Samuel Bostaph wrote:
>As Mao Zedong once said: "Political power grows 
>out of the barrel of a gun." I've never had a 
>private employer point a gun at me to encourage 
>either action or restraint from such.


Adam Smith was of a different opinion:

"It is not, however, difficult to foresee which 
of the two parties must, upon all ordinary 
occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and 
force the other into a compliance with their 
terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can 
combine much more easily; and the law, besides, 
authorises, or at least does not prohibit their 
combinations,1 while it prohibits those of the 
workmen.2 We have no acts of parliament against 
combining to lower the price of work; but many 
against combining to raise it. In all such 
disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A 
landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or 
merchant, though they did not employ a single 
workman, could generally live a year or two upon 
the stocks which they have already acquired. Many 
workmen could not subsist a week, few could 
subsist a month, and scarce any a year without 
employment. In the long-run the workman may be as 
necessary to his master as his master is to him; 
but the necessity is not so immediate."


John C. Médaille