>>493003>The problem is when you go underground you cut yourself off from growth and public sympathy. It's impossible to win a revolution without public sympathy.No to the first, qualified no to the second.
It isn't actually impossible to have public sympathy while operating underground, and revolutionaries
have to operate underground unless they already have established military support… in which case, they
still need to have some cover for their revolutionary activities as long as they operate separately from sympathizers within the armed forces. Anyway, it's really the state propaganda machine and crackdowns which make garnering sympathy difficult.
Some level of public sympathy is necessary to win a revolution, but it's also true that public sympathy can be gained
through the course of revolution, and it's not necessary to start with overwhelming public sympathy or even have overwhelming public sympathy at the time of victory. The primary concerns are taking control over the state through force; the most valuable sympathy to have in this case isn't the general public, it's swathes of the lower ranks of the military class, and whatever sympathizers can be gained from the upper ranks. More sympathy is good, but trying to set out on revolution starting with overwhelming support, delaying and delaying in the hopes of some day getting that starting point without first accomplishing anything, is a fool's errand. It's important to look at this stuff for what it is; a socialist revolution represents the interests of the working class, but it still must attain power through ruthless revolutionary warfare which only requires enough support and power to overtake the existing state and take control of, and reform, and run the existing bureaucracies.