Communists do not fight for personal military power (they must in no circumstances do that, and let no one ever again follow the example of Zhang Guotao), but they must fight for military power for the Party, for military power for the people. As a national war of resistance is going on, we must also fight for military power for the nation. Where there is naivete on the question of military power, nothing whatsoever can be achieved. It is very difficult for the labouring people, who have been deceived and intimidated by the reactionary ruling classes for thousands of years, to awaken to the importance of having guns in their own hands. Now that Japanese imperialist oppression and the nation-wide resistance to it have pushed our labouring people into the arena of war, Communists should prove themselves the most politically conscious leaders in this war. Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
Not every day I don’t. My kids also don’t need me to have life insurance, and I don’t need a homeowners policy with protection against fires because my house is built to code.
Being armed is an insurance policy against things you maybe have read about but cannot imagine. 30 days of no electricity and no running water after a solar event for example would break any social contacts all your assumptions about society are founded on. And in case of political extremism making it to public policy, No you will not survive a battle against a standing army, but when they’re stacking up to drag you out to execute you for being an intellectual or the dozens of things governments executed people en masse for just in the last few generations, nobody wants to be the first one shot for a thing they don’t really truly believe in, and getting enough people to commit genocide is essentially impossible until you’ve disarmed everyone who is not part of the government.
Now convince me these things did not all happen in the last 100 years and would never happen here.
civilians shouldn’t have guns period. anywhere.
except people that need them for actual non-murder reasons (farming, sport, hunting etc).
you don’t need a gun designed to kill people
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.
—Mao Zedong, Selected Works Vol. II, pp. 224-225
You should have guns to shoot and kill cops and nazis. But I agree with you that those are not people.
Why should guns be monopolized by a state that is not controlled by those civilians? Seems like a system of oppression 2 me.
wrong take
Not every day I don’t. My kids also don’t need me to have life insurance, and I don’t need a homeowners policy with protection against fires because my house is built to code.
Being armed is an insurance policy against things you maybe have read about but cannot imagine. 30 days of no electricity and no running water after a solar event for example would break any social contacts all your assumptions about society are founded on. And in case of political extremism making it to public policy, No you will not survive a battle against a standing army, but when they’re stacking up to drag you out to execute you for being an intellectual or the dozens of things governments executed people en masse for just in the last few generations, nobody wants to be the first one shot for a thing they don’t really truly believe in, and getting enough people to commit genocide is essentially impossible until you’ve disarmed everyone who is not part of the government.
Now convince me these things did not all happen in the last 100 years and would never happen here.