Friedrich Engels: For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
György Lukács: The process of revolution is - on a historical scale - synonymous with the process of the development of proletarian class consciousness. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Mao Zedong: Communists the world over are wiser than the bourgeoisie, they understand the laws governing the existence and development of things, they understand dialectics and they can see farther. The bourgeoisie does not welcome this truth because it does not want to be overthrown. To be overthrown is painful and is unbearable to contemplate for those overthrown, for example, for the Kuomintang reactionaries whom we are now overthrowing and for Japanese imperialism which we together with other peoples overthrew some time ago. But for the working class, the labouring people and the Communist Party the question is not one of being overthrown, but of working hard to create the conditions in which classes, state power and political parties will die out very naturally and mankind will enter the realm of Great Harmony. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Mao Zedong: Who are the people? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism -- the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplices -- suppress them, allow them only to behave themselves and not to be unruly in word or deed. If they speak or act in an unruly way, they will be promptly stopped and punished. Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The bourgeois court, which claimed to maintain order, but which, as a matter of fact, was a blind, subtle instrument for the ruthless suppression of the exploited, and an instrument for protecting the interests of the moneybags. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Emma Goldman: The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution - particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Louis T. McFadden: We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Golda Meir: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Clara Zetkin: Her final aim is not the free competition with the man, but the achievement of the political rule of the proletariat. The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas Woodrow Wilson: Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down... Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Rodolfo Walsh: Millions want to be informed. Terror is based on lack of communication. Break the isolation. Feel again the moral satisfaction of an act of freedom. Defeat the terror. Circulate this information. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Che Guevara: Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Mao Zedong: The real task of knowing is, through perception, to arrive at thought, to arrive step by step at the comprehension of the internal contradictions of objective things, of their laws and of the internal relations between one process and another, that is, to arrive at logical knowledge. To repeat, logical knowledge differs from perceptual knowledge in that perceptual knowledge pertains to the separate aspects, the phenomena and the external relations of things, whereas logical knowledge takes a big stride forward to reach the totality, the essence and the internal relations of things and discloses the inner contradictions in the surrounding world. Therefore, logical knowledge is capable of grasping the development of the surrounding world in its totality, in the internal relations of all its aspects. This dialectical-materialist theory of the process of development of knowledge, basing itself on practice and proceeding from the shallower to the deeper, was never worked out by anybody before the rise of Marxism. Marxist materialism solved this problem correctly for the first time, pointing out both materialistically and dialectically the deepening movement of cognition, the movement by which man in society progresses from perceptual knowledge to logical knowledge in his complex, constantly recurring practice of production and class struggle. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Struggle against imperialism that is not closely linked with the struggle against opportunism is either an empty phrase or a fraud. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Bernays: In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered to him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Firstly, it is not true that fascism is only the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie's fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc. It would therefore be a mistake to think that "pacifism" signifies the liquidation of fascism. In the present situation, "pacifism" is the strengthening of fascism with its moderate, Social-Democratic wing pushed into the forefront. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lyudmila Pavlichenko: Elanor Roosevelt: How many men have you killed? Lyudmila Pavlichenko: Not one man... Fascists... 309. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Bernays: In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons (...) who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
György Lukács: In Marx the dialectical method aims at understanding society as a whole. Bourgeois thought concerns itself with objects that arise either from the process of studying phenomena in isolation, or from the division of labor and specialisation in the different disciplines. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Modern capitalism, under which the banks dominate production, has carried this interdependence of the various branches of the economy to the utmost. The banks and the more important branches of industry and commerce have become inseparably merged. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Anarchism is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond and not of the proletarian. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
György Lukács: From a very early stage the ideological history of the bourgeoisie was nothing but a desperate resistance to every insight into the true nature of the society it had created. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The history of the working-class movement now shows that, in all countries, it is about to go through (and is already going through) a struggle waged by communism-emergent, gaining strength and advancing towards victory-against, primarily, Menshevism, i.e., opportunism and social-chauvinism (the home brand in each particular country), and then as a complement, so to say, Left-wing communism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Anarchism is bourgeois individualism in reverse. Individualism as the basis of the entire anarchist world outlook. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Otto Kuusinen: Thus the centralism of a Communist Party is a democratic centralism, i.e., it is based on the will of the broadest membership of the Party. In practice democratic centralism means: all the leading Party bodies from top to bottom are elected; regular accounts are rendered by Party bodies to their Party organisations and higher organs; strict Party discipline and subordination of the minority to the majority; decisions of the higher bodies are absolutely binding on all the lower bodies. In every Communist Party, the principle of democratic centralism underlies the Rules that determine the structure and forms of its organisation, the norms of its internal life, the methods of the practical activities of the Party organisations, and the duties and rights of the Party members. The duties of a Party member constitute the corner-stone of all Party activity. Since the Communist Party is called upon to carry out the great tasks of radically reorganising society, it cannot consider a mere agreement of its members with the Party programme sufficient. A Communist is one who actively helps to carry out the programme of the Party and necessarily works in one of its organisations under its leadership and control. The opportunists do not make such demands of the members of their parties. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another-all this is common knowledge. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Franklin D. Roosevelt: In our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Bernays: When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And "propaganda" got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words so we found the words "public relations". wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Bernays: It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Bernays: This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
