World Socialist Radio - Socialism from the barrel of a gun

 Socialism From the Barrel of a Gun

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

Recent media attention has focused on the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), a US-based left-wing organisation promoting firearms training and “working-class armed self-defence,” after a Democratic Senate candidate in Maine was criticised for past posts encouraging people to join it. Reports suggest growing gun ownership among LGBTQ and left-liberal Americans driven by fear of political repression, while a Cato Institute FOIA request revealed the SRA is under FBI investigation. The SRA presents itself as a left-wing counterpoint to right-wing gun culture, framing firearms as tools for community defence and resistance to authoritarianism. However, this trend reflects not a coherent ideological shift but widespread anxiety produced by capitalism – economic insecurity, political polarisation, violent policing, and commodified security – conditions that push different social groups to arm themselves defensively.

This episode criticises the SRA’s use of revolutionary rhetoric, particularly selective quotations from Marx and implied links to Leninist traditions, arguing these ideas are taken out of their historical and theoretical context. Marx’s later view emphasised democratic, majority-led self-emancipation rather than armed minorities or vanguards, and the piece contends that firearms cannot resolve capitalism’s structural causes of insecurity and division. Drawing on historical examples and socialist theory, it argues that armed groups – left or right – reproduce capitalism’s logic of coercion and offer consumerist, individualised responses to systemic problems. Socialism cannot be achieved or defended by militias or vigilantes, but only through conscious, democratic, and mass political organisation; the SRA is therefore a defensive reaction to social breakdown rather than a genuine revolutionary alternative.

Taken from the January 2026 edition of The Socialist Standard.

s.

Mobster diplomacy

We’ll probably never know whether the kidnapping of Maduro has been timed to distract from Trump’s domestic political woes. What we do know is that this latest act illustrates the nonsense of the concepts of international law and national sovereignty.

When one mob within the global capitalist class perceives that its interests are threatened by another mob, it doesn’t take too long for the gloves to come off and the violence to begin.

The propaganda machine is up and running, claiming the kidnapping was about ‘stabilisation’ of the region and the orange clown saying that the US ‘will take care of the country’. Nonsense. It’s just another turf war in the gangster society we know as capitalism.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Socialist Sonnet No. 217

Executive Action

 

Whine of drones is a clear indication

Diplomacy is not being considered.

Legitimacy’s readily deferred

Concerning judgement of a rogue nation.

It’s the will of the Commander in Chief

That can decide upon robust action

To eliminate a capital faction,

Disregarding the terror and the grief.

Borders are not sacrosanct boundaries,

Sovereignty not so sovereign after all.

Which governments rise, succeed or fall

Is subject to the markets’ vagaries.

Sound of drones is sycophants eulogising

The great leader whose stock, it seems, is rising.

 

D. A.   

2026, Peaceful?

 

Writers, even non sci-fi ones, who want to infer a dystopian future or society signal that by setting the story in a far off time. There are exceptions. William Morris’s very opposite of dystopian News from Nowhere is set in 2102.

Metropolis the German Fritz Lang of 1927 is set in 2026. Ray Bradbury’s 1950 There Will Come Soft Rains about nuclear destruction and its aftermath in California is set in 2026.

Anyone wishing for a peaceful New Year is already on a sticky wicket. The Russian/Ukrainian conflict continues with there still remaining some doubt as to whether a decapitation strike was attempted on President Vladimir Putin just before the old year’s close. The odds of a major flare up in the Middle East are astronomically high. There are flashpoints all over the place just waiting to burst out into open battle.

One of the most dangerous states in the world, one perusing capitalist ends with military force to achieve its aims of taking and controlling resources, looking to extend its geopolitical power and attempting to squash other capitalist competitors, is the USA. Its illegal attack upon Venezuela and its elected President is just another oil and other resources grab. Whether nationalism will rear it head and resistance will occur from within or whether the population sigh with relief and embrace, even if not enthusiastically, the puppet regime the Americans impose on Venezuela remains to be seen.

Whatever the outcome the circumstances of the vast majority will remain unaltered: continued exploitation by a ruling property owning class, and assets and wealth transferring to a powerful minority.

January 2026 SOCIALIST STANDARD Now Available OnLine FREE

 

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2026/no-1457-january-2026/

Whose 'welfare'?

Around 7 million people in the UK have asthma, of whom some 58,000 suffer ‘really scary’ attacks that require hospitalisation. These severe sufferers will be heartened to know that Depemokimab,, a new ‘ultra-long acting’ medicine that only needs to be taken twice a year, has just received UK approval, having shown it can reduce the number of severe attacks by 72 percent (Sunday Times, 28 Dec).

An ‘important step forward’ then, showing how capitalism has our welfare at heart? Er, not entirely. The paper added that the drug ‘will reduce the time patients need to take off work, as well as free up NHS resources’. Money priorities linger like a bad smell, even over positive news stories.

worldsocialism.org/spgb/

New Year musings

 ‘Happy New Year!’ exhortations are beginning to fly around. What’s the ‘Happy’ you are trying to convey to whoever is on the receiving end of one of this time limited urges? Happiness is subjective anyway and whatever event provides it for one person may not do so for another. Money can’t necessarily provide happiness it’s said, but for those who don’t have enough of it the expression miserable but rich as opposed to happy and poor would win hands down. In a capitalist society, money, either the surfeit or the lack of it, goes a long way toward determining one’s mental make up. So do you really expect that the forthcoming new year will provide you with positive benefits over and above ones you already enjoy assuming you believe you have some?

At this period in time just before the calendar clicks over there will be lots of pundits, experts, influencers, media personalities and others, keen to suppose what may occur in the new months ahead. In the majority of cases one might as well take Mystic Meg seriously.

The crystal ball will be perused for ideas in various fields, sporting, economic, political, geopolitical, and cultural. Educated guesses based upon existing data may prove to be close to the mark. Some events will provide the kicking from the capitalist system, the football world cup for instance. Which not only distracts but also reinforces nationalist fervour. Double win for capitalism.

Propaganda machinery in the UK will have to work hard in May when local elections occur except a large number of voters have already been disenfranchised by the ruling Party who worry about the kicking it can expect there.

Internationally, there will be the continuance of existing conflicts and new conflicts exploding around the planet. These will likely be driven by the thirst for resources and profit made by carious capitalist entities. The race for hegemony in various spheres of the globe will continue.

Attacks on free speech and the imposition of more and more censorship will gain ground everywhere because capitalism can’t lose control of the peasants revolting.

What will be the response when, in twelve months time, the question is posed, what did 2026 ever do for us? Hopefully the answer may surprise us especially those who view its beginning through cynical and jaundiced eyes.

But without eschewing a plethora of cliches, each of which proves the point that nothing happens with effort, and whether you believe that making new year resolutions are helpful, the goal, the focus, the point has to be ‘make capitalism history.’ Let’s rid ourselves of capitalism before capitalism rids itself of all of us.