Beginning with the French Revolution, the state is glorified not as a means unto an end but as an end unto itself. The state expands its activities into the areas of health, education, and welfare. Conscripted armies become the norm. The combination of large popular armies, technological advances, gargantuan state bureaucracies, and ideological nationalism creates a situation that erupts in the form of the large-scale international wars of the first half of the twentieth century.
Early Challenges to the State’s Monopoly on Violence (1885–1915)
Revolutionary groups begin using assassinations and bombings as a tactic. The classical anarchists assassinate the head of state of five major countries and many lesser officials over a thirty-year period. Violent battles between radical labor groups, state forces, and private vigilantes become common.
The State at Its Apex (1914–45)
Violence by non-state actors is temporarily eclipsed by the First and Second World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, internal repression within different countries, and the cooptation of labor movements by twentieth-century governments.“First generation warfare” of the type that developed after the Treaty of Versailles in 1648 gives way to “second generation warfare” invented by the French during the First World War. The Germans respond by developing “third generation warfare” during the same period.
Continued Challenges to the State’s Monopoly (1945–89)
The defeat of the Axis powers results in the division of Europe into blocs of colonies controlled by the United States and the Soviet Union. The rise of the Cold War and American power escalates US intervention into the Third World. Armed resistance groups form in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America to resist US imperialism. These groups are ideologically divergent and frequently hostile to one another. Their only commonality is their opposition to US hegemony and its program of liberal-capitalism. These armed resistance groups continue the tactics of bombings, assassinations, hijackings, and other methods used by their nineteenth-century predecessors like the anarchists. These groups begin to form the basis of “fourth generation warfare” where states and non-state organizations wage war against one another. A transitional phase between second or third and fourth generation warfare takes place during the guerrilla wars of Asia during the Cold War period.
The Dominance of Fourth Generation Warfare (1989– )
The collapse of the Soviet Union ends the Cold War and its related “hot wars,” such as those of Central America. The United States now achieves unchallenged and unprecedented hegemony. Resistance forces, acting independently of states, escalate their wars against US imperialism. Included in this are not only attacks against US targets abroad or US allies and interests, but attacks within the US mainland as well, whether by domestic insurgent forces (such as the US militia movement or so-called “eco-terrorists”) or by foreign organizations waging war against the United States (such as Al-Qaeda).
The Decline of the State (1975– )
The state begins to recede and its primary function, the waging of war, is rendered too costly by the advent of nuclear weapons. The economic costs of the welfare state also contribute to an implosion of the state. The rapid development of communications and transportation technology renders the state less necessary for the facilitation of trade. The failure of the state to fully consolidate itself in certain regions leads to the spread of disorder elsewhere. Public confidence in the state begins to diminish.
Armed Struggle Against the State
Note: The material contained in this article is intended for purposes of education and discussion only. Neither the author nor the American Revolutionary Vanguard organization accepts responsibility for the misuse of this material. Neither advocates unlawful activity of any sort.
Perhaps no political question is more controversial than the matter of when it is acceptable to take up arms against the state under which one is a subject. The American Declaration of Independence, no doubt one of the most significant documents in the history of political philosophy and political struggles, sought to address the central questions that must be considered when armed revolt against the established political order is undertaken. The Declaration recognizes that revolutionaries, out of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” should fully articulate and be fully forthcoming concerning their specific reasons for instigating rebellion and the specific objectives which they hope to achieve by means of their revolutionary efforts. While recognizing that “governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes” and that “mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed,” the Declaration maintains that at times “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” The central question involves the matter of when political conditions have degenerated to the point where a revolutionary endeavor “becomes necessary.”
A number of perspectives exist on the question of armed rebellion against the state. Participants in current antigovernment movements in the United States come from a variety of cultural and ideological backgrounds and bring with them certain conventions and traditions. Many of those attracted to grassroots populist movements have fairly conservative social and cultural values. A central feature of traditional conservatism is an emphasis on order as an overriding value. Conservatism typically regards suffering under unjust laws and government actions to be superior to the threat of chaos that often accompanies the breakdown of political authority. A good number of American conservative-populists also think of themselves as nationalists. The US Constitution is seen as almost divinely inspired. The emotional impulse of many of these people is to regard open rebellion against the state as “unpatriotic,” “un-American,” or “treasonous.” Much of this seems to be rooted in the culture that developed in America during the Second World War era. In those days, the norm was to “rally around the flag pole” in support of the government’s war effort against the evil Axis forces. The perceived justice of the Allied crusade against the Axis alliance combined with the perceived benevolence of Roosevelt’s New Deal as a means of coping with the social and economic disasters associated with the Great Depression served to inculcate in many Americans the idea of an enlightened and virtuous American regime deserving of loyalty, reverence, and obedience. These attitudes are still quite common among the older generation and among the cultural groups that have been most isolated from and least impacted by the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Strong nationalistic currents that serve to erect a certain taboo against defiance of the state are reinforced by the strong Christian traditions found among many conservative-populists. Most religions generally teach that obedience to civil authority is a good thing and some Christian clergymen will often refer to biblical passages that speak of the “powers that be” as having been ordained by God for the sake of preserving peace and order in society. So among many “traditional” cultural groups there is a strong religious as well as nationalistic impediment to resistance to the state. At the same time, however, it is also possible to stand some of these cultural norms on their head and use them to support the idea of rebellion against political authority. After all, the American Revolution, an event that is glorified both in the educational system and in popular culture, involved armed overthrow of the existing political order. Resistance to tyrannical rulers is an idea that is deeply ingrained in American traditional culture. The revered Declaration of Independence is, in fact, a revolutionary decree. Deified figures from American history such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson led an armed revolution against the state under which they lived. The constitutional “right of the people to keep and bear arms” is considered sacred by many cultural conservatives, even those who know practically nothing about the rest of the Constitution’s contents.
