>Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> > this running dog
>
>I can't remember the first noun in the phrase now, but "X [scabs?] and
>running dogs" was widely used in China for a half century or so, and
>I've always wondered about the literal reference of "running dogs."
>(It's possible that the translator substituted a western equivalent of
>the original Chinese -- I don't know.) The best guess I've made or heard
>is that it refers to the decorative dogs (coach dogs) that accompany the
>carriage of an aristocrat. Dwayne uses the phrase here, so perhaps he
>can answer my question.
>
>Carrol
X=imperialists. Here's the context, below. i've always thought it referred to the way dogs run alongside a moving vehicle--like a coach--nipping and barking. but, alas, my ethonocentrism...
"We are talking about how to deal with domestic and foreign reactionaries, the imperialists and their running dogs, not about how to deal with anyone else. With regard to such reactionaries, the question of irritating them or not does not arise. Irritated or not irritated, they will remain the same because they are reactionaries. Only if we draw a clear line between reactionaries and revolutionaries, expose the intrigues and plots of the reactlonaries, arouse the vigilance and attention of the revolutionary ranks, heighten our will to fight and crush the enemy's arrogance can we Isolate the reactionaries, vanquish them or supersede them. We must not show the slightest timidity before a wild beast. <...> "Who are the people?" At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party unite to form their own state and elect their own government they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism-the landlord class and bureaucratbourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplices-suppress them, allow them only to behave themselves and not to be unruly in word or deed. If they speak or act in an unruly way, they will be promptly stopped and punished. Democracy is practised within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship" http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1949mao.html