GEM Draft: Federation | Militia

Another aspect of MLM is that it brings a great deal of clarity on a crucial question of revolution: what does it mean to take power? Two of Mao’s most important insights are that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and that without a people’s army the people have nothing—or another way of putting it is that unless the masses have the military organizations necessary to protect themselves as they build their new world, then everything they’re setting up and building is for nothing and can and will disappear at the point of the enemy’s guns.