Religious traditions and icons can be used in a similar manner. The Bible is full of stories o
f oppressed people engaging in revolt against political tyrants. Egyptian pharaohs, Babylonian kings, and Roman emperors are depicted as evil, vicious, satanic oppressors. The key for contemporary revolutionaries is to liken enemy political figures to biblical villains such as Herod or Nebuchadnezzar and to compare the current American regime to the evil empires of ancient Rome or Babylon.
In addition to grassroots conservative populists and religious traditionalists, many libertarians are also to be found among the ranks of current opponents of the government. This tradition includes a powerful axiom against the “initiation of force” to achieve political goals. A problem here is that many libertarians use this axiom as a basis for what amounts to virtual pacifism. However, libertarians typically revere the American “founding fathers” who engaged in violent revolution against the state. Libertarians are also typically younger, less religious, and less nationalistic than cultural conservatives, so this obstacle does not seem insurmountable.
Nonviolence is also a strong current among opposition groups on the left. This phenomenon seems to be largely rooted in the influence of religious pacifists such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King on contemporary leftists. Some of it is also no doubt traceable to mere personal cowardice. A few acts of violent state repression of the Kent State/MOVE/Ruby Ridge/ Waco variety against leftists would hopefully wake many of them from their love affair with pacifism. Meanwhile, some of the more committed advocates of nonviolence on the left have demonstrated their willingness to confront the police and be arrested in acts of “nonviolent civil disobedience” so the situation does not appear entirely hopeless.
If ever there was a political situation where armed revolution would be justified, it would have to be the contemporary United States. A statement of this type will understandably seem incongruous to persons reared on sophisticated propaganda about the “land of the free and home of the brave.” However much power these illusions may hold over people who cling to them, some heavy doses of reality ought to prick their respective balloons.
One source of contemporary nationalistic sentiments is the tremendous and quite justifiable pride that many Americans feel concerning their nation’s revolutionary origins and traditions of liberty. However, it is essential to recognize that the classical American republic of the revolutionary era no longer exists and has long been overthrown by an amalgam of corporate, bureaucratic, and military interests. While strands of the original US Constitution, such as the free speech clause of the First Amendment, survive in part, the bulk of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, particularly the Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments have been de facto repealed. So by traditional constitutional standards, and certainly by the libertarian standards of the political philosophy outlined in the Declaration of Independence, the current American regime is unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, and illegitimate. This regime has nothing in common with the federal republic outlined in the Constitution whatsoever. The current American regime is an oligarchy ruled by corporations and elite financial interests, bureaucrats, media bosses, and a professionalized political class. This oligarchy maintains the outward forms and symbols of the classical republic solely for the purposes of thought control of the average citizen and creating an appearance of legitimacy. A necessary task for revolutionaries is to demonstrate to the broader public the thoroughly unconstitutional, illegitimate, and essentially un-American nature of the current regime.
The present American regime is not so much a national government as a world empire. While many of those with antigovernment sentiments have correctly condemned the emerging system of global governance, the so-called “New World Order,” via institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, North American Free Trade Agreement, etc., it must be recognized that the domestic American oligarchy and ruling regime are the primary instigators and beneficiaries of the developing global order. Simply put, there is no “UN” without “US.” Like the Romans of two thousand years ago and the British of two hundred years ago, the US ruling class maintains an international empire that engages in unchallenged, unrivaled, and unparalleled world domination. In this respect, King George Bush II has much in common with an earlier King George from the American revolutionary era. The consequences of America’s half century of world domination for the rest of the world have been devastating. Nearly four million killed in the American-sponsored Indochinese wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Six million killed in subversion, destabilization, and counter-insurgency campaigns orchestrated by the CIA and its corporate controllers.[234] Millions, including hundreds of thousands of children, dead from the genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq. Brutal oppression of the Palestinian people by the American client state of Israel.
Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans killed in the CIA-sponsored wars of the 1980s. The economic exploitation of the oil-producing nations of the Middle East and the subsequent destabilization of the region. The exportation of armaments to rival combatants worldwide and the resulting escalation of local wars. The economic stranglehold placed on Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of Timorese slaughtered by the US-backed, armed, and financed Indonesian regime. The American support for the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1980s. Thousands killed in the America air assault on Serbia. The list goes on and on.[235]
The current regime’s domestic performance has been quite heinous as well, though not nearly as destructive at its international actions. The United States maintains the world’s largest prison population with millions incarcerated in federal and state penitentiaries, local jails, juvenile detention facilities, military concentration camps, psychiatric prisons, and labor camps. Millions more are in the direct clutches of the state via the probation and parole system. Most of these people are victims of cultural persecution or political repression, such as those imprisoned for drug “offenses,” or poor people arrested for relatively minor economic or property crimes and unable to afford attorneys and bail bondsmen or, simply put, to buy their way out of jail. Government thugs ranging from federal agents to metropolitan police regularly kill unarmed civilians with impunity. Many more are robbed and assaulted, harassed and threatened by the state’s goon squad commonly referred to as “law enforcement.” Millions of traditional farmers have been run off their lands by state-supported agribusiness cartels. Repressive housing regulations guarantee a large homeless population that is subsequently criminalized under loitering and vagrancy laws. State-subsidized prison construction, private profiteering from the war on drugs, and corporate use of prison labor has created a new system of chattel slavery. A full-frontal assault on all traditional civil liberties is now underway by means of the “terrorism” hysteria. The average person works nearly half the year just to cover tax debts. Mounting public debts and liabilities guarantee an eventual economic meltdown. Monopolistic health care cartels have effectively priced medical treatment out of the range of working people. The ongoing process of currency devaluation and the looting of social security funds by improvident politicians threaten to completely destroy the retirement security of the present generation of workers. The economic base of the working class is being depleted as domestic manufacturing is being moved to “Third World” nations where nineteenth-century-like wage slavery prevails and cheap labor can be exploited. The war on drugs, gun laws, the anti-crime hysteria, and the police state has criminalized minority youth en masse. Meanwhile, efforts by the ruling class to buy the loyalties of minority elites via social engineering schemes have reduced white workers and students to second-class citizens in many areas of life. The America of the future looks to be a bankrupt police state with a Third World-like class structure, in a perpetual state of war, undergoing persistent terrorist assaults and riddled with ethnic and cultural strife.[236]
It is important to remember that the first generation of American revolutionaries engaged in armed revolt against the British Empire over far less egregious state actions. Mostly they were concerned about minor taxation
without representation, unreasonable restrictions on trade, and sporadic government intrusions such as the Quartering Act. The American founders would no doubt regard the present state system as a hideous monster of a tyranny. Fortunately, the regime has not yet been able to fully extinguish freedom. It is difficult for the regime to impose formal censorship as this would be in conflict with the interests of the powerful media corporations.[237] The deeply embedded American gun culture has greatly hindered efforts at civilian disarmament. Some apologists for the state use these examples of remaining freedoms as an excuse for demanding public support for the state. However, the time to take action against a tyrannical government is not after freedom has been completely abolished. By then it is too late, as the residents of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia learned the hard way.[238] The time for action is before the state is fully able to consolidate its power in a totalitarian manner. This means that, in contemporary America, the time for action is now. The United States will not be able to undergo another thirty to fifty years of current statist expansionism without succumbing to the full apparatus of totalitarianism.
Most people generally prefer that political change take place in a peaceful manner and rightfully so. Change that occurs with the least amount of violence, bloodshed, and societal disruption and dislocation is obviously the kind of change that is likely to be the most beneficial to the average person. Armed actions against the state should never be undertaken solely for the purpose of gratuitous violence, the emotional satisfaction that comes with revenge, or simply “to make a statement.” Indeed, revolutionary organizations should shun persons who demonstrate such motivations as dangerous security risks and possible provocateurs. Military actions against the state must be done for defensive or purely strategic purposes only. While such military actions should certainly not be pursued in a reckless or imprudent manner, it also needs to be recognized that no ruling class ever steps down without a fight. Recall the fate of the Chinese students at Tiananmen Square, the peasants of El Salvador, or the Branch Davidians at Waco. At the end of the day, all of the lobbying, voting, petitioning, letter writing, ballot initiatives, demonstrations, speech-making, leafleting, class action lawsuits, jury nullifications, strikes, boycotts, construction of alternative institutions, passive resistance, and “non-violent civil disobedience” in the world will not be sufficient to dislodge those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The former rulers of the Soviet Union knew their system was a failed and dying dinosaur. Yet they clung to their sacred Marxist-Leninist dogma and bureaucracy to the death. The rulers of the corporate states of the West will no doubt do the same. This is particularly true of the American ruling class which has an empire to defend. If global tyranny and domestic police statism are to be successfully resisted and defeated, then the next wave of American revolutionaries must be prepared to fight and win.
Attack the System Page 30
