Lenin: Democracy means equality. The great significance of the proletariat's struggle for equality and of equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as meaning the abolition of classes. But democracy means only formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labor and wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing father, from formal equality to actual equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: The Party represents unity of will, which precludes all factionalism and division of authority in the Party. Hence Lenin's warning about the "danger of factionalism from the point of view of Party unity and of effecting the unity of will of the vanguaid of the proletariat as the fundamental condition for the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat," which is embodied in the special resolution of the Tenth Congress of our Party "On Party Unity." wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Otto Kuusinen: The principles of the organisational structure of a Communist Party follow from the role it is destined to play in the working-class movement and the nature of its aims and tasks. The interests expressed by a Communist Party are not the mere sum total of the private interests of individual workers or groups of workers; they are interests of a whole class and can manifest themselves only through the common will which unites numerous isolated actions into one common struggle. Only a centralised leadership is capable of uniting all the forces, directing them towards a single goal and imparting unity to the uncoordinated actions of individual workers and groups of workers. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: For years the Dalai Lama was on the payroll of the CIA, an agency that has perpetrated killings against rebellious workers, peasants, students, and others in countries around the world. His eldest brother played an active role in a CIA-front group. Another brother established an intelligence operation with the CIA, which included a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet to foment insurgency. The Dalai Lama was no pacifist. He supported the U.S./NATO military intervention into Afghanistan, also the 78 days' bombing of Yugoslavia and the destruction of that country. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: If one looks into the genealogies of many 'old families,' one discovers episodes of slave trafficking, bootlegging, gun running, opium trading, falsified land claims, violent acquisition of water and mineral rights, the extermination of indigenous peoples, sales of shoddy and unsafe goods, public funds used for private speculations, crooked deals in government bonds and vouchers, and payoffs for political favors. One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor -- backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Haruki Murakami: If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Deng Xiaoping: The main task in the socialist stage is to develop the productive forces, keep increasing the material wealth of society, steadily improve the life of the people and create material conditions for the advent of a communist society. There can be no communism with pauperism, or socialism with pauperism. So to get rich is no sin. However, what we mean by getting rich is different from what you mean. Wealth in a socialist society belongs to the people. To get rich in a socialist society means prosperity for the entire people. The principles of socialism are: first, development of production and second, common prosperity. We permit some people and some regions to become prosperous first, for the purpose of achieving common prosperity faster. That is why our policy will not lead to polarization, to a situation where the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Henry Winston: Communists have manned picketlines in the face of growing terror. They have led successful united front actions against the Peekskill mobsters. Mothers with babes in arms have led united front actions for outlawing the atom bomb and for seating (China) in the U.N. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ho Chi Minh: There cannot be any alliance with or any concession to the Trotskyite group. We must do everything possible to lay bare their faces as henchmen of the fascists and annihilate them politically. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: From all that has been said in this book on the economic essence of imperialism, it follows that we must define it as capitalism in transition, or, more precisely, as moribund capitalism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Malcolm X: I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver. I am speaking as a victim of this American system, and I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Hence, social life, the history of society, ceases to be an agglomeration of "accidents", for the history of society becomes a development of society according to regular laws, and the study of the history of society becomes a science. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Amilcar Cabral: We want independence for our country. But that means, for us, much more than acquiring a flag to wave and an anthem to sing. Independence, for us, means the liberation of our motherland and the liberation of our people. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Frida Kahlo: It is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Frida Kahlo: I feel uneasy about my painting. Above all, I want to transform it into something useful for the Communist revolutionary movement. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Frida Kahlo: For the first time in my life, my painting is trying to help in the line set down by the Party: REVOLUTIONARY REALISM. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Deng Xiaoping: According to Marxism, communist society is based on material abundance. Only when there is material abundance can the principle of a communist society - that is, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' be applied. Socialism is the first stage of communism. Of course, it covers a very long historical period. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Chris Hedges: We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: While having little of substance to say about the causes of strikes, the press greatly emphasizes the damage they do to the economy and the inconveniences inflicted upon the public. Little is said about the conditions of working people and their struggles in the face of the increasingly difficult economic conditions imposed on them by corporate power and government policies. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
R. Palme Dutt: There is no escape for capitalism save the escape of death. Do what they may, they cannot get out of the continual circle of ever-rising prices, piling debts, unemployment, war and threats, of war, and all the time the rising tide of the anger of the people at home and in the subject countries abroad. It is their knowledge of this which inspires their panic fear of Bolshevism, even when the actual movement is as weak as a child; until by the very noise of their panic they help to create what they are seeking to destroy. It is their knowledge of this which is making them fight with all the ferocity and violence of a trapped animal. They are in panic because they know their failure; they are violent because they know they are not strong. And it is this same knowledge, which gives the confidence of absolute assurance to the Communist struggle. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Aimé Césaire: ... no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
