Kelley says the things I mentioned at the Socialism 2023 Conference.

Lenin says a lot of things in S&R that can be contradictory, but on this specific matter about proletarian power during the dictatorship of the proletariat, he is correct. The proletariat needs a force to enforce their class rule. This cannot be confused with police or prisons. The armed force is the whole proletariat armed, whose political power flows not from the barrel of guns but from their ability to subvert and overturn their proletarianization. The problem with Lenin is that, whatever the reasons, he precisely ignored his own theory and set up his own police and prisons.

A final point, I disagree with Five over here on that police and prisons aren't specific to capitalism. Lenin's system was capitalist, he admitted so himself. The later USSR was capitalist too. There's a lot of different ways to define capitalism, but my favorite way is to define it with the historical contingency of the proletariat. Proletarian existed and their conditions did not tend towards the abolition of their class, therefore the system is capitalist.

Sure, precapitalist systems had their dungeons and their armies that enforced carceral power, heck the Romans obviously had a word for it, but these systems are vastly different from the historically contingent form carcerality takes today. I would place these systems as seeds of police and prisons, but not as how we understand these concepts today. It is also telling these carceral seeds co-emerged with capitalist seeds.

When it comes to building an army for self-defense, I've been impressed by the system described in Homage to Catalonia where 'ideologues' were responsible for political and military discipline, who as opposed to Soviet commissars, had no authority to punish or imprison. A combination of a chaplain and nco, their job was to maintain morale and observe that humanitarian and anarchist principles were observed even at the point of contact with the enemy.

It should be noted in the early days of the Makhnovshchina and the Spanish Civil War, conscription wasn't necessary. The YPJ is another all-volunteer military formation. The Spanish anarchists whose lightning mobilization stopped the coup and made up the ranks of most of the early military fronts were all volunteers, joining as affinity groups or mobilized from syndicate organizations.

Another example of how abolition can support revolution, one of the first adventures of the Iron Column during the Spanish Civil war was the liberation of San Miguel de los Reyes prison and burning its records. Many of the prisoners released joined the force. Several key militants in the fight were survivors of incarceration, such as Buenaventura Durruti.

As the Fascists were re-enforced by Hitler and Mussolini, and every government but Stalin's abandoned the Republican forces, the situation on the ground changed. Conscription and the replacement of Ideologues with Commissars happened at the same time, one could argue that neither institution could exist without the other.

While Nestor Makhno's insurgent army was fueled by the social revolution it enabled, its tactical innovations that lead to early successes and Makhno's force of character were unique features that also drove enlistment. In its later days it is true that they began pressing men into service. Available now in hindsight, a common feature as both armies were falling back on conscription was that the revolution they were fighting for was already a lost cause.

Mass mobilization for self-defense is not incompatible with revolution and abolition, and does not necessarily imply systems of coercion.