> That's all true, but it doesn't address the question of whether
> the good guys should use violence, does it? If you just read
> this bit, it makes violence look like the tool of monsters.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/krupskaya/works/rol/rol26.htm
Krupskaya cites Lenin:
"Armed insurrection is a special form of political struggle, one subject to special laws which must be attentively pondered over. Karl Marx expressed this truth with remarkable saliency when he wrote that armed 'insurrection is an art quite as much as war.'
"Of the principal rules of this art, Marx noted the following:
"1) Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it firmly realize that you must go to the end.
"2) Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point, at the decisive moment, otherwise the enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and organization, will destroy the insurgents.
"3) Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with the greatest determination, and by all means, without fail, take the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising.'
"4) You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.
"5) You must strive for daily successes, even if small (one might say hourly, if it is the case of one town), and at all costs retain the 'moral ascendancy.'
"Marx summed up the lessons of all revolutions in respect to armed insurrection in the words of 'Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary policy yet known: de l'audace, de l'audace, encore de l'audace."
Now, for the purpose of this discussion, and in our context, i.e. considering the existing balance of *military* forces between OWS and the status quo, I'd emphasize the very first sentence of item 1. Because that's pretty much all we need to know at this point. Here it is that sentence, again:
NEVER PLAY WITH INSURRECTION!