant on drafting peasantry, who spent most of their time as agricultural workers. The superiority of a professional army over a levy army should be immediately obvious but was not logistically possible under feudalism before the technological developments and social changes of the reformation/renaissance period. Secondly, we shall only consider a short list of major revolutions for the sake of brevity. Generally, other revolutions e.g. the Spanish Civil War follows the same patterns established in our case studies.

Revolution	Result	Notes
English Civil War	Revolutionary Victory, British republic established	The army is the only reason a republic was even established after the defeat of the Cavaliers, as the general opinion was in favour of maintaining the constitutional monarchy even among the parliamentarian leaders (See the history of the Rump Parliament).
American Revolution	Revolutionary Victory, American independence secured	Not really a revolution, as the ownership of production within American territory was not changed. Wealthy planters remained in charge of their plantations and the industrial revolution had barely even begun in Britain meaning there were no great industrialists owning American assets on either side of the fight. Many of the COs of the Continental Army were in the British army up to the moment of the conflict, including George Washington and the Continental Army was defeated routinely in cases where they did not heavily outnumber the enemy. If it were not for the intercession of the actual French armed forces, the historiographical consensus is that the war would've ended in American defeat. The British also faced problems that would not be faced by the reactionary side of a domestic revolution, including long transatlantic supply lines and sympathy towards the revolution by a significant portion of the British parliament.
French Revolution	Revolutionary Victory, First French Republic established	Interesting case: reactionary officers vs revolutionary enlisted men. Reactionary officers were forced from their posts by the enlisted men and most emigrated. Revolutionary officers were promoted swiftly and took control of the nascent republican army, Napoleon Bonaparte among them. The French republic became the First French Empire only when the army under Napoleon demanded the change, not because of popular uprisings against Republican rule, all of which were crushed (e.g. the Vendee rebellion).
Slave Revolts	Variable Result (see notes)	All failed except for Haiti. Haiti only succeeded because the army was busy fighting on both sides of the French revolution. The French expedition to restore Haiti to colonial rule was defeated when a significant portion of the attacking army defected.
Revolution of 1848	Variable Result (successful in France, failure in Italy, Austria, and Germany)	The revolution succeeded in places where the enlisted soldiers defected to the revolution (e.g. France) and was defeated in places where they did not (e.g. Austria). Germany should not be seriously considered as an example of either due to the circumstances of the German confederation. The Austrian army managed to defeat the revolutionaries despite critical disorganization, low morale, and broken supply lines.
Russian Civil War	Revolutionary Victory	Although there was an attempt at the start of the civil war to not use tsarist soldiers, the inexperienced proletariat and peasant army was routed soundly by the white army. The Red Army was only able to win after military reorganization by Trotsky, after which it was comprised of an astounding 83% ex-tsarist soldiers and officers disillusioned with the Russian Empire and Kerensky's Russian Republic.
German Revolution of 1919	Reactionary Victory	The demands of the army for the abdication of the Kaiser were the only successfully enforced demand. Anarchist and Communist revolts were obliterated by the armed forces and veterans of the first world war
Chinese Civil War of 1949	Revolutionary Victory	Only successful due to material support from the government of the Soviet Union. The Chinese Communist Party was on the defensive for the entire conflict until the post-1945 period, which was the first time the CCP's regular army (i.e. not militia) was near the KMT army in size.
Cuban Revolution	Revolutionary Victory	Every attempt by the revolutionaries to take on the government failed initially, as the armed forces were totally on the side of Batista. It wasn't until the US placed Batista's government under embargo and Batista's own supporters began to abandon him that the tide turned. Regardless, Cuba provides the model of a successful revolution performed by and large without the support of a significant portion of a nation's armed forces but this was only possible under peculiar conditions (US embargo of Batista, and ironically the arming of the guerillas by CIA agent Frank País), neither of which would be likely to be replicated now and in Canada.

