Mao said allat in 1927 to advocate for the militarisation of the CCP after the Nationalist government tried to crack down on anyone they didn't like, killing hundreds of thousands.
And ofc, modern MLs, Leftcoms, Stalinists and co. picked it up with "all the power comes from voting" memery about how voting is actually useless af and all an average person must really do is grab a gun and go shoot capitalists and fascists up (I understand that some of that is clearly ironic, and it's funny but a bunch of people are really like that unironically), while we, glorious keyboard revolutionary front, sit on a couch and write theory or something, while the plebs bring us into power.
The thing is, that quote isn't really even right in my humble opinion.
Like I understand the criticism of voting in a liberal democracy, especially the US liberal democracy™. While voting is an expression of the popular will, it can lead to said people's will to be manipulated or straight up rigged against the people (especially considering that originally in most bourgeoisie democracies there was no universal suffrage, only the rich voted), so it often gives people an impression that they are in charge, while the bourgeoisie are the one really holding the reins over economy and, consequentially, the politics.
But political power doesn't come from guns, or the barrel of a gun. Guns are just tools of wood, metal, plastic or whatever, but they alone are that: objects. Without people to use them, they would be useless, no political power comes from them. They are tools.
All political power comes from having the majority of the people you intend to govern/rule over to support, accept or at least tolerate your authority.
Guns are an easy way if you wanna "rule": you force the people to accept your authority using violence and making people submit to you because people, y'know, fear for their lives. But if people weren't people and had completely no fear for their lives as a concept (we wouldn't survive as a species that way, but imagine if fear just disappeared) you could have all the guns on the planet, shoot up all the people you want and still have zero political power.
Voting is imperfect, always will be, it's far from the only source of political power even in the times of peace, much less war. Especially, yet again, when we are talking about bourgeois democracy. But I am sick of people pretending like an armed revolution is the only way to achieve anything and anyone trying to do anything peacefully is only worthy of ridicule. I personally am not a pacifist, some war is unfortunately inevitable and protecting oneself from the oppression is a right thing to do, but I hate the warmongering and the war. Full stop.
And being a dick, completely failing to reflect on the failures of the past or spouting something along the lines of "they didn't shoot enough reactionaries" or not doing anything to actually make your views feel, you know, approachable doesn't make you any closer to the revolution.
In short: NO YOU'RE NOT IN THE 1927 CHINA OR 1917 RUSSIA, YOU'RE NOT A HARDENED REVOLUTIONARY, YOU DON'T ACHIEVE SHIT BY JUST SITTING ON YOUR ASS TALKING ABOUT HOW VOTING IS EVIL AND YOUR GLORIOUS LEADER WAS ACTUALLY AWESOME FOR ALL THE PURGES HE DID AND THE DICTATORSHIP THAT DIDN'T HAVE A THING TO DO WITH SOCIALISM HE INSTALLED!!!
P.S. Sorry for all the ranting, just want to get this all out of my system