I think a reasonable reading of the texts is that an armed proletarian militia is fundamental to Marxism-Leninism.
Universal arming of the people. In future armies shall at the same time be workers’ armies so that the armed forces will not only consume, as in the past, but produce even more than it costs to maintain them.
The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions – cheap government – a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and state functionarism" and "in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia
Lenin in *The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution *
Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
In this text, Lenin reäffirms the traditional Marxist call for a proletarian militia against some Eurocommunists who call for disarmament instead of a militia. Lenin argues that, "Socialists cannot, without ceasing to be socialists, be opposed to all war. Firstly, socialists have never been, nor can they ever be, opposed to revolutionary wars."
He points out that the police and armed forces in capitalist countries are the teeth with which the bourgeoisie bite the proles. This is shown in the use of armed forces against strikes. Lenin argues the correct response is a proletarian armed force (against the bourgeoisie) not disarmament. To disagree with this "is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution".
"Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie."
"On the question of a militia, we should say: We are not in favor of a bourgeois militia; we are in favor only of a proletarian militia."
He argues that the capitalists are mostly concerned to "safeguard the old instruments of oppression: the police, the bureaucracy, the standing army"
"Yet now of all times, at the present revolutionary moment, it is most urgent and essential that there be a universal arming of the people. To assert that, while we have a revolutionary army, there is no need to arm the proletariat, or that there would “not be enough” arms to go round, is mere deception and trickery. The thing is to begin organising a universal militia straight away, so that everyone should learn the use of arms even if there is “not enough” to go round, for it is not at all necessary that the people have enough weapons to arm everybody."
"This ideal has not only become a part of our programme, it has not only won a place in the history of the labour movement in the West, namely, in the experience of the Paris Commune; it has not only been evaluated, stressed, explained and recommended by Marx, but it was actually put into practice by the Russian workers in the years 1905 and 1917." (this really drives home how inseparable the idea of the people's militia was to Marxism)
Comrade Lenin states that "we will not be able to maintain power unless we counter the magnificent organisation of the entire Russian bourgeoisie and the entire bourgeois intelligentsia with an equally magnificent organisation of the proletariat"
He says that "Organisation is the slogan of the moment" but that doesn't mean politely organising within the limits set by capitalist laws. It means the kind of organising that scares the bourgeoisie.
"We need revolutionary government, we need (for a certain transitional period) a state. This is what distinguishes us from the anarchists. The difference between the revolutionary Marxists and the anarchists is not only that the former stand for centralised, large-scale communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small production. The difference between us precisely on the question of government, of the state, is that we are for, and the anarchists against, utilising revolutionary forms of the state in a revolutionary way for the struggle for socialism."
A people's militia is contrasts with armed police and army (bourgeois institutions): "We need a state, but not the kind the bourgeoisie needs, with organs of government in the shape of a police force, an army and a bureaucracy (officialdom) separate from and opposed to the people. All bourgeois revolutions merely perfected this state machine, merely transferred it from the hands of one party to those of another."
Lenin, following Marx, advocates "merging the police force, the army and the bureaucracy with the entire armed people. Following the path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, the proletariat, must organise and arm all the poor, exploited sections of the population in order that they themselves should take the organs of state power directly into their own hands, in order that they themselves should constitute these organs of state power."
Lenin saying All Coppers Are Bastards: "Prevent restoration of the police force! Do not let the local government bodies slip out of your hands! Set up a militia that will really embrace the entire people, be really universal, and be led by the proletariat!"
And some gender equality stuff in case that wasn't obvious: "What kind of militia do we need, the proletariat, all the toiling people? A genuine people’s militia, i.e., one that, first, consists of the entire population, of all adult citizens of both sexes; and, second, one that combines the functions of a people’s army with police functions, with the functions of the chief and fundamental organ of public order and public administration... St. Petersburg has a population of about two million. Of these, more than half are between the ages of 15 and 65. Take half—one million. Let us even subtract an entire fourth as physically unfit, etc., taking no part in public service at the present moment for justifiable reasons. There remain 750,000 who, serving in the militia, say one day in fifteen (and receiving their pay for this time from their employers), would form an army of 50,000. That’s the type of “state” we need!" (These numbers are, as Comrade Lenin notes, just to give a general idea.)
Arm the people with Glock 19s, a more gender-neutral gun than Glock 17s
Stressing again the militia as the anti-police, the democratic antidote to policing: "The substitution of a people’s militia for the police is a reform that follows from the entire course of the revolution and that is now being introduced in most parts of Russia. We must explain to the people that in most of the bourgeois revolutions of the usual type, this reform was always extremely short-lived, and that the bourgeoisie—even the most democratic and republican—restored the police of the old, tsarist type, a police divorced from the people, commanded by the bourgeoisie and capable of oppressing the people in every way."
The cop point again, and some rough numbers again: "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people’s militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people). Service in this militia should extend to all citizens of both sexes between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five without exception, if these tentatively suggested age limits may be taken as indicating the participation of adolescents and old people. Capitalists must pay their workers, servants, etc., for days devoted to public service in the militia. Unless women are brought to take an independent part not only in political life generally, but also in daily and universal public service, it is no use talking about full and stable democracy, let alone socialism. And such “police” functions as care of the sick and of homeless children, food inspection, etc., will never be satisfactorily discharged until women are on an equal footing with men, not merely nominally but in reality."
