* “Who? Whom?” is a great concept, but a lousy phrase. It’s meaning isn’t obvious enough, it’s a little hard to say, and it sounds too much like an owl talking. Was it translated from a language where it sounds better?
It’s better than no phrase at all, but do readers have any ideas for a substitute phrase for the idea that some people ask who is helped and who is hurt before they decide who is right, in politics. “Cui bono” is related, but not the same — it refers to the “follow the money” idea that some action has a hidden motive. “But will it hurt the Jews?” is the same idea, but we need something that applies generally, not just to one group.
* Who, whom?:
“…a Bolshevist principle or slogan which was formulated by Lenin in 1921…
2nd All-Russian Congress of Political Education Departments……”The whole question is — who will overtake whom?”
…Trotsky used the shortened “who whom” formulation in his 1925 article, “Towards Capitalism or Towards Socialism?”…
…invoked by Joseph Stalin in 1929… gave the formula its “aura of hard-line coercion”…
“The fact is, we live according to Lenin’s formula: Kto-Kovo?: will we knock them, the capitalists, flat and give them (as Lenin expresses it) the final, decisive battle, or will they knock us flat? “.
…Stalin used kto-kogo to justify a policy of mass coercion against peasant kulaks to implant collective farms long before industry reached a high level.”
Who wins, who dies?
Who gets to do what, to whom?
Who’s the horse, who’s the rider?
* It’s not an entry-level catchphrase. You have to know it to know it, if you know what I mean. But once you do know it writing it out longhand as “Who rules whom” or “who shall rule whom” is tedious. People like less obvious catchphrases, by the way. It makes them feel like insiders for knowing them.
I don’t have a better phrase, but “whose side are you on” works okay. Maybe we could just flash gang signs at each other.
* I am sure that Lenin intended it in a very broad sense.
Who gains from whom?
Who defeats whom?
Who did what to whom?
Who chooses to be with, support, favour or join whom?
* I think that ‘Who? Whom?’ is a great formulation.
Nothing could be more concise.
Subject form, object form.
