"Armed Insurrection"

People often complain that Marx, Engels and Lenin had little to say about Communism - what would this utopian society be like? As a revolutionary marxist in my early twenties, I was more interested in the practical business of the prior overthrow of capitalism.

I read about the great controversies in the Second International: those who argued for a peaceful road to socialism exploiting bourgeois democracy vs. those like Lenin who said that you might win the government but the state would fight back. Lenin proved his point in the October Revolution in Russia and later, to my excitement, I discovered that the Third International, the Comintern, had written this practical manual. See also this review.

Sadly, I could never afford it.

I was reminded of all this watching the main-stream media (MSM) reacting to Jeremy Corbyn and Marine Le Pen .. and to a lesser extent, Donald Trump ('Muslims') and Tyson Fury.

When faced with challenging opinions outside the liberal orthodoxy, my former trotskyist self would argue that the bourgeoisie goes through five stages:

1. Ignore them*
2. Attempt to ridicule them
3. Threaten them with civil war
4. Sabotage them
5. Deploy the military in a coup.

We already saw an endless series of stupid gibes at Corbyn. Today it's the turn of Marine le Pen's Front national to be ridiculed for only getting 40% of the vote (more than UK election winners generally achieve) and losing in the face of a manoeuvre by the French establishment parties, the Socialists and Republicans.

It's telling that the intellectual case for bien-pensant capitalism is apparently so weak that the battle of ideas can't be won on a level playing field. That's what comes of denying reality I suppose - or maybe we should elect genetically-engineer a new people.

The Draka got there first, with Homo Servus. **

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* See also 'Repressive Tolerance'.

** On this topic see Ken Macleod's good-to-middling novel 'Intrusion'.