A. Leontiev: Anxious to save the bankrupt capitalist system, the bourgeoisie goes from one method of struggle against the revolutionary proletariat to another. Now it roles by means of an open fascist dictatorship, now it prefers to back Social-Democracy which has had such tremendous experience in duping and betraying the working class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
A. Leontiev: An unwonted sharpening of class contradictions takes place under the conditions of the general crisis of capitalism. In the new situation the bourgeoisie, feeling the approach of its downfall, makes use of the severest and cruellest methods of repression against the working class. In a number of countries the bourgeoisie, after repelling the first attacks of the working class in the very first years after the war, established fascist dictatorships (e.g., Italy and Hungary). In Germany the bourgeoisie established a fascist dictatorship only after a number of intermediate steps, in February 1933, when the Hitler government came into power. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
A. Leontiev: The bourgeoisie finds it continually more difficult to maintain itself in power by means of the more veiled forms of bourgeois dictatorship. It goes over to open fascist dictatorship. It represses the labour movement by the bloodiest methods. It passes over to open terror against the working class and its organizations. All this is clear evidence of the instability of capitalism, of the uncertainty of the bourgeoisie concerning what the morrow will bring. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
A. Leontiev: The fascist form of open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is extremely characteristic of capitalism in the epoch of its decay and downfall. Fascism tries to create a bulwark for the bourgeoisie against the working class. It appeals to the broad masses of the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, office em- ployees and clerks, small businessmen, and the intelligentsia. It penetrates into the more backward elements of the working class. It widely mobilizes all the declassed elements. It conducts its frantic defence of capitalism, at least at first, under the mask of anti-capitalist agitation. The hazy demagogy against capitalism serves fascism as a decoy to catch adherents from among the disinherited but politically backward sections of the petty bourgeoisie. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,(1) (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh: If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Paul Robeson: Here (Soviet Union) I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life ... I walk in full human dignity. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Kamo: The working people have a lot of enemies. And the most dangerous is the kind that can tell untruths in our own language. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Bill Gates: The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15%. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Fidel Castro: Revolutionaries didn't choose armed struggle as the best path, it's the path the oppressors imposed on the people. And so the people only have two choice: to suffer, or to fight. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
John Maclean: I wish no harm to any human being, but I, as one man, am going to exercise my freedom of speech. No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind. I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Marcus Tullius Cicero: The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The question of imperialist wars, of the international policy of finance capital which now dominates the whole world, a policy that must inevitably engender new imperialist wars, that must inevitably cause an extreme intensification of national oppression, pillage, brigandry and the strangulation of weak, backward and small nationalities by a handful of “advanced” powers—that question has been the keystone of all policy in all the countries of the globe since 1914. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Alexandra Kollontai: The followers of historical materialism reject the existence of a special woman question separate from the general social question of our day. Specific economic factors were behind the subordination of women; natural qualities have been a secondary factor in this process. Only the complete disappearance of these factors, only the evolution of those forces which at some point in the past gave rise to the subjection of women, is able in a fundamental way to influence and change their social position. In other words, women can become truly free and equal only in a world organised along new social and productive lines. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Kwame Ture: The African for the last five hundred years has known neither peace nor justice. His wealth and his labor have built Western Europe and America. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Frantz Fanon: Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the laborer. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: There can be no doubt at all. "Permanent revolution" is not a mere underestimation of the revolutionary potentialities of the peasant movement. "Permanent revolution" is an underestimation of the peasant movement which leads to the repudiation of Lenin's theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky's "permanent revolution" is a variety of Menshevism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
K. V. Ostrovityanov: In the socialist system, State power belongs to the working people of town and country. Workers, peasants and intelligentsia are active builders of communism, working for themselves and for the good of the whole of society. The capitalist economic system means that power in society belongs to the capitalists, who use this power to maintain a state of affairs which is satisfactory and advantageous to the propertied classes, while the proletariat and the working masses of the peasantry are exploited classes, compelled to work for the capitalists and landowners. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
K. V. Ostrovityanov: Social property is the foundation of the socialist system, the source of wealth and power of the Motherland, the means to a rich and cultured life for all the working people. It is sacred and inviolable. The Constitution of the U.S.S.R. obliges every citizen in Soviet society to safeguard and strengthen social property. Persons attacking socialist property are enemies of the people and are punished by law. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
K. V. Ostrovityanov: In the first phase of communism, social or socialist property exists in two forms; (1) State property and (2) co-operative and collective farm property. State socialist property is the property of the whole of the Soviet people, vested in the Socialist State of workers and peasants. Co-operative and collective farm socialist property is the property of individual collective farms and co-operative unions. To the two forms of socialist property there correspond two forms of socialist economy: (1) State enterprise (factories, mills, State farms, M.T .S., etc.) and (2) co-operative (collective) economy (collective farms, industrial artels, enterprises of the consumer co-operatives). The existence of the two forms of socialist property is the result of the historical conditions in which the proletarian revolution and the construction of communism take place. Having won State power, the working class finds in existence different forms of private property which have evolved in the course of history: on the one hand, large-scale capitalist property based on the exploitation of hired labour and, on the other, small-scale private property of the peasants, artisans and handicraftsmen which is based on their personal labour. In the course of the socialist revolution large-scale capitalist property is expropriated and passes into the hands of the socialist State. Hence there arises State (public) socialist property. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
K. V. Ostrovityanov: State socialist property differs fundamentally from State capitalist property. When one enterprise or another, or even a whole branch of the economy, becomes the property of the bourgeois State, its social nature is unaltered. The modern bourgeois State represents the interests of monopoly capital and is an instrument of coercion in its hands, with which it protects the oppression of the working majority by the propertied minority. Accordingly, State capitalist enterprises, too, are based on the exploitation of the working people and stand opposed to the people, as an alien and oppressive force. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
K. V. Ostrovityanov: In socialist society power is in the hands of the working people, headed by the working class. They own the means of production. The labour-power used in socialist enterprises is not a commodity, since the working people who own the means of production, cannot sell their labour-power to themselves. Accordingly, every possibility of the exploitation of man by man is ruled out in socialist enterprises. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
K. V. Ostrovityanov: The differences between State enterprises and co-operative (collective) enterprises are not differences of a fundamental kind. They are differences of two forms of economy within the framework of socialist relations of production. State property is the highest form of socialist property, and the State form of production is the highest form of socialist production. Enterprises based wholly on State property are of a consistently socialist type. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stephen Hawking: My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it. The Soviet government is doing everything in its power to enable women to carry on independent proletarian socialist work. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The Soviet government is in a difficult position because the imperialists of all countries hate Soviet Russia and are preparing to go to war with her for kindling the fire of revolution in a number of countries and for taking determined steps towards socialism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Albert Einstein: Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Albert Einstein: Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willingto work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: But a slave who becomes conscious of his servitude and rises to struggle for his emancipation has already half ceased to be a slave. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
