Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2023-06-11 11:27:05

Social

English– @protestation@mastodon.acc.sunet.se– @protestation@f.lakes.com.au

Français– @protestation@mastodon.social– @protestation@hub.skogsnisse.net

Deutsch– @protestation@kommunismus.social– @protestation@friendica.hashy-net.de

Português– @protestation@mastodon.world– @protestation@foggyminds.com

Quotes– @protestation@freeradical.zone– @protestation@freund.aksel.at

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)

Protestation

2023-06-11 11:27:05

Social

English– @protestation@mastodon.acc.sunet.se– @protestation@f.lakes.com.au

Français– @protestation@mastodon.social– @protestation@hub.skogsnisse.net

Deutsch– @protestation@kommunismus.social– @protestation@friendica.hashy-net.de

Português– @protestation@mastodon.world– @protestation@foggyminds.com

Quotes– @protestation@freeradical.zone– @protestation@freund.aksel.at

Protestation

2021-07-31 15:43:02

Quotes

• Lenin: The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it "in proportion to capital", "in proportion to strength", because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
• Michael Parenti: If we communists merely hunger for power, why do we side with the powerless?
• Michael Parenti: During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
• Michael Parenti: Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
• Michael Parenti: Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.
• Michael Parenti: In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.
• Michael Parenti: Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."
• Muhammad Ali: I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road, and I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe: no risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, but Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda.
• Muhammad Ali: I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I'd see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony.
• Paulo Freire: With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?
• Peter Ustinov: Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
• Giordano Bruno: Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
• Giordano Bruno: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry.
• Mao Zedong: Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
• Denis Diderot: From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
• Lenin: In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the "lower depths" of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
• Karl Marx: Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
• Tom Mann: In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky: It is necessary to instil in the masses our own confidence in the inevitable bankruptcy of evil, so that they will be left with no doubt, so that they will come through this moment in serried ranks, prepared for battle. This is the task of the theoreticians. But the tasks of the others are to lay bare and show up this evil, to lay bare the sufferings and torments of the masses and of the individual fighters torn from their midst by the enemy, to give them the meaning they actually have and which gives them the strength to bear everything courageously, without wavering. Only in this way is it possible to instil in the masses courage and understanding of the need for struggle. Those who influence the mind and those who put confidence in victory into the heart and mind are both needed. Scientists and poets, teachers and propagandists are needed.
• Malcolm X: Concerning non-violence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
• Mao Zedong: In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
• Lenin: The Great French Revolution ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. From that time to the Paris Commune, from 1789 to 1871, one of the types of wars were wars of a bourgeois-progressive, national-liberating character. In other words, the chief content and historical significance of these wars were the overthrow of absolutism and feudalism, the undermining of these institutions, the overthrow of alien oppression. Therefore, those were progressive wars, and during such wars, all honest, revolutionary democrats, and also all Socialists, always sympathised with the success of that country (i.e., with that bourgeoisie), which had helped to overthrow, or sap, the most dangerous foundation of feudalism, absolutism and the oppression of other nations.
• Lenin: Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism, reached only in the twentieth century. Capitalism now finds the old national states, without the formation of which it could not have overthrown feudalism, too tight for it. Capitalism has developed concentration to such a degree that whole branches of industry have been seized by syndicates, trusts and associations of capitalist billionaires, and almost the entire globe has been divided up among the "lords of capital, either in the form of colonies, or by enmeshing other countries in thousands of threads of financial exploitation. Free trade and competition have been superseded by the striving for monopoly, for the seizure of territory for the investment of capital, for the export of raw materials from them, and so forth. From the liberator of nations that capitalism was in the struggle against feudalism, imperialist capitalism has become the greatest oppressor of nations. Formerly progressive, capitalism has become reactionary; it has developed the forces of production to such a degree that mankind is faced with the alternative of going over to Socialism or of suffering years and even decades of armed struggle between the "great powers for the artificial preservation of capitalism by means of colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of every kind.
• Lenin: Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
• Lenin: An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.
• Lenin: In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed.
• Kim Jong-il: The more the imperialists have intensified their counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist offensives to stifle the independent interests of the masses, the more resolutely our Party has defended and implemented revolutionary principles.
• Tom Mann: We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists, and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned.
• Bashar al-Assad: The price for rejection or resistance is much less than the price of submission and surrender.
