Georgi Dimitrov: Under no circumstances must we underrate fascism's power of ideological infection. On the contrary, we for our part must develop an extensive ideological struggle based on clear, popular arguments and a correct, well thought out approach to the peculiarities of the national psychology of the masses of the people. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Aneurin Bevan: The issue therefore in a capitalist democracy resolves itself into this: either poverty will use democracy to win the struggle against property, or property, in fear of poverty, will destroy democracy. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Aneurin Bevan: No serious student who studies the history of the last half century can deny the ferment of ideas associated with the names of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Their effectiveness in arming the minds of working-class leaders all over the world with intellectual weapons showed that their teaching had an organic relationship with the political and social realities of their time. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Aneurin Bevan: A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Aneurin Bevan: No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied aid because of lack of means. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Eugene V. Debs: The prison in our modern life is essentially a capitalistic institution, an inherent and inseparable part of the social and economic system under which the mass of mankind are ruthlessly exploited and kept in an impoverished state, as a result of which the struggle for existence, cruel and relentless at best, drives thousands of its victims into the commission of offenses which they are forced to expiate in the dungeons provided for them by their masters.The prison as a rule, to which there are few exceptions, is for the poor.The owning and ruling class hold the keys of the prison the same as they do of the mill and mine. They are the keepers of both and their exploited slaves are the inmates and victims of both.As long as the people are satisfied with capitalism they will have to bear its consequences in the prison sentences imposed upon increasing numbers of them, and also bear the poverty and misery which fall to the lot of those who toil and produce the wealth of the nation.The prison at present is at best a monumental evil and a burning shame to society. It ought not merely to be reformed but abolished as an institution for the punishment and degradation of unfortunate human beings. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Tolstoy: All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Bertolt Brecht: Times of extreme oppression are usually times when there is much talk about high and lofty matters. At such times it takes courage to write of low and ignoble matters such as food and shelter for workers; it takes courage when everyone else is ranting about the vital importance of sacrifice. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: The Party becomes strong by purging itself of opportunist elements. The source of factionalism in the Party is its opportunist elements. The proletariat is not an isolated class. It is constantly replenished by the influx of peasants, petty bourgeois and intellectuals proletarianized by the development of capitalism. At the same time the upper stratum of the proletariat, principally trade-union leaders and members of parliament who are fed by the bourgeoisie out of the super-profits extracted from the colonies, is undergoing a process of decay. "This stratum of bourgeoisified workers, or the 'labour aristocracy,'" says Lenin, "who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and, in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real channels of reformism and chauvinism." (See Vol. XIX, p. 77.) In one way or another, all these petty-bourgeois groups penetrate into the Party and introduce into it the spirit of nesitancy and opportunism, the spirit of demoralization and uncertainty. It is they, principally, that constitute the source of factionalism and disintegration, the source of disorganization and disruption of the Party from within. To fight imperialism with such "allies" in one's rear means to put oneself in the position of being caught between two fires, from the front and from the rear. Therefore, ruthless struggle against such elements, their expulsion from the Party, is a prerequisite for the successful struggle against imperialism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: When feudalism was overthrown and "free" capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Dialectics is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical,-under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another,-why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: We understand the inevitable connection between wars and the class struggle within the country; we understand that war cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and Socialism is created; and we also differ in that we fully regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary. We Marxists differ from both the pacifists and the Anarchists in that we deem it necessary historically (from the standpoint of Marx's dialectical materialism) to study each war separately. In history there have been numerous wars which, in spite of all the horrors, atrocities, distress and suffering that inevitably accompany alt wars, were progressive, i.e., benefited the development of mankind by helping to destroy the exceptionally harmful and reactionary institutions (for example, autocracy or serfdom), the most barbarous despotisms in Europe (Turkish and Russian). wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: If tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be "just" "defensive" wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every Socialist would sympathise with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slave-owning, predatory "great" powers. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The so-called Great Powers have long been exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small and weak nations. And the imperialist war is a war for the division and redivision of this kind of booty. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical political meaning of that term. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Down with this contemptible fraud! There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be "equality" between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the exploited and the exploiters. There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real "freedom" as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may possess, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: One of the biggest and most dangerous mistakes made by Communists is the idea that a revolution can be made by revolutionaries alone. On the contrary, to be successful, all serious revolutionary work requires that the idea that revolutionaries are capable of playing the part only of the vanguard of the truly virile and advanced class must be understood and translated into action. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: No natural science can hold its own in the struggle against the onslaught of bourgeois ideas and the restoration of the bourgeois world outlook unless it stands on solid philosophical ground. In order to hold his own in this struggle and carry it to a victorious finish, the natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
