Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> Actually many of the people who talk about Z & F - e.g., on this list
> - have no problem with a little "violence." Z himself partly explains
> his interest in Lenin by saying that in politics sometimes you have
> to shoot people.
>
I haven't been following this thread -- but I would take it as a given, not needing much theoretical defense, that sometimes you have to shoot people -- though I don't see how one needs to be a Leninist to hold that position, nor do I see how Lenin's politics particularly depend on it any more than any other rational politics does. Lenin, along with almost all Marxists, did disapprove of individualist terrorism. I once heard an anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, that when the Grand Duke was assassinated Lenin exclaimed "Good Show," then sat down to write an article attacking terrorism. Probably that would have been my reaction if someone had shot Clinton during the war to partition Yugoslavia or Bush during the invasion of Iraq.
Carrol