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From: myers@uwmacc.UUCP (Jeff Myers)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The Left and Gun Control
Message-ID: <670@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Jan-85 11:01:44 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.670
Posted: Tue Jan 15 11:01:44 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Jan-85 14:20:14 EST
References: <229@qusavx.UUCP>
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 51

> 
> 	I for one would like to put to rest a certain widespread miscon-
> ception: that the left favors gun control.  While I have no doubt that
> certain left-liberal and socialist organizations do promote either the
> registration of handguns or their complete abolition, the genuine 
> Marxists I have known (including a former member of the S.D.S
> Weathermen) take the line that gun control amounts to "disarming the
> proletariat" and you obviously cannot wage a successful revolution 
> without firearms.  I used to point out to this fellow that too many of
> his intrepid working class army were fascist in their political tastes,
> but that didn't sway him or any of his friends.

"Genuine Marxist"?  There's a misty term for you.  Marxists have been
battling for decades (both verbally and physically) over claims of
intellectual purity.  Working toward a working class revolution in the US
at this stage in our development simply turns one into a sectarian
Trotskyist.  The "genuine Marxists" I respect most stress the necessity
of aiding autonomous movements in the periphery and tend to stress the
importance of democratic traditions in those countries which have a
longstanding one.  But it's a real problem working for
radical change within a system organized to prevent it.

> So when I read on the
> net (or in the local paper) that Democrats are socialists and socialists
> are communists and communists want to take our guns away, in fact this
> plays precisely into the hands of those who believe only violence can
> change society or purge it of its dastardly foes (however these may be
> defined).

Roger.

> 	I find it astonishing that a supposedly well-educated body of
> folks (as I believe the vast majority of netlanders to be) can be so
> strikingly naive with regard to political distinctions.  This can 
> undoubtedly be explained to a large degree from being brought up in the
> United States, where Democrats and Republicans are assumed to be
> opposites when in fact but two sides of the same coin.  Please
> do not insult radicals by lumping them together with liberals: liberals
> seek only to alter the system to make it more liveable for all its
> elements; radicals seek to replace the system entirely in the belief
> that its very nature is to create the havoc liberals hope to mend and
> conservatives portray as unfortunate yet inevitable.

Quite well put.

-- 
Jeff Myers				The views above may or may not
University of Wisconsin-Madison		reflect the views of any other
Madison Academic Computing Center	person or group at UW-Madison.
ARPA: uwmacc!myers@wisc-rsch.arpa
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