Socialism
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Here are a collection of quotes to combat Revisionists and Ultra-Leftists.

Part 4 of This Series:

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call Communism the real movement which sublates the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence” - Karl Marx

“We must announce to the governments: We know you are the armed power which is directed against the proletarians; we will against you in peaceful way where it is possible, and with arms if it should become necessary” - Karl Marx

“To confine Marxism to the theory of class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle and the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat” - V.I. Lenin

“Owing to the present circumstances the whole world is developing faster than we are. While developing, the capitalist world is directing all its forces against us. That is how the matter stands! That is why we must devote special attention to this struggle” - V.I. Lenin

“Some people believe that Marxism and Anarchism are based on the same principles and that the disagreements between them concern only tactics, so that, in the opinion of these people, no distinction whatsoever can be drawn between these two trends. This is a great mistake. We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism. Accordingly, we also hold that a real struggle must be waged against real enemies” - J.V. Stalin

“You are wrong if you think that the Communists are enamoured of violence. They would be very pleased to drop violent methods if the ruling class agreed to give way to the working class. But the experience of history speaks against such an assumption” - J.V. Stalin

“It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible” - J.V. Stalin

“The People’s Communes were to represent a shortcut to Communism. Three years of toil would lead to ten thousand years of happiness. Poetry was displacing Marxism as a guide to economics” - R. Palme Dutt

“The socialist society could probably be divided into two phases. The first one is undeveloped socialism and the second one is relatively developed socialism. The latter may need much longer time to be achieved than the former” - Mao Zedong

“In a country such as China completing socialist construction is a tough task. Hence it’s still early to say we’ve completed our socialist construction” - Mao Zedong

“Understanding China’s realities is the fundamental basis for understanding all the problems of the revolution” - Mao Zedong

“Oppose book worship; Seek truth from facts; No investigation, no right to speak” - Mao Zedong

“People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed!” - Mao Zedong

“If the imperialists insist on launching WW3, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it’s also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse” - Mao Zedong

“A new upsurge in the struggle against U.S. imperialism is now emerging throughout the world. Ever since the Second World War, U.S. imperialism and its followers have been continuously launching wars of aggression and the people in various countries have been continuously waging revolutionary wars to defeat the aggressors. The danger of a new world war still exists, and the people of all countries must get prepared. But revolution is the main trend in the world today” - Mao Zedong

“The Soviet people and Government helped us both morally and materially in the years of our struggle for independence, and. they continue to help us in every way: with credits, industrial plants and specialists” - (President Henri Boumedienne of Algeria, in New Times, June 9, 1965)

“The progress of the African peoples is unthinkable without the fraternal and sincere assistance of the Soviet Union" - (President Sekou Toure of Guinea, October 2, 1965)

“There never was and never will be an anti-Soviet Communism” - Janos Kadar

“What fool (durak) invented this word perestroika? Why rebuild the house? Is there anything wrong in the Soviet Union? We are fine! What is there to rebuild? It is necessary to improve, reorganise, but why, if the house is not falling apart, why does it need to be rebuilt?” - Volodymyr Shcherbytsky

“All levels of society contribute to the impetus for social revolution. Within the base, advancments in the means of production precipitate conflicts with the relations of production. The inherent revolutionary nature of capitalism at work within the means of production runs counter to the institutional path dependencies found in the relations of production. This conflict ultimately provides the magnitude of revolutionary impetus but no direction. Direction emerges as the resultant sum of all applied ideological vectors emanating from the superstructure. Chief among these vectors is the reactionary. This is the tendency which must be overcome” - Louis Althusser

“With the revolution progressing and getting into its stride our view on and attitude towards the role of the young people and students changed radically. We defined the young people and students as constituting the fully-fledged main force of the revolution, thus breaking away from the old viewpoint according to which the motive force of the revolution had been defined with the main emphasis on the workers and peasants. This is proved to be correct by the course of the youth and student movement… the old theory which did not regard students even as a social stratum does not conform with the actual situation in our country” - Kim Il-sung

“So, to build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty. True, we are building socialism, but that doesn’t mean that what we have achieved so far is up to the socialist standard. Not until the middle of the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal” - Deng Xiaoping

“The socialist system has been basically established in China, the principal contradiction within the country was no longer the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but the one resulted from the need of the people for rapid economic development” - Deng Xiaoping

“It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat” - Deng Xiaoping

“Without the existence of the Soviet Union the socialist revolution in Cuba could not have been possible" - (Fidel Castro, speech in the Red Square, April 28, 1963)

“Lucanamarca. Neither they nor we have forgotten it, to be sure, because they got an answer that they didn’t imagine possible. More than 80 were annihilated, that is the truth. And we say openly that there were excesses, as was analysed in 1983. But everything in life has two aspects. Our task was to deal a devastating blow in order to put them in check, to make them understand that it was not going to be so easy. On some occasions, like that one, it was the Central Leadership itself that planned the action and gave instructions. That’s how it was. In that case, the principal thing is that we dealt them a devastating blow, and we checked them and they understood that they were dealing with a different kind of people’s fighters, that we weren’t the same as those they had fought before. This is what they understood. The excesses are the negative aspect… If we were to give the masses a lot of restrictions, requirements and prohibitions, it would mean that deep down we didn’t want the waters to overflow. And what we needed was for the waters to overflow, to let the flood rage, because we know that when a river floods its banks it causes devastation, but then it returns to its riverbed… [T]he main point was to make them understand that we were a hard nut to crack, and that we were ready for anything, anything” - Abimael ‘Gonzalo’ Guzmán

“No theory in history can match Marxism in terms of rationale, truth, and spread, and no theory has exerted such a huge influence on the world as Marxism. This proves the truth and vigor in Marxism and its irreplaceable role in understanding, reshaping and advancing the world” - Xi Jinping

“Although there is a vast ocean between China and Latin America, we are connected heart and soul. We are bound together not only be profound traditional friendship and close interests, but also by our common pursuit of beautiful dreams” - Xi Jinping

“I believe that, for real Communists, Stalin weighs no less than Lenin, and in a percentage of right decisions, he doesn’t even have an equal in world history” - Xi Jinping

Part 5:

  • enigma@lemmygrad.mlOP
    2·
    2 years ago

    “These defects are inevitable in the first phase of Communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby. In a higher phase of Communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased and with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners; From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” - Karl Marx

    “Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby” - Karl Marx

    “Aside from the stock-company business, which represents the abolition of the capitalist private industry on the basis of the capitalist system itself and destroys private industry as it expands and invades new spheres of production” - Karl Marx

    “The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have been developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other” - Karl Marx

    “According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas - also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree” - Friedrich Engels

    “Oppression by force was replaced by corruption; the sword, as the first social lever, by gold” - Friedrich Engels

    “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping” - Friedrich Engels

    “The present situation of society - this is now pretty generally conceded - is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organisation. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward, the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces, evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie, developed with a rapidity and in a degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalist mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class” - Friedrich Engels

    “In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite - into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the exploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers” - Friedrich Engels

    “The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves” - Friedrich Engels

    “Socialised production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organisation, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master - free” - Friedrich Engels

    [Do you intend to replace the existing social order by community of property at one stroke?] “We have no such intention. The development of the masses cannot be ordered by decree. It is determined by the development of the conditions in which these masses live, and therefore proceeds gradually” - Friedrich Engels

    [How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of property is to be effected?] “The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution” - Friedrich Engels