A summary of our case study is that successful revolutions are revolutions supported by a significant portion of those serving in the armed forces in the area at the time. Exceptions to this exist, e.g. Cuba, but that is only due to confounding variables. Attempts to replicate a Castroist style of revolution in Canada or the United States would undoubtedly fail, especially in a world without Soviet support for communist insurrections.

Officers vs enlisted men

A secondary lesson to be drawn from this is that class lines exist within the military hierarchy just like in civilian society. Officers in a modern military are strictly selected through education systems such as West Point and RMC. It is just as important that they adhere to a belief in the project of the state as it is that they are competent commanders. Political education is part of the curriculum of the average military academy in capitalist countries just as in communist ones. Because of this, the officer class is generally far more reactionary than their underlings in the enlisted and non-commissioned ranks. However, just like in the civilian economy, the labour of the armed forces is done by the lowest levels of the military hierarchy. Professional officers act as the foremost oppressor of the enlisted man. The resentment of enlisted soldiers towards professional officers can be exploited and increased with proper outreach and organization. Furthermore, if the bulk of enlisted men were to side with a revolutionary movement, the officer corps would be powerless to stop them as was the case in the French Revolution.

Why is the support of the soldiery so important?

Why is this all necessary? Why should the left even bother reaching out to the soldiering class? Since the invention of the modern army, the arms race between the oppressed classes and their oppressors has been particularly one-sided. The modern army structure is an incredibly efficient tool of violence that is inherently superior to the system of levies it replaced. That levy system is the closest historical equivalent to how many leftists seem to imagine a communist revolution: a disorganized mass of urban and rural poor. Soldiers are trained in combat principles and the use of military equipment in the same manner as the proletariat are trained in the use of factory machines, point-of-sale systems, and computers. A fight between these professional fighters and even a large proletariat militia would be particularly one-sided. Regardless of any reaction of disgust to the idea of sullying one's ideological purity by appealing to trained killers, it is the only way the goal of revolution can ever be achieved.

Clarification on supporting militarism vs engaging the soldiery

It is important that the appropriate lesson be drawn from this. Communists should not become chest-beating psychos supporting the coming invasions of Iran and Mexico. The lesson is not to support unrestrained applications of force by the bourgeois state using the army as a cudgel. When the opportunity arises, we should strongly oppose ongoing and future military interventions and conflicts. What should be done is a concerted effort to appeal to the average soldier. Soldiers should not be talked down to, belittled, or dismissed as seems to be the current leftist instinct. Soldiers should be addressed as potential comrades. Appeals should be made to their sense of self-preservation and humanity. Most of them would much rather collect a cheque and get free college than actually get deployed. Those who actually do fantasize about murdering the state's enemies are victims of propaganda and should be engaged in the same manner as other victims of propaganda in your life. If you are incapable of doing these things, just shut up and do not engage with them at all.

Should leftists join the army?

One instinct you may have on learning this lesson is that leftists should simply infiltrate the armed forces and shift the culture towards socialism. While certainly possible if a critical mass of communists were to enlist, this is not necessarily realistic. Consider that the army is strictly authoritarian. Attempts to proliferate communist sentiment from within would presumably be cracked down upon by reactionary elements in the officer corps. The only potential advantage to this would be to create a corps of revolutionaries trained in warfare and the operation of military equipment.

Conclusion

There will be no communism without the support of the soldiering class. There will be no support from the soldiering class if the left does not improve its organizational skills and basic demeanour. If your goal is not a revolution, this is a perfectly fine state of affairs. If it isn't, a significant shift in the internal culture of left-wing movements is necessary. The growing climate change crisis means we are running out of time to achieve communism. Action must be taken at once.

Future Work

Look forward to the future publications from the Monty division of the printhouse: Rage For The Machine: CIA infiltration of leftism Let's Plan the Economy: critiquing Towards a New Socialism Range Feudalism 2: why do so many farmers support their own immiseration?