George Moorad: When Jay Gould said, many years ago, that he could hire one half of the working class to kill the other half, he undoubtedly was boasting of the power of propaganda as opposed to mass thinking. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Xi Jinping: Theory, once divorced from practice, will become rigid dogma, losing its verve and vitality. Practice, without the guidance of correct theory, is like 'a blind man on a blind horse approaching a deep lake at midnight. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Georgi Dimitrov: Many comrades did not believe that so reactionary a brand of bourgeois ideology as the ideology of fascism, which in its stupidity frequently reaches the point of lunacy, would be able to gain any mass influence. This was a serious mistake. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: That today, when the wave has ebbed, there remain and will remain only real Marxists, does not frighten us but rejoices us. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Harry Truman: If it explodes, as I think it will, I will certainly have a hammer on those boys (meaning to the Russians). wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Nelson Mandela: We also honour the great Che Guevara whose outstanding revolutionary efforts, even on our continent, were of such magnitude that no prison nor censorship could conceal him from us. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Maurice Cornforth: It is sometimes said that the essential feature of science is that it is based on observations. Of course, science is based on observations; but this is not its most essential feature. The basis of science is not mere observation, but experiment. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
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/…
