this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Wow you really did something there.
Why would I ever play along with being forced to fight for a country and government that has provided me with no material assets and has been actively trying to repress me and my class my entire life?
Im not kidding when I say day 1 they give me something lethal id be fragging the highest up in the chain of command that I can reach lmao
That's actually why so many revolutions came out of conscripted forces. It's terrible, but giving a bunch of people who don't want to fight weapons and training makes it hard for you to control that when they come back home.
Conscripting forces (under capitalist or imperial systems especially) will almost always lead to some form of domestic revolution or civil war either after or during the imperial war the conscripts are fighting in.
Exceptions seem to exist in predominantly settler colonial states or states with massive existing racial/ethnic underclasses. Since the way to quell the revolutionary intents of conscripts is concession at the social underclass' expense.
See the GI bill and redlining in America, Palestinian relations in Israel, North Koreans in South Korea, etc.
So a conscript force in NATO states would likely result in a fascist/socialist dialectic reforming as the old liberal states slide into reaction.
Without conscription, there can't really be a large scale violent revolution, but it's also less likely to literally consume the world in hellfire overnight as the old guard clutches to power in the most violent ways possible.
Also former conscripts made up the majority of revolutionary leftist parties, fascist paramilitaries, and organized criminals. So there isn't really a positive to conscription beyond just heightening contradictions and forcing more people from passive political life into active political life.
Exactly.