The peaceful protest side also helps! The state would much rather make concessions to peaceful protest than they would to an armed one, because the latter challenges the state’s monopoly on power. The existence of a peaceful protest lets the state pretend to ignore the armed one, while still giving into their demands. Of course the state would rather make no concessions at all, so both are necessary.
I mean, yes, that’s what I was saying, but you’ve named the problem right here. Peaceful protest doesn’t challenge state power, it can reform things but not make radical change, so if radical change is necessary (it is), peaceful protest serves only to distract from truly effective movements.
I’m saying that if you don’t have the numbers for armed resistance to actually win, a parallel peaceful protest movement can still give a path to get concessions (but peaceful protest won’t get anything by itself).
And taking advantage of that phenomena to quell people’s outrage is very explicitly something the bourgeoisie do to keep the more extreme movements from being able to expand to the point that they CAN make the actual, needed, radical change.
The peaceful protest side also helps! The state would much rather make concessions to peaceful protest than they would to an armed one, because the latter challenges the state’s monopoly on power. The existence of a peaceful protest lets the state pretend to ignore the armed one, while still giving into their demands. Of course the state would rather make no concessions at all, so both are necessary.
I mean, yes, that’s what I was saying, but you’ve named the problem right here. Peaceful protest doesn’t challenge state power, it can reform things but not make radical change, so if radical change is necessary (it is), peaceful protest serves only to distract from truly effective movements.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying that if you don’t have the numbers for armed resistance to actually win, a parallel peaceful protest movement can still give a path to get concessions (but peaceful protest won’t get anything by itself).
And taking advantage of that phenomena to quell people’s outrage is very explicitly something the bourgeoisie do to keep the more extreme movements from being able to expand to the point that they CAN make the actual, needed, radical change.