Understanding political power

Forget about Adam Smith. The first law of economics is: You do not own anything that you cannot defend or hide. And you cannot trade anything that you do not own.

The peasants depended on soldiers to do the defending, who made leaders that turned around and oppressed the peasants. Some peasants rebelled and overturned the leaders, but the rebels would become soldiers and oppress the peasants in turn. This cycle was stopped when Mao Zedong’s communist agrarian revolution took power. The rights of the peasants are protected and defended. Mao understood that without peasants who grew food for the city folks, there would be no art and science; there would be no civilization. Without the peasants who grew food for the soldiers, the greatest armies would fall in a matter of days. Maoism is therefore an example of political power based on the support and the shared benefits of the peasants.

Mao understood that the peasants must be prepared to defend their rights and their land, and that they must be armed to do that, because their enemies would be well armed. Hence the quote: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.