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Violence is an acceptable and probable way to overthrow the current hierarchy. Violence has been an acceptable way to solve political issues since the dawn of humanity. Although I do suppose the primitive hunter-gather tribalism could be exempt from this, but that age is long past. Mao said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". Now I'm not a Maoist but I've got to agree with this. You want to enforce a law you've got to have a punishment for those who break said law. Now this could be something light like a fine or community service, or something much greater such as exile or death. Everyway you've still got to enforce it with the punishment. The government has a monopoly on force as well it should, because if it didn't then it would taken over by whatever group that had the most or biggest gun. This is what Marx meant by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The exploited become the new exploiters. The workers create a government that deprives the bourgeoisie class of so called "rights" and "Freedoms" in order to safeguard the revolution. I mean really could you just imagine what would happen if the Bolsheviks let the remains of the Czarist forces and the Provisional Government do whatever they felt like. Or if they hadn't violently risen up at all?

As for peaceful reforms or peaceful revolutions (I know our current bourgeoisie society has contradictions in it but this is just double plus ungood.) they tend to be limited to small reforms. Also they usually take a longer amount of time I mean everyone talks about the successes of the civil rights movement but Plessy V. Fergusuon was decided in 1896 and the civil rights act was passed in 1964. Yeah 68 years of non-violent struggle........... This is our best hope? You know I'm probably being too generous here considering race relations before 1896 and after 1964 but I think the point is clear. You can't just expect people to roll over as you threaten their interests and ideology. They're not going to play by your rules. If you don't fire back they will gun you down with even batting an eyelash. If you organize a march they'll organize a firing squad. You organize a sit in they organize a raid. You call a strike they call the Pinkertons. People won't just sit around and get at shot at no matter how pleasing an idea is. They have to a chance to fight back, to not just be martyrs that you can use in a speech about how the capitalists are violating rights.

The Paris Commune was destroyed because it didn't exercise its full force. It didn't go after Versailles; it didn't take over France's national bank. There's not going to be just a general strike or some great enlightenment that will immediate dismantlement the old society. A new state will need to rise up and defend the gains of the workers. Even if you do get a majority of the population to agree with you it won't matter. Unless they have planes, tanks, bombs, and guns to defend themselves they'll end up being chewed up and spit by the military industrial complex.

If this comes out as just a long rant I apologize. But I'm really just tired of this pacifist attitude that everything will be rainbows and happiness as long as we don't incite violence. These petty morals hold violence as some kind of poison that infects everything it touches. It ignores the tactical and dialectic nature of violence and simply engages in moralizing humanist bullshit.

And yes, shoulder-fired are teh roxx0rs

Hey zed, u were in the military, I heard that the military is letting soilders buy their own weapons to use as opposed to the GI weapon M4A1. Alot of ppl are buying Aks because the sand in the desert doesnt jam them like the American guns.

Also Im rather fond of WW1 era warfare, something about trenches, bayonet rifles, massive feild artilery, 20 man tanks, and poison gas really facinate me.