What should Revolutionaries Do?

Some OHMS members have realised that conscientious objection is essentially a privilege of the middle class and educated youth, but in opposing the class inequality of CO exemption, OHMS fails to see that defiance will also be the monopoly of the middle class.

What should revolutionaries do? The army is the chief instrument of bourgeois state power, and if it is operating at full strength the revolution can be crushed. The answer for a revolutionary is to undermine and propagate revolutionary sentiment. This was a major factor in the success of the 1917 October Revolution; it made the insurrection in the Dominican Republic in 1965 so successful prior to the massive US intervention; and note the attention the NLF has paid to propaganda in the army of the Republic of Vietnam.

Even in sub-revolutionary situations, the army often has a critical role as a professional strike-breaker and as a backup at demonstrations (remember the trucks and barbed wire at Wellington airport when the All Blacks left in 1970).

Draft resistance would be tactically correct only if it was likely that it would result in a successful outcome, that is such massive non-compliance that the army is truly crippled.