Part 1: Firearms, Warfare, and the International Communist Movement

Authors Note

This analysis was written in the summer of 2025 and has been divided into a series of articles for New Worker. The anti-racist uprisings of 5 years prior showed a dramatic change in what the current landscape of the firearms industry and how it affects demonstrations and the behaviors of various currents of the political right and left. Not only do questions from these changes need to be addressed, but the Trump administration's nationalization of various police forces, expansion of ICE, and deployment of the National Guard, is creating an increasingly volatile situation. The need to understand firearms, our relationship to them under socialism vs capitalism, and the historical Communist attitude towards them is an essential part of any program. Thus “the firearm question” was born out of an understanding that while military structures, firearm ownership, and the party’s relationship to these things are necessarily distinct things, their relation requires us to analyze them as a whole. The focus on firearms ultimately is that of a political one, as armed conflict must be addressed, but contemporary issues of gun violence, the firearms industry, etc. take precedence as there is an immediate need to address them in a programmatic and united manner.

The Communist Movement is no stranger to firearms, and any movement that takes the seizure of political power seriously needs to understand that the ability for a class power to retain its supremacy is in one deep breath defined by its ability to be more organized than its class adversaries, and to leverage the latest in technological and strategic warfare in its exhale. In other words, the bourgeoisie retains the might of millions upon millions of armed personnel to maintain control over the working class, but it shows restraint in leveraging these forces. As long as the proletariat is disorganized in the face of the bourgeoise, it doesn’t stand a chance. But the firearm is a force multiplier and the suppression of the bourgeoisie, as history has shown, will be done with the organized proletariat hand in hand, and the bourgeoisie at the barrel end of a rifle. 

In Marx and Engels’ address to the Communist League in 1850, we see a particular passage in reference on what to do about the petty-bourgeoise of their time:

“To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.“ (1) 

While one particular phrase gained notoriety, it is crucial that we understand they came to the conclusion to the necessity of the arming of the proletariat based on an analysis of their conditions. While the custom of simply quoting Marx and Engels is enough to impress some for the sake of appearing radical, said radicalism should be tested in the fires of application. Bad steel often cracks, and so do those who are inadequately prepared to comprehend the gravitas they speak until it’s made very clear for them in the worst ways. Marx and Engels recognized that in the wake of this revolutionary point in time, the proletariat had absolutely no choice but to take up the firearm if it sought to assert itself as the ruling class force for the abolition of class distinctions and thus drew up general guidelines of what should be done to accomplish this. This unfortunately wouldn’t pan out, but the establishment of the Paris Commune 21 years later would only reinforce the role of the firearm as a necessary tool in the fight for socialism-communism. 

Moving forward a few decades later, we’d see the RSDLP adopt in its 1903 program: “Replacement of the standing army by universal arming of the people.” (2) 

Again, context is important here, as this is referring to the defense of the socialist revolution, the establishment of the transitional state. That doesn’t mean however, the Bolsheviks would be waiting for socialism to begin arming workers, as the Bolsheviks would go on to establish the Voykena, or the Bolshevik Combat Organizations, (or The Red Guard as is most commonly discussed amongst circles in the U.S.) in 1905 with the resolution On Armed Uprising. Drawing heavily from Sovikin’s Bolshevik Military and Combat Organizations, they were established primarily to combat the Black Hundreds, but also to eventually serve as preliminary military detachments in preparation for revolution. In the early process of their establishment, Lenin wrote:

“Immediately establish combat squads everywhere and anywhere, both among students and especially among workers, etc., etc. Let detachments of 3 to 10, 30, etc. people be organized immediately. Let them arm themselves immediately, as best they can... Let these detachments immediately choose their own leaders and, if possible, contact the Combat Committee of the St. Petersburg Committee” (3). (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., v. 11, pp. 336-37). 

