El Salvador Soldiers Don’t Blindly Follow Orders here; I joined the US Army here
Rebellious US soldiers in Vietnam
El Salvador: Soldiers Don’t Blindly Follow Orders
During the 1970s, there was a revolutionary effervescence in El Salvador due to poor working conditions and poor pay. Farmworkers, industrial workers, and teachers went on strike.
I was a corporal in the army in San Miguel in the third infantry brigade. Although I did not have a communist revolutionary consciousness, I did know that I belonged to the working class.
One day the lieutenant came and told me, “Corporal, I need you to get the section together and prepare them to break a strike.”
The section consisted of 40 soldiers with anti-riot equipment including batons, protective helmets, gas masks and more. I told the section that we were called to go to a strike and disperse the strikers.
However, my feelings were completely mixed. I knew that disobeying an army order could mean jail or death. But I also knew that among the striking teachers were some who had been my teachers.
I started by asking some soldiers, “How are you going to respond when we go to the strike? What do you think of the mission they have entrusted to us?”
The responses were mixed. Some said, “You have to go and hit them hard, beat them, arrest them, or possibly kill them. Because we are people from the army, and they are civilians who are trying to cause disorder.”
Others said “No, you have to be tricky. Many of those strikers had been our teachers and they are fighting for better living conditions.”
Finally, it was my turn to speak to the section. I was alone with the soldiers; there was no officer. So, I started telling them, “Our mission when we get to that strike is going to be to try not to hit or arrest anyone. If we have to shoot, we’re going to shoot into the air. Just scare them and tell them to disperse. I said that it was not necessary to kill anyone. That we were not part of the system, that we were civilians dressed in uniform.
Then I continued, “In a few years, we are going to be back on the streets. Probably some of us are going to become teachers, other laborers, farmworkers. So, it’s going to be best not to shoot anyone or arrest anyone. Try to pretend we’re going to attack them to discourage them from spreading out, but don’t hurt them.”
After I spoke like this, many of the soldiers agreed with my position and said that it was fine that we were going to do it that way. If they didn’t touch us, we weren’t going to hit them.
Many of these soldiers were my friends. We knew each other, and we had already talked about political things and the hardship of our lives.
That experience and others that I lived within the army showed me that soldiers do not just blindly follow the orders of officers. But that they are open to see reality when it is presented to them and can be won to join the fight with the working class, especially industrial workers.
The end of the story: We were all ready to go when the order came that it was no longer necessary to go out and disperse the strikers.
History is full of examples like this. Both in local armies and imperialist armies, soldiers have, at times, joined the working class to fight together against the bosses.
Today, fighting for a communist revolution, we are better prepared ideologically to win many of those soldiers, sailors, and marines to join our fight for communism.
—Comrade Ex-Soldier
I joined the US Army on Purpose to Organize for Communism
Once, while I was on leave from military service, my uncle approached me and said, “I’m confused. How are you a communist and also in the Army?”
While I was doing my service, my whole family knew that I was a communist. And my enlistment in the Army was completely purposeful for comrades, but it was an almost hypocritical contradiction for some friends and family members. Yet, I’ve always known how to respond to everyone who questioned my position as a communist soldier.
I love to be asked that question because it paves the way to a sharp political discussion about organizing a communist revolution in a capitalist society. I told my uncle that to organize a successful communist revolution, we must undoubtedly organize soldiers to turn the guns around.
“Where else are we going to get our weapons?” I asked him.
However, it wouldn’t simply be a robbery of the capitalists’ weapons. Our philosophy of organizing in the military is far more sophisticated.
The military is made up of sons and daughters of the working class. Throughout history, it has been working-class soldiers who have been sent to fight and die in imperialist wars. In Vietnam, there were 58,220 US military fatalities. In Iraq, 4,490.
Imagine the countless civilian lives lost: at least 2 million in Vietnam and about a half a million in Iraq. And those soldiers were working-class too.
The 9/11 attacks killed 2,996 Americans, while current estimates in the NATO vs. Russia conflict in Ukraine are 3,000.
Capitalists and imperialists from all parts of the world depend on giving orders to soldiers. They give us the training and weapons to go out and do their dirty work. It’s time to go out and do our own work: organize in the military to build a solid communist base among soldiers and sailors in order to build the military infrastructure necessary for overthrowing capitalist governments around the world. That’s the only way we can take state power, and it begins in the barracks.
This communist military work is possible, and we already have experience doing it. In the decade I was in the service, I managed to bring our communist politics to soldiers in the barracks. It was difficult work, but I clearly remember the first time I told my close soldier friend that I was a communist. He was a white boy from Iowa, and I was a Latino boy from Los Angeles. And I felt completely connected to this person since we both came from working-class families, and we knew this was a f*ed-up capitalist system in which we live.
With a little more base-building, I remember making more solid connections with two other soldiers to the point that we organized a group of three soldiers to go to Washington DC and march on May Day under a communist flag.
I did two tours in Iraq, and I saw a lot of hypocrisy on the part of the US government—claiming to fight for freedom and democracy while trying—and ultimately failing—to be an army of imperial occupation in the Middle East.
Being a communist organizer in the military is not hypocritical; it is necessary. It is necessary in order to take power from the bosses, and it is necessary in order to unite seemingly opposite people from different ethnicities, countries, or languages.
Therefore, we must continue to encourage young comrades to join the Army and organize for our ranks – the working class ranks that will someday turn the guns around. Iraqi, American, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Russian, and South African soldiers must unite to turn the guns around and organize for communist revolution.
—Comrade Veteran
Read Our Pamphlet:
Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Crucial to Communist Workers’ Revolution