Re: someone's brought up East Timor again so ...

[David Welch <david.welch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, May 19, 2001 at 04:48:52PM +1000, Andy Gianniotis wrote:
> A policeman just happened to be walking past at that point in time and I
> gratefully called out for help (this actually happened). Was I wrong in
> calling on the state to help me, a (so-called) revolutionary Marxist
> activist ??
>
You should have organised a workers militia! Or to put it another way, it's a
standard tenet of Marxism (I would hope) that the police are there to maintain
social control, not to fight crime. Given this it's rather foolish to pretend
that the police can be forced to do the latter, especially when it comes
to physical attacks on revolutionaries. Not only that but it makes the day
when not only prison warders but the entire apparatus of the state are
actively trying to suppress revolutionaries more difficult to prepare for.