By 1906, it would be established that these combat organizations were to be reorganized and subordinated to the leadership of party organs. While work was redirected in 1907, this did not lead to their dissolution, and even when the RSDLP as an organization moved away from its most illegal activities such as armed skirmishes against the state, expropriation, etc, these organizations remained. These formations were then perfectly situated for the outbreak of World War I, as they ramped up training and arming of workers, and political agitation amongst soldiers, printing multiple papers and distributing them. This preparation would prove essential for the victory over the Kerenski government and the bourgeoisie of Russia. This experience would be taken into account, as Lenin had already called for the “abolition of the police, the army, and the bureaucracy” in the April Thesis, (4). and reiterated proposed changes to the party program; 

“The experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, which created the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and a number of similar organisations, thereby confirmed the experience of the Paris Commune, which consisted in the fact that the proletariat must have a state for the period of transition to socialism, but this state{2} must not be a conventional type of state, but the immediate, massive and wholesale organisation of the armed workers to substitute for the old instruments of administration: the standing army, the police and the civil service.“ (5) 

The combat organizations would be reorganized into the Soviet Armed forces in 1918, and be the foundation for the Red Army. All of this is the product of the Bolsheviks very carefully analyzing revolutionary history, the conditions they were operating under, and putting front and center the aims of establishing a revolutionary society. 

Of course this raises the question of “why would the Soviet Union have a standing army anyway?” This fact is usually thrown to slander the Bolsheviks, the Soviet Union, and the International Communist Movement as a whole. But the most crucial details of the time period would make it very clear that the policies needed to be reassessed. 1. The Soviet Union not only survived a civil war, but said civil war saw invasion from multiple other countries, showing the bourgeoisie internationally desired the destruction of the socialist state. 2. The failure of the German Revolution marked a halt in the move of socialism westward. 3. World War I would introduce a new kind of mechanized warfare with aircraft and tank warfare seeing their initial implementation, a trend that would continue in complexity as time goes on. The Soviet Union thus needed to maintain an army trained in combatting invading adversaries and operating specialized equipment in a coordinated plan of attack. This, of course, does not at all discount the need to move away from the standing army, only that a material approach must be taken. The army, the police, and other related appendages of the old bourgeois state. In turn, the state under socialism-communism will need to establish its own organs to maintain itself with the objective of dissolving them when feasible.

In The Armed Forces and Revolution, Lenin states: 

“Everywhere, in all countries, the standing army is used not so much against the external enemy as against the internal enemy. Everywhere the standing army has become the weapon of reaction, the servant of capital in its struggle against labour, the executioner of the people’s liberty.“ (6) 

This observation takes on a fascinating character nearly 90 years after, as the fall of the Soviet Union during the 1991 counterrevolution demonstrates just what kind of internal enemies can exist. These are facts that should be taken into account for our own revolutionary aspirations depending on what should come crawling out of the wood work when we finally seize the manor. 

The International Communist Movement of course was adaptable. Many other socialist-communist revolutions of the 20th century would see, not formal standing armies going head to head, but guerilla armies of volunteers and dedicated revolutionaries trained in Marxism-Leninism, such as in Cuba and Vietnam. On Guerilla Warfare by Mao Zedong is often assigned reading for armies all over, including the U.S. military across various units in various branches. Che Guevara would also make his contribution with Guerilla Warfare. We can even see the Angolan Civil War as evidence of how we should be flexible in how we conduct warfare, as Soviet advisors struggled in the wake of the opposing South African incursion , where Fidel Castro and Cuban units were able to better advise and collaborate with MPLA units, and successfully suppressed enemy forces. Despite the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) being a formal standing military; the product of fusing Cuban revolutionary forces and personnel of the former army of the Batista regime, Cuba’s military hardware, professional forces, and experienced guerrilla fighters, allowed Cuban forces to aid in both conventional and Guerrilla warfare. 

This in mind, a series of questions present themselves. ”If we know that standing armies have become a necessity due to certain conditions, what makes them so antithetical to socialism-communism?” We could ask even further, “if the state is under the control of the proletariat, why does an army under control of said proletariat seem antithetical to the long term goal of socialism?” Lastly, “why do we have standing armies?” To adequately answer these, we will need to observe capitalism’s development.