• Tom Mann: A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for co-operative ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people.
• Lenin: Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
• Lenin: The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus-the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)-all this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation.
• Tom Mann: We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land monopolists, machinery monopolists and financial monopolists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible.
• Lenin: It is now essential that Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the fundamental objectives of the struggle against opportunism and "Left" doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in conformity with the specific character of its economics, politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth.
• Tom Mann: There can be no real socialism where exploitation obtains, under socialism no person can live idly upon the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money, necessary for reproductive purposes.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at making any the slaves of governments, but to gradually and surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free and intelligent citizens.
• Tom Mann: True morality forbids exploitation, the present individualist system of conducting industry necessitates exploitation, and therefore is immoral. The results of this immoral system are found in a minority of persons receiving large incomes without working, and many persons deprived of the opportunity of a livelihood.
• Lenin: The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters-who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it-throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .).
• Lenin: The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters-who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits-and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
• Karl Marx: In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.
• Rosa Luxemburg: The imperialist capitalist class, as the last offspring of the caste of exploiters, surpasses all its predecessors as far as brutality, open cynicism, and rascality are concerned. It will defend its «holy of holies» – its profits and privileges of exploitation – tooth and nail. It will defend them with the cold-blooded viciousness which it manifested during the history of its colonial policy and during the last World War. It will move heaven and hell against the workers. It will mobilise the peasantry against the industrial workers. It will set the backward elements of the proletariat against the vanguard of socialism. It will get its officers to commit massacres. It will attempt to nullify socialist measures by a hundred and one methods of passive resistance. It will put in the way of the revolution twenty uprisings à La Vendee3. To save itself it will invoke the assistance of the foreign enemy, the murderous armed force of a Clemenceau, a Lloyd George, or a Wilson4. It will sooner turn the country into a smoking heap of ruins than voluntarily relinquish its power to exploit the working class.
• Lenin: Marx and Engels had said: equality is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
• Tom Mann: Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor.
• Lenin: We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the -class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters-then we are for it!
• George L. Jackson: Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
• George L. Jackson: At its core, fascism is an economic rearrangement. It is international capitalism’s response to the challenge of international scientific socialism. It developed from nation to nation out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s dilapidation. The common feature of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of the independent nation-states, it does so by default! It is simply an arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an attempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’s rulers by circumflexing and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing from below. Fascism must be seen as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried–a consciousness that was compromised.
• George L. Jackson: When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?
• Friedrich Engels: Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
• Trotsky: My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the ‘official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, ‘The Pravda — a Labour Paper’. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor’s revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party.
• Jan Sejna: I was accompanying the Cuban delegation led by Defense Minister Raul Castro…The whole delegation was in a good mood when we were returning from Litomerice. I was in a car with Raul Castro and Luis Martino. During the ride, we exchanged opinions on some international and party issues…they said they made their own assessment of J.V. Stalin’s work because he was a great fighter against imperialism. I told them that the CPSU, cde. Khrushchev or our party never said that imperialism would be any different than before, or that it was not necessary to fight against it. I emphasized that we fully support the position of the CPSU and the Moscow Declaration.
• Lenin: …the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”.
• Walter Duranty: Stalin has been widely attacked by political adversaries, Russian and foreign, as a cruel and heartless man, but in point of fact he was remarkably long-suffering in his treatment of the various oppositions. This statement may sound surprising, but it is true, as the record shows. The Kremlin’s struggle with Oppositionists began before Lenin s death, and again and again one or another of the Opposition leaders admitted his faults and beat his breast and cried “Mea maxima culpa,” and the Kremlin forgave him. I say this is all on record, whatever the Trotskyists may claim.
• Karl Marx: To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.
• Henry Ford: Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government. take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
• James Connolly: The criminal capitalist and ruling classes will not peacefully abide by the verdict of the ballot, but will strive by violence to perpetuate their robber rule in spite of the declared will of the majority of the people.
