It's very difficult to look at this current era of "the left" and not come to the conclusion that dismissing the importance of any act of violent resistance is ill advised. When I compare this current era to previous eras, the early 1900s, the 1800s lead up to the US Civil War, even the '60s and early '70s, it's striking just how little power "the left" has now, and how neatly that correlates with a huge drop in leftist political violence & sabotage. Even before the rise of the USSR, there was momentum in the west behind workers' movements, embodied not just in political parties and militant labor unions, but also in various other organized groups whose political class interest aligned even if their strategies differed.
While there is plenty of debate over the effectiveness of "propaganda of the deed" (a term which is thrown around too liberally), it's actually very difficult to argue that it had a net mitigating effect on the power of the workers' movement in the early 20th century or the abolitionist movement in the 19th century. The expression of class contradiction through workers' violence against slavers, capitalists, landlords, and imperialists, far from damaging the labor or abolitionist movement, reinforced the antagonism between the people and the state. It is more difficult to obfuscate the contradiction between classes in a circumstance where the monopoly on force of the rentier-capitalist class is challenged by workers. If unchallenged, the violence of the state does not diminish, the paranoia of the robber barons does not disappear; rather, their megalomaniacal advance simply continues unchallenged. Even without a real violent challenge to the capitalist status quo, the iron heel still comes down, eager to stomp out even the most reasonable voices of disagreement with the brutal agenda of the state.
It is not that acts of terror against the state are singlehandedly effective revolutionary activity, but I can't help but conclude that these acts were essential to a broader revolutionary movement. A left which totally dismisses or suppresses such actions is merely a punching bag for the state. You can march, you can organize, you can do whatever peaceful, legal things you like… and the state will still vilify and suppress you as though you were a violent criminal. The state will use all its power - propaganda, electoral shenanigans, accusations, censorship - to ensure that you cannot win elections without bending th
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