This is mostly a serious question. Also, not for the tankies/MLs. I already know what your answer to that question is. I may not always agree with you on everything, but you do have an answer that if the conditions became right, could actually work.
No, this is for the type of anarchist completely against the wall, gulags, seemingly any amount of getting hands dirty. What is the solution to those types of people? There are so many of them in the US, a lot of which are heavily armed, that they could easily topple a socialist system, and even if they didn’t do that, their existence would be incompatible with any marginalized group living their lives, since they love to harass them at best, outright murder them at worse. So what’s the solution? Anarchists often seem to avoid this, seemingly believing that if there was a socialist or communist society, they would just say “aw shucks, guess I was wrong about that. Guess I’ll no longer be racist or xenophobic!”
So am I missing something, what’s the answer?
I don’t think community militias could have enough scale to effectively field tanks and aircraft. It require much more logistics than they could afford.
I agree that community militias probably can’t (and arguable shouldn’t) be able to field that kind of equipment. However, if community militias confederate with other community militias to form a unified military - which I think is feasible - that may be more possible.
Also, OP seemed to mostly be talking fascists and qultists, sort of small-scale reactionary threeper militia kind of folks. Armoured cavalry and drones would definitely help against those kinds of forces, but it doesn’t seem to be necessary. A well-organized community defense force may be sufficient. The state forces backing the boomers up are another story, but I don’t think that’s what is at issue here.
A last thought, kind of unrelated to your point, but something that just struck me thinking about how to get the materials together to build tanks and planes. It’s hard to think about products that are as enmeshed in the global capitalist system as military products. Building and operating a military machine requires tapping resource lines rooted in colonial power or other forms of exploitation. Tanks and guns need oil, metals, chemicals, and other materials that may not be available at all domestically or, if they are, only in qualities insufficient to support an army. The Glorious People’s Army of the Soviet American States would likely be manufactured and maintained with the blood of oppressed peoples. That needs to be part of the discussion when leftists talk about militarization.
If revolution in USA is victorious than you would have half of the world trying to crush it, and I really doubt that capitalists inside would give up without a fight. You will really need strong army to survive. Bolsheviks tried initially to get by just with voluntary militias, and it failed catastrophically, because enemies have military education, military experience, pre-existing organisation, a lot of modern weapons, willingness to use them, and, most importantly, support from significant part of the population, and you could not win just by militias.
The main downside of militias is that they are extremely susceptible to particularism, when community defense group defend just their community, and that makes them vulnerable to defeat in detail. Plus, you would probably need draft in first years to be able to muster enough forces to survive.
US has pretty much whole range of needed resources, and that is your advantage.
If the conditions were in place to have a new american revolution, global capital would have collapsed to the point of impotence already. I mean the global economy headed by the US which keeps most of the world as either vassal or farm is weakening even now. We can’t keep a Bolivian coup alive. Imagine the world when we h ave a revolution, most of the resource mine nations would have either been rebelling or are starting rebellion and even states like France and the UK would see themselves weakened by right or leftwing movements.
Well, after WW1 imperialist states were extremely weakened, and yet they managed to defeat revolutions in Europe and almost defeated Bolsheviks.
True but capital wasn’t nearly as global as it is now. A current capital collapse would see the world imperial powers realize that relying on 1 countries military doesn’t work when the country dies.
They would invade, because a socialist America is a grave threat to capital, and globalization will actually make them more unified than they were in 1918.