• Karl Marx: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomes class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
• James Connolly: I consider it my duty to act in the interests of the class to which I belong - the working class. The interests of the other classes are well enough looked after already.
• Lenin: I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism.
• Karl Marx: Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.
• Karl Marx: Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
• Friedrich Engels: Those who have the word unity most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension.
• Ella Rule: It's not an accident that #Labour has failed the working class. It was set up to fail the working class. It is a party of the billionaire finance capitalist ruling class, just as surely as the Tory party. Unless British workers grasp this fully, we will never progress.
• Karl Marx: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
• Fidel Castro: What did he leave behind? I believe the biggest thing is, really, his moral values, his conscience. Che symbolized the highest human values, and he was an extraordinary example. He created a great aura, a great mystique. I admired him a great deal, and loved him. It always produces a great deal of affection, that admiration. And I explained the story of why I was so close to him... There are so many indelible memories he left us, which is why I say that he is one of the noblest, most extraordinary, most disinterested men I've ever known, which would have no importance unless one believed that men like him exists by the million - millions and millions of them - within the masses. Men who distinguish themselves in a truly singular way couldn't do anything unless many millions like him had the embryo or the ability, the capacity, to acquire those qualities. That's why our Revolution has been so dedicated to fighting illiteracy and to developing the educational system. So that everybody can be like Che.
• Samir Amin: To be a Marxist is to continue the work that Marx merely began … It is not to stop at Marx, but to start from him … Marx is boundless, because the radical critique that he initiates is always incomplete, and must always be the object of its own critique.
• Charu Mazumdar: Decadent imperialism also realized that it was not possible to carry on in the old method. So it took a new form, introduced a new method of exploitation by giving dollars as gift. Neo-colonialism began. When imperialism and all the reactionaries of the world were grouping for a way out, to save themselves, the revisionist policy of the traitor Krushchov in 1956 made its appearance before them with a light of new hope. The reactionary government of India found a way to create illusion about Krushchov's independent capitalist path. But the reactionary government knew that it was impractical, illusory. That is why the reactionary government of India's bourgeoisie entered into a secret pact with the U.S. imperialism in 1958. That is why in 1959 as it launched an attack on democracy, on the one hand, by suspending the constitution in Kerala, so also it started, on the other hand, slandering against the source of the spontaneous movement, the great Chinese People's Republic. It provided shelter to Tibet's imperialist agent, Dalai Lama. But when in spite of this the people spontaneously started along the path of struggle, the bourgeoisie without any delay shot dead 80 people. Thus the last possibility of peaceful transition to socialism ended.
• Karl Marx: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
• Karl Marx: The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
• Deng Xiaoping: Our first conclusion was that we had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
• Deng Xiaoping: Not until the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
• Deng Xiaoping: To build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty.
• Lenin: Democracy must be built at once, from below, through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without "supervision" from above, without the bureaucracy.
• Lenin: Replacement of the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army by the universal arming of the whole people, by a universal militia of the entire people, women included, is a practical job that can and should be tackled immediately. The more initiative, variety, daring, and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better.
• Lenin: Democracy from below, democracy without an officialdom, without a police, without a standing army; voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people-this is a guarantee of freedom which no tsars, no swash-buckling generals, and no capitalists can take away.
• M.I. Ulyanova: Vladimir Ilyich really appreciated Stalin. For example, in the spring of 1922 when V. Ilyich had his first attack, and also at the time of his second attack in December 1922, he invited Stalin and addressed him with the most intimate tasks. The type of tasks with which one can address a person on whom one has total faith, whom you know as a dedicated revolutionist, and as a intimate comrade. Moreover Ilyich insisted, that he wanted to talk only with Stalin and nobody else. In general, in the entire period of his illness, till he had the opportunity to associate with his comrades, he invited comrade Stalin the maximum. And during the most serious period of the illness, he invited not a single member of the politbureau except Stalin.
• M.I. Ulyanova: There was an incident between Lenin and Stalin which comrade Zinoviev mentions in his speech and which took place not long before Ilyich lost his power of speech (March, 1923) but it was completely personal and had nothing to do with politics. Comrade Zinoviev knew this very well and to quote it was absolutely unnecessary. This incident took place because on the demand of the doctors the Central Committee gave Stalin the charge of keeping a watch so that no political news reached Lenin during this period of serious illness. This was done so as not to upset him and so that his condition did not deteriorate, he (Stalin) even scolded his family for conveying this type of information. Ilyich, who accidentally came to know about this and who was also always worried about such a strong regime of protection, in turn scolded Stalin. Stalin apologized and with this the incident was settled. What is there to be said – during this period, as I had indicated, if Lenin had not been so seriously ill then he would have reacted to the incident differently. There are documents regarding this incident and on the first demand from the Central Committee I can present them. This way, I affirm that all the talk of the opposition about Lenin’s relation towards Stalin does not correspond to reality. These relations were most intimate and friendly and remained so.
