From: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Subject: Re: U.S. Is Not Going to War in Somalia for any Good Reasons
Reply-To: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 23:14:29 GMT

In article <1go3qmINNp22@CATHY.NA.CS.YALE.EDU> yarvin@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin) writes:
>>
>>Perhaps.  Tactics generally are studied and disseminated.  That's what
>>military colleges are for, after all.  What you're describing is
>>perhaps a model for rebellion as much as anything else.
>
>A communist rebellion is only suited for producing a communist state as the
>end product.

This is true in a sort of tautological way.  The thing about
Marxism/Leninism is that it provides a ready-made model and system to
revolt and fill in power vacuums.  It is generally easier to follow or
modify Lenin's notions of party leadership and social order than to
invent your own.  This is true for insurgents that are left out of a
nation's power structure, and must reinvent the social order if they
win (Military inspired coups, of course, do not wind up being a
Marxist revolution because the Army is part of the power structure.
Praetorean guards changing the emperor, and such.)  This was my
original point, and I apologize for not making it clearer.

>
>>  Further, to
>>kill those who may disagree with you has been true since long before
>>the Romans.
>
>It is an ancient barbarian tactic.  However with the invention of printed
>matter it generally died out.  Print immensely facilitates the spread of
>ideas, so that the number of people who need to be killed becomes too large
>to stomach.  For most people, that is.  Not for the communists.

Also, the French revolutionaries during the Reign of Terror, the
Fascists, the right-wing death squads in El Salvador, etc.
Unfortunately, the will to supress dissent seems to be congenital.

>
>>  I've argued that a lot of these insurrections may have
>>gone over to Communism because they were anti-America primarily, and
>>Communism was a handy ideology to have when you're anti-American.
>>(The Iranian Revolution provided perhaps another model of
>>anti-American ideology.)
>
>To say that a person turned to communism because he was anti-American is
>like saying someone turned to cannibalism because his job was miserable: it
>may in a way be true, but that does not justify it.

Perhaps not justify it, but it's possible to understand their
thinking.  Imagine yourself rebelling against a Western-sponsored
government in the 1960s, be it a relic of colonialism or something
more recent.  You're out of the power structure.  Leninism provides a
do-it-yourself blueprint for insurrection and for replacing the
existing power structure.  Further, to declare yourself a Communist
will get you military aid from the USSR or China, making things easier
(I don't believe there have been many revolts and guerrilla wars that
have succeeded without the support of a Great Power, be it the
American Revolution and France, the French Underground and the Allies,
or the Viet Minh and the USSR) What would you do in this situation?



--
The insane fear of socialism throws the bourgeois headlong into the
arms of despotism.
			-- Tocqueville, 1852
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