> Margaret wrote:
>
> >
> > 1) It's self-destructive to quote Mao about power
> > coming from the barrel of a gun when it's the other
> > side that has all the guns.
Is it self-destructive to say that the wind of hurricanes does damage? Mao's statement is not a moral exhortation but a description of reality, and probably its best English rendering, in any case, is "power flows *through* the barrel of a gun," though there is a lot of debate about that. Your statement is but a special case of Mao's more general case. *They* have the guns now -- so our task is to do the political work which will, ultimately, put the guns in our hands or somehow neutralize the guns in their hands. Read the uncensored version of the article Engels wrote on Force in history, which was probably the ultimate source of Mao's assertion. Engels focuses on the fact that *they* have the guns and on how this is to be gotten around or through.
It would be easier to conduct conversations with you Margaret if you would ever respond to what Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, etc. actually said and in context rather than to some bizarre version that exists only in your head or in the words of whatever red-baiter you got your information from.
Carrol