Gun laws

Should citizens have the right to own guns?

Yes.

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The most elementary tasks of a workers’ government must be to arm the proletariat, disarm the bourgeois counter-revolutionary organisations, bringing control over production, shift the main burden of taxation onto the propertied classes and break the resistance of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.

http://www.marxists.org/history/interna ... actics.htm

The only way to safeguard the revolution is to arm the people and train them. Gorbachev couldn't have done what he did against an armed populace.

No, certainly not. Only violent and degenerated societies such as the United States allow it. Even for the revolutionaries, it would be a great danger as it could allow the revolutionary forces to spread civil war, which is the greatest threat for a revolution. It would give the possibility to provocative elements to sabotage peaceful movements and give arguments to counter-revolution. Even after the revolution, it would be a threat to individuals (suicidal or violent persons) and a bad example for children. The individual ownership of guns fits to individual and petty-bourgeois societies and to an individual conception of defense and violence. In a socialist society, guns would be stored in special places in each district under the supervision of the popular army, the party or the state officials.

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Neither could Stalin.

What's the point of this? The "pre-Stalin" USSR had to deal with many more armed rebellions, the Tambov one, the rebellions in Georgia and Central Asia and of course Kronstadt, just to name some of them.
To think that, had everyone been armed, the Soviet collectivization and industrialization would have failed and the Stalinist leadership deposed does not make sense given the evidence that the general population was with the Party, even during the harshest periods of collectivization in a situation in which a civil war almost broke out ( and a number of these rebels certainly had arms ).

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Gorbachev couldn't have done what he did against an armed populace

This idea is ridiculous. People in USSR could have organized strikes or demonstrations. But the only demonstrations there was was in support of counter-revolution. Would they have done anything else with weapons? If they didn't had the courage to risk jail, why would they have risked their own life? The last chance for the USSR was a military coup.

I was surprised that Mabool answered yes because he found this quotation. Does the quotation says that you should arm the population in general and, furthermore, the individuals? No. The quotation says that you should arm the proletariat, that is to say not individuals but a class, and moreover in a time of revolution. If you want to arm the proletariat, you can arm the party, arm the factories, but you can't arm the population in general. And even if you wanted to arm the population in general, you don't need to arm the individuals.

The quote says "arm the proletariat, disarm the bourgeoisie". So yes, of course "as a class". I was kind of presupposing a state in which we are in power (which becomes apparent if you look at the context of the quote), and of course we'd only give arms to our class, taking them away from the enemy class. Just as the quote says. Maybe I should have voted other...

Yeah I don't get why the only-for-our-class clause wasn't assumed. If we're disenfranchising our enemies why the shit would we give them guns? I don't see any reason, whatsoever, to keep guns out of the hands of our loyal cadres. Maybe it will give us pause before we try to frag them over.

@shigalyov: I think the great terror would have been significantly less destructive with armed soviets.

I think Stalin would have been more terrible. Moreover, it would have been a clear proof that he was right about terrorists and saboteurs.

What? Why? And maybe a little terrorism would have taught Stalin some humility (like not gutting the RA for instance).

@shig: I don't really want to get into that what-if. Too many problems to be had there. I'm simply suggesting that thermidor is a lot more difficult in the face of an armed revolutionary proletariat (not that Stalin represented thermidor but rather power unchecked). Of course you're going to have Nilolaevs, just like everywhere has assassins, but with even a vaguely competent police force such things can be contained. The Kirov assassination is a bad example to use btw.

Comrade Dagoth, there was already some terrorism in USSR, and something worst, there was some conspiracies. Let's take an example. Tukhachevsky was preparing a military coup. Of course some bourgeois propagandists will say that he was not really preparing a coup, that it was a German setup. Even if it is true, there is no doubt that Stalin and his staff didn't knew it, they really thought that there was a coup. As for Molotov's assassination, it was clearly terrorism. It is also well know that someone tried to assassinate Lenin. He received a bullet in the neck, a crossed bullet with poison, and it may have been the cause of his death. These terrorists, of course, didn't disappeared after Lenin.

If such terrorists, conspirators or even simple dissidents had weapons at home, what would they have done? They could have used it to retaliate directly by terrorist means. Then Stalin would have been right: there was a terrorist threat in the Soviet Union. Or they could have tried to regroup and organize military actions. Then Stalin would have been right: there was an opposition trying to overthrow the Soviet power.

Thermidor, comrade Dagoth, this a period of the French Revolution. And during this revolution, the whole country was in arms. The lack of leadership led to Thermidor, not the lack of weapons. Thos who organized Thermidor, they had no weapons at all. A few policemen, but no army.

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You might not agree with the analysis, but surely you're aware that the term "Thermidor" has been applied to other revolutions.

Oh yes, Trotsky said it hundreds and hundreds of time. But there can't be better examples of thermidor than Thermidor itself, and I wanted to stress the fact that, for a thermidorian counter-revolution, the question of guns is secondary.

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Did you mean Kirov?

Of course.

@OP-B: Hmm, it seems to me that terrorists should be easy to keep disarmed so long as only the soviets have arms. Registration alone would make weapons extremely easy to track, and to punish those whose guns were in the hands of terrorists. Unregistered weaponry is evidence enough of criminality as well. While I do support our cadres being armed I do not mean this to be that our comrades would just walk into a store and out with a gun. Compulsory training, alongside rigorous mental screening, is a must. Ultimately our aim is to reduce the functions the state performs and put these duties in the hands of the people. Like to me in Communism the people would not need organization into an army (to defeat whatever threat) but would naturally form up and work together to solve the issue. This level of human cohesion cannot be reached if we cannot trust our comrades with bullets and rifles.

On thermidor: The Ayatollah's Iran is a far better example than Stalin's USSR. In fact this is one of my key departures from Trotsky's rhetoric.

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it seems to me that terrorists should be easy to keep disarmed so long as only the soviets have arms.

In the USSR the Soviets represented the whole population, and terrorists were part of the population. Then if you think that only the State's officials or the Party members should be allowed to have weapons at home, you should vote "no".

In my opinion, allowing guns at home is dangerous, because you can't be sure that you comrade won't use it against his neighbour, his wife or his granny, or in order to suicide. It happens, nobody is perfect, even our comrades. There is also the question of criminality. You know that in the USA, it is often said that having guns at home protects you from crime, because of course if you see a robber, you will take the gun and shoot. And if you want to do it fast enough, you will need to have it under your pillow. You will also need to have the child know where the gun is in case of problem (because, of course, the child is perfectly able to shoot the robber). Well, let's hope the child won't play with it at school... But robbers are not stupid. Since they know the population has guns, the will also carry gun for their own safety. That's why there is so much crimes in the United States.

Therefore, as I said, guns should be owned collectively and kept in special places, under the supervision of party members, state officials, or even factory workers. But not at home.

A few days ago I was reading an article about people suiciding on railways. And the specialists say that the big problem is that there is not enough barriers. You need only a simple barrier, even a very little barrier, very symbolic, to prevent someone from suiciding. Just a symbol, a few minutes, a few seconds, and a life is saved. Do you imagine what can happen when people have a direct and simple way to commit suicide?

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On thermidor: The Ayatollah's Iran is a far better example than Stalin's USSR. In fact this is one of my key departures from Trotsky's rhetoric.

The main problem with this idea that Thermidor is a counter-revolution is that it is not Marxist at all. You know than Napoleon was the Thermidor of Thermidor, the counter-revolution in the counter-revolution. However, have you ever seen Marx writing that Napoleon wasn't, in a way, a revolutionary? This is the big problem of this rhetoric. Napoleon, according to Marx, was also a revolutionary.