“Once the aim of the proletarian movement - i.e., abolition of classes - is attained, the power of the state, which serves to keep the great majority of producers in bondage to a very small exploiter minority, disappears, and the functions of government become simple administrative functions. The Alliance draws an entirely different picture. It proclaims anarchy in proletarian ranks as the most infallible means of breaking the powerful concentration of social and political forces in the hands of the exploiters. Under this pretext, it asks the International, at a time when the Old World is seeking a way of crushing it, to replace its organisation with anarchy” - (Karl Marx, on the Juras Alliance)

“The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance” - Karl Marx

“In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history. The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter” - Karl Marx

“The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, even the writing of history. The best-paid historians are the ones best able to falsify history for the purposes of the bourgeoisie” - Friedrich Engels

“All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake ‘public opinion’ for the benefit of the bourgeoisie” - V.I. Lenin

“We have made the start. When, at what date and time, and the proletariat of which nation will complete this process is not important. The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown” - V.I. Lenin

“[O]nly people who shut their eyes so as not to see, and stuff their ears so as not to hear, can fail to notice that all over the world the birth pangs of the old, capitalist society, which is pregnant with socialism, have begun” - V.I. Lenin

“We must not borrow the system of encumbering young people’s minds with an immense acount of knowledge, nine-tenths of which was useless and one-tenth distorted. This, however, does not mean that we can restrict ourselves to Communist conclusions and learn only Communist slogans. You will not create communism that way. You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind” - V.I. Lenin

“Throughout the civilised world the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal), which regards Marxism as a kind of ‘pernicious sect’. And no other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no ‘impartial’ social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers’ wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital” - V.I. Lenin

“Take our old Economists. They too howled that their opponents were conspirators, Jacobins (see the Rabocheye Dyelyo, especially No. 10, and Martynov’s speech in the debate on the program at the Second Congress), that by plunging into politics they were divorcing themselves from the masses, that they were losing sight of the fundamentals of the working-class movement, ignoring the initiative of the workers, etc., etc. In reality these supporters of the ‘initiative of the workers’ were opportunist intellectuals who tried to foist on the workers their own narrow and philistine conception of the tasks of the proletariat. In reality the opponents of Economism, as everyone can see from the old Iskra, did not neglect or push into the background any of the aspects of Social-Democratic work, nor did they in the least forget the economic struggle; but they were able at the same time to present the urgent and immediate political tasks in their full scope and they opposed the transformation of the workers’ party into an ‘economic’ appendage of the liberal bourgeoisie” - V.I. Lenin

“It would be hard to imagine any greater ineptitude or greater harm to the revolution than that caused by the ‘Left’ revolutionaries! Why, if we in Russia today, after two and a half years of unprecedented victories over the bourgeoisie of Russa and the Entente, were to make ‘recognition of the dictatorship’ a condition of trade union membership, we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly ‘Left’ slogans” - V.I. Lenin

“The struggle for immediate and direct improvement of conditions, is alone capable of rousing the most backward strata of the exploited masses, gives them a real education and transforms them - during a revolutionary period - into an army of political fighters within the space of a few months” - V.I. Lenin

“The party which entered into a compromise with the German imperialists by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been evolving its internationalism in practice ever since the end of 1914. It was not afraid to call for the defeat of the tsarist monarchy and to condemn ‘defence of country’ in a war between two imperialist robbers. The parliamentary representatives of this party preferred exile in Siberia to taking a road leading to ministerial portfolios in a bourgeois government. The revolution that overthrew tsarism and established a democratic republic put this party to a new and tremendous test - it did not enter into any agreements with its ‘own’ imperialists, but prepared and brought about their overthrow. When it had assumed political power, this party did not leave a vestige of either landed or capitalist ownership. After making public and repudiating the imperialists’ secret treaties, this party proposed peace to all nations, and yielded to the violence of the Brest-Litovsk robbers only after the Anglo-French imperialists had torpedoed the conclusion of a peace, and after the Bolsheviks had done everything humanly possible to hasten the revolution in Germany and other countries. The absolute correctness of this compromise, entered into by such a party in such a situation, is becoming ever clearer and more obvious with every day. The Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia (like all the leaders of the Second International throughout the world, in 1914–20) began with treachery - by directly or indirectly justifying ‘defence of country’, i.e., the defence of their own predatory bourgeoisie. They continued their treachery by entering into a coalition with the bourgeoisie of their own country, and fighting, together with their own bourgeoisie, against the revolutionary proletariat of their own country. Their bloc, first with Kerensky and the Cadets, and then with Kolchak and Denikin in Russia - like the bloc of their confrères abroad with the bourgeoisie of their respective countries - was in fact desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. From beginning to end, their compromise with the bandits of imperialism meant their becoming accomplices in imperialist banditry” - V.I. Lenin

“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at who it is aimed” - J.V. Stalin

“The bourgeoisie, with its arbitrary, eclectic style of history writing, has no idea of the process of past events, or how things arise in the present” - William Z. Foster

“They (Maoists) were in the forefront along with the Trotskyites and the anarchists, and the social democrats marching together in one orchestra. Don’t forget the Zionists, throw them in there. And they all wanted one head, and that was comrade Stalin’s head. So it shows you that’s the reason they were all after him. It was only under comrade Stalin’s rule that the Communist movement was united. Think about that. We were the most powerful force on this planet; Marxism-Leninism on the other hand, is like being balanced on a tightrope. If you sway right you fall for right-revisionism, and if you sway left you fall for left-revisionism (ultra-leftism/dogmatism/book-worship), we as Marxist-Leninists must maintain balance and hold the golden centre of Stalin” - Angelo D’Angelo

“Real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this ‘pure socialism’ view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure of security force is required, where none of the value produced by the workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage. It is no suprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except for the ones that succeed” - Michael Parenti