Some (not so) random readings

[Todd Archer]

In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it
belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles
them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a
great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his
mission. The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda of the deed' can
argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of
terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political
experience prove otherwise.  The more 'effective' the terrorist acts,
the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the
masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the
confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the
murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old
rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the
police repression grows more savage and brazen.  And as a result, in
place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes
disillusionment and apathy. 

Leon Trotsky from "Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism"

and

Terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of
intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to connect the
revolutionary struggle and the working-class movement into an integral
whole. It is difficult indeed for those who have lost their belief, or
who have never believed, that this is possible, to find some outlet for
their indignation and revolutionary energy other than terror.

Vladimir Lenin from "What Is To Be Done"

and

A long time ago, my friend Karl Marx had their number. In 1850 he wrote
a review of a couple of books by French police spies on the
conspiratorial secret societies of the day -- the Weathermen of the day.
In this piece, Marx took them down and shook them out as never before.
Here are a couple of sentence from Marx's review, for example: 

"Their job indeed consists in forestalling the process of revolutionary
development, pushing it artificially into crises, making a revolution on
the spur of the moment without the conditions for a revolution. For them
the only condition for the revolution is a sufficient organization of
their conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution, and wholly
share the confusion of ideas and the limitation to fixed notions of the
old alchemists. They go eagerly for invented devices to achieve the
revolutionary miracle: incendiary bombs, explosive contraptions with
magical powers, riots, whose effects are sure to be all the more
miraculous and awesome the less they have any rational basis. Busy with
such plot-mongering, they have no other aim than the next overthrow of
the existing government, and look with deepest disdain on a more
theoretical clarification of the workers as to their class interests."

Hal Draper from "Cops, Dirty Harry, and Junious Pool"

All of these were copied shamelessly from the Marxists Internet Archive,
a great place for reading.

Todd