• Trotsky: And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration.
• James Connolly: If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, rather than to go forth to strange countries and be slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers may live.
• Lenin: Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.
• Stalin: Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying he can say: All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world – the liberation of mankind.
• Stalin: These demands may be petty, the workers themselves in various towns and districts may be fighting disunited today: this struggle itself will teach the workers that final victory will be achieved only when the entire working class goes forward to storm its enemy as a single, strong, organised force.
• Stalin: The same struggle will show the workers that, in addition to their direct enemy the capitalist, they have another, still more vigilant, enemy – the organised strength of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist State with its troops, courts, police, prisons, gendarmes.
• Stalin: The Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is needed so that with its help the proletariat could expropriate the bourgeoisie, confiscate the land, forests, factories and works, machines, railways, etc. from all the bourgeoisie. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie – that is what the Socialist revolution must lead to.
• Stalin: There will be neither capitalists nor proletarians: consequently there will be no exploitation. There will be only collectively working people…There will be no place for buyers and sellers of labour-power, hirers and hired…All private property in the implements and means of production will be abolished, there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists but only working people, collectively possessing all the land and its resources, all the forests, all the factories and works, all the railways, etc.
• Stalin: Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new constitution of the USSR proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the State (the dictatorship) is in. the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by and beneficial to the working people.
• Sir Alexander King: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
• Kim Jong-il: Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: The masses can see how completely, tirelessly comrade Stalin is giving himself to this sacred work, the work of Lenin, the building of socialism, how he is carrying them forward towards a better life. Everybody can see that and they believe him, he is surrounded by their trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: And it is not a coincidence, that Trotsky, who never understood the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the masses in building socialism, thinking that it can be built merely by an order from above, is now standing on the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the Politburo, who are helping the masses to build socialism. It is not a matter of chance, therefore, that the unprincipled bloc of Kamenev and Zinoviev together with Trotsky have pushed them from one step to another into a deep abyss of an unheard betrayal of Lenin’s work, the work of the masses, the ideals of Socialism. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their entire band of killers acted together with the German fascists, entered into a pact with the Gestapo.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: They wanted to create unrest in the ranks of the masses, kill the brain and heart of the revolution – Comrade Stalin himself. This did not happen. This despicable gang of scoundrels has been shot. Now the masses are rallying around the Party even more closely. Their love for Stalin has grown. Even people who are not members of the Party are writing that it is necessary to bring out the collected works of Lenin and Stalin as supplementary reading in newspapers which have a wide circulation…
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: …With the organisers in various areas of production, with the collective farmers, workers, the combine workers, the beet growers etc. Everybody can see how on the foundation of these economic organisations the friendship amongst people is strengthening in this country of Soviets, how the masses have grown culturally. And millions of workers can see how selflessly, completely and without a break, comrade Stalin is giving himself to their vital work, the work of Lenin, the work of building Socialism, how he is leading them forward towards a better life. They can see this and they believe him and engulf him with all encompassing trust and love.
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya: Neither the Trotskyites, nor the Zinovievs or the Second International will be able to hide the true facts, or will be successful in blowing dust into the eyes of the workers…
• Karl Marx: We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
• Plato: Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public.
• Paulo Freire: In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.
• Stalin: And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way. The theory of "equilibrium" is an attempt to indicate a third way. And precisely because it is based on a third (non-existent) way, it is utopian and anti-Marxist.
• Kim Il Sung: Counter-revolutionary violence is an indispensable means of rule for all exploiting classes. Human history not yet knows an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence. In particular, the imperialists cling ever more desperately to violent means to maintain their rule as they approach nearer to their doom. The imperialists, while suppressing the peoples of their own countries, check all the revolutionary advance of the oppressed nations in a sanguinary way with their military forces for aggression and plunder against other countries.
• IT'S CLASS WAR! All economism is idealism. (@RedKahina)