The dialectic of repression

The people are not to blame that there has not been a revolution. Next time they must trust in local leaders . . . - fierce men and blunt, without too many ties binding them to the peace. They must choose, too, the favourable concurrence of a foreign war . . . "

- Irish-Canadian nationalist Thomas D'Arcy McGee
(quoted in Ireland: the politics of enmity 1789-2006, by Paul Bew,
OUP, 978 0 19 820555 5)

At least one of the preconditions for revolution specified by this Irish bourgeois nationalist obtains in Britain today: the state is engaged in catastrophic and debilitating foreign wars, which are not only becoming increasingly economically incompatible with the necessity for the capitalist class to cream off more and more of the wealth of society. This means that the armed forces are being more and more over-stretched. They are being required to fight with inadequate and obsolescent equipment, with the result that they are failing to subdue ill-equipped indigenous popular insurgents. This situation is creating a battle-hardened working class that, were leftist elements not infected with reactionary pacifism, could serve a similar function in a revolutionary situation to that of the radicalised soldiery in Venezuela.

Our armed forces have practical experience of the inefficiency and incapacity of moribund capitalism to support them in their military duties, and some are even beginning to appreciate the need for revolutionary change at home, judging by the parodies of the Clash's English Civil War song being posted to the F**k the Army website by troops in Afghanistan.

The dialectic of this situation means that while the ruling class dreams of deploying troops against working people in possible future crisis situations, the very forces of repression themselves have the potential - and, in due course, could have the inclination - to turn their weapons upon the oppressors.

The radicalising of the armed forces is admittedly at a very low level as yet, not the least because the left has not perceived the revolutionary potential they constitute. But while the spontaneous nature of the troops' critique of a system which sends them to fight unwinnable wars means they are not exposed to a more profound analysis of the situation, the very fact that this critique is emerging in the absence of such a revolutionary analysis places a great responsibility upon those who should be responding appropriately to the imperatives
of the time.

At a time when New Labour is putting into place more and more repressive machinery, the intrinsic weakness of the forces required to administer this repression is highly significant.

Even more apposite than the situation in the armed forces is the disaffection in the police and prison officers, who are being required to accept wage rates inadequate for a reasonable standard of living. For the first time since police strikes were banned after the 1926 General Strike, industrial action is being seriously considered by these bastions of the ruling class status quo.

The capitalist requirement for ever-increasing profits means that the state cannot afford the costs of maintaining the repressive machinery necessary to protect those profits.

Again, the need for analysis of the endemic impossibility of resolving this contradiction should be on the left's agenda, and history will not forgive us our continued failure to produce this.

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