re-mao thought?

[MLuftmensch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Luftmensch)]

re-mao thought?

Is armed struggle always effective in achieving collective objectives?
Although this is very difficult to substantiate, a slew of precedents
can be summoned - Lenin & Mao, Ho Chi Minh & Castro, etc.

At the same time, in the war between labour and capital, unarmed
struggle has been common. The ability of the masses to refuse, to say
no, has always been our most powerful weapon. More powerful, some
might say, than  atom bombs - a weapon over which we will never
have democratic control.

I would like to ask both Maoists & Maoans about what I  - perhaps
mistakenly - perceive to be contradictory about Mao's thought/praxis
in regard to armed struggle, armies & arms.

Mao said & other have repeated that power comes from the barrel of a gun.
Yet in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima,
he remarked (to Anna Louise Strong) that the atom bomb was a paper
tiger. It was the people, he explained, who decide the outcome of a war,
not the weapons.

Why then, after  falling out from under the Soviet nuclear "umbrella," did
China embark on a nuclear arms program, under what I assume must have been
Mao's guidance?

regards,
michael luftmensch



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