Marxist Rifle Association

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Not necessarily an AK or SKS, but the gun that suits your material conditions. As materialists, we know that social and material conditions determine our options for strategy and praxis. For example, for a proletarian in the US to purchase an $800 AK pattern rifle or SKS (especially if it's in 5.45x39 or 7.62x39) for their first or primary rifle simply because they like the aesthetics and origin of the gun is often times anti-materialist and pointless. An analysis of the of the US will reveal that one can acquire an AR-15 pattern rifle for under $500 and an optic for ~$100, as well as that 5.56/.223 is by far the most prevalent and cheapest intermediate cartridge in the country, both in stores and in usage by other people. That paired with the ubiquity of AR parts and mags makes the AR-15 quite literally "the people's rifle" of the Unites States.

AKs, AK parts, and AK ammunition are more archaic and expensive, not only requiring more money to acquire them but also making finding ammunition and spare parts for your rifle in a potential domestic conflict far more difficult.

Now, I will admit that in AR-ban states, an SKS with AK mags may be the best option for a semi-automatic rifle in an intermediate cartridge.

A material analysis will determine what the best guns to equip progressive and proletarian forces of a country are. I'm not policing or telling you what gun to buy, but I am recommending people to approach the situation materially and not ideally. If you happen to want to buy a Makarov, Tokarev, Mosin, or whatever as collectors pieces and have a surplus of money, then whatever. But relying on these weapons, particularly in the US, should be resisted.

Marxists do not support, and have never supported, any form of gun control under capitalism.

On June 20, 1967, Comrade Huey P. Newton wrote "In Defense of Self Defense", an article in The Black Panther. In the second-to-last paragraph, he stated:

When a mechanic wants to fix a broken down car engine he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation, they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun. Only with the power of the gun can the black masses halt the terror and brutality perpetuated against them by the armed racist power structure; and in one sense only by the power of the gun can the whole world be transformed into the earthly paradise dreamed of by the people from time immemorial. One successful practitioner of the art and science of national liberation and self defense put it this way: “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.” (Brother Mao Tse-Tung)

As Marxists, we want peace- but to think that peace in our current, violence-ridden capitalist society can be achieved through a limiting of, or abolition of armaments for the working class is reactionary and silly. Lenin drives this point home in “The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution” in late 1916:

Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.

Violence is sewn into the DNA of all capitalist countries, especially the United States, and the ever-present problem of gun violence in the US is rooted in systemic poverty, alienation, militarist culture, white chauvinism, and the for-profit firearms industry; capitalism is the cause of these symptoms.

Any form of gun control legislation coming from the capitalist state is class warfare against the proletariat and, especially in the US, is inherently racist- history has proven this. J. Sykes, in the Freedom Road Socialist Organization's Fight Back! News, writes:

The right to bear arms was formalized by the Bill of Rights, which included the Second Amendment, though in practice this only applied to white citizens, and was driven primarily by fear of slave revolts.

In the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that citizenship didn’t apply to people of African descent. Chief Justice Roger Taney, in arguing against equal citizenship to African Americans in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case, worried that it “would give to persons of the negro race” the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

Further on, he continues:

The democratic right to bear arms was denied in practice to Black people in the South, though some still armed themselves. Indeed, throughout the Jim Crow period, there is a tradition of armed resistance in the Black Belt South that includes the Alabama Sharecroppers Union, the Deacons of Defense, and the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP leader Robert F. Williams.

The Mulford Act, banning the open carry of loaded firearms, was passed in California in 1967 (with the noteworthy support of the NRA) in a direct attack on the Black Panther Party, to roll back the rights they exercised in arming themselves in defense of their communities. Before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a firearm permit after his house was firebombed. Indeed, disarming oppressed nationalities to prevent self-defense has historically gone hand in hand with their oppression. Thus, we have to understand that the question of gun control in the U.S. is tied to the question of national oppression.

With the continuation of national, racial, and class-based oppression to this day, any form of gun control legislation, including the expansion of state-administered background and health checks, would perpetuate this oppression.

Now, let us address the question of past and present socialist states and firearms policies within them. Let us return to the former quote from Lenin: "Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap." When the capitalist state has been destroyed and the working class has seized state power through a vanguard party, the necessity for a mass arming of the people fades; though, this should not be misconstrued as a disarmament of the working class. The proletariat, under socialism, remains armed through the workers' state and its defensive apparatuses, such as the people's army and local militias that serve to protect the gains of the revolution from both internal and external reaction.

Let's close-off with some classics:

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.

• Lenin

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

• Marx & Engels

Sources:

• Huey P. Newton - "In Defense of Self Defense" (1967), The Black Panther

• Vladimir Lenin - "The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution" (1916)

• J. Sykes - "Gun control: the Marxist-Leninist view" (2023), Fight Back! News

• Party for Socialism & Liberation - "The Socialist Approach to Ending Gun Violence" (2024)

• Karl Marx & Frederick Engels - "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League" (1850)