Where do Tanks come from? ☭

They see the bourgeoisie (only the largest of the bourgeoisie, mind you) and the police as the bulk of the opposition to revolution. They often assume that nearly all, or at least most of society will be at their back (or at least neutral on the sidelines), and that they wont be forced into conflict before their support can safely grow to those enormous and overwhelming levels.

And in this, wide angle lens frame, we can only understand that we are not dealing with thousands of opponents, but tens of millions or more on a national level, and hundreds of millions on a global scale. The capitalist system will enter conflict with, at least some, of its internal systems fully operational, and many members of society tied to those will side against the revolution. And in understanding this framing, we can only understand that the highest stages of revolution — which we can dub “high stage revolution”, would, and does, and has historically, necessarily, resembled war.

It’s not just the means of production that you must seize, but entire societal apparatuses — and you need them to be operating immediately and in a way that cannot be easily subverted or undermined. You need to control the farms for food, and trucks for shipments. You need to control resources to supply the factories, and you need more labour to harvest the resources. You need the power plants to provide energy, and you need anti-air defences to protect them from attack. So this sort of project is not a one time “go get yet shovel and dig” type deal — this is about building a long lasting system that can develop and grow your capacity for revolution and revolutionary war. It’s not something you can win in a day, a week, or even months, but in years. And even if it were, the bourgeoisie would mostly escape, reform, and retaliate through every possible channel. It’s literally impossible to get them all in one fell swoop, it would be a prolonged endeavor, especially since new ones would keep emerging until they are all defeated, encircled, or exhausted of their remaining resources.