Socialism
liberation.us.to

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

    “If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed. Nationalism without Socialism - without a reorganisation of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of Ancient Erin - is only national recreancy” - James Connolly

    “One after another, these ‘nations’ used the freshly granted freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism against the Russian Revolution as its mortal enemy, and, under German protection, to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia itself. The little game with the Ukraine at Brest, which caused a decisive turn of affairs in those negotiations and brought about the entire inner and outer political situation at present prevailing for the Bolsheviks, is a perfect case in point. The conduct of Finland, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic lands, the nations of the Caucasus, shows most convincingly that we are dealing here not with an exceptional case, but with a typical phenomenon. To be sure, in all these cases, it was really not the ‘people’ who engaged in these reactionary policies, but only the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes, who - in sharpest opposition to their own proletarian masses - perverted the ‘national right of self-determination’ into an instrument of their counter-revolutionary class policies. But - and here we come to the very heart of the question - it is in this that the utopian, petty-bourgeois character of this nationalistic slogan resides: that in the midst of the crude realities of class society, especially when class antagonisms are sharpened to the uttermost, it is simply converted into a means of bourgeois class rule; Or take the Ukraine. At the beginning of the century, before the tomfoolery of ‘Ukrainian nationalism’ with its silver rubles and its ