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/…
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/…
