By Sierra Ward
September 17, 2026
As the United States continues its war on Iran and its aggression against Cuba, John Catalinotto’s 2017 book, “Turn the guns around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts, and Revolutions,” becomes increasingly more relevant and is a history those interested in building a real movement that’s actually capable of defeating Empire should read.
Catalinotto uses Marxist class analysis and cites historical examples to demonstrate that class matters, even with the state’s own enforcers.
Drawing from the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Kiel Mutiny of 1918, it shows how in each the troops turned their guns around. The book further draws on national liberation struggles in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola in the 1960s and 1970s, which, in turn, sparked revolts within the Portuguese military that overthrew Portugal’s fascist regime in 1974, which, in turn, aided these independence movements.
Catalinotto weaves each of these events together around the history and struggle of the GI enlisted soldiers’ resistance to the U.S. war against the Vietnamese liberation struggle, using real letters, interviews and firsthand accounts that he crafts together with that historical research.
His work demonstrates how this resistance in the military led to the creation of the American Servicemen’s Union (ASU) and other active duty and veterans’ resistance groups and that this resistance within the rank-and-file U.S. troops helped strengthen the resistance to the war among civilians here in the United States. This aided the Vietnamese people in their victory and achieving independence in 1975.
Is conscription in the future?
Today, the United States is actively at war, and there is even talk about bringing back the draft. While war strategists debate over where they want to bomb and sanction next, more workers are sent off to die on behalf of the U.S. Empire. The soldiers, sailors, marines and airforce personnel are themselves workers.
If we antiwar activists deny that reality, we don’t help the U.S. working-class military personnel, and our denial certainly doesn’t help the people in the Global South either.
If we want to help protect Iran’s sovereignty, we should be organizing with the rank and file and helping their resistance. We should be taking steps to prepare for active, militant resistance to any draft efforts, and we should be in solidarity with workers facing vile conditions as they’re being sent off to slaughter.
Recently, the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier has been in the news as families of those on board report abhorrent conditions and a possible mutiny. It is important for the antiwar movement that these voices be heard and that we, as Marxist-Leninists, listen. Most of these voices within the rank and file go unheard due to government censorship.
As Catalinotto wrote in the first page of the book, “This book is dedicated to the unknown soldier-resisters, who are the first to awaken their class interests and turn their weapons on the rulers who have sent them into vain battle.”
Communist Andy Stapp and many other brave antiwar veterans worked to create the ASU, a union of rank-and-file service personnel (who in those days were called GIs). This union fought for better wages and more benefits for low-ranking GIs. It also fought against illegal wars, racism and deployment of Army and National Guard against U.S. citizens. It challenged “the brass” in the chain of command.
The ASU, in tandem with the other collective efforts of antiwar GIs in the U.S., contributed greatly to the Vietnamese liberation struggle as well as awakening the consciousness of numerous veterans who are active communists today.
“Turn the Guns Around” makes this point well. If there’s an opening for us to get workers away from the clutches of the Empire, to save them from being cannon fodder and to raise their consciousness, then we should take it. We gain nothing by abandoning workers; we should meet them where they are at.
As Workers World Party founder Sam Marcy stated, “The duty of revolutionary Marxists is to preach the class struggle, to fight the class war,” and this includes reaching out to those low-ranking military personnel swept up by the military machine, lest we abandon them to fascism.
