>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.
I wasn't quoting Mao, Carrol...I was quoting Saul Alinsky! Alinsky was complaining about people who quote mindlessly. It was a too-oblique reference on my part, and I (rightly) apologised to Doug for it.
>
>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.
I'm sure it would be easier for you, Carrol! But I don't want to play Dueling Quotations. What earthly good would that be? Dueling Banjos has a great deal more to recommend it -- it's good listening, at least.
I think it a great pity that you could even call Alinsky a 'red-baiter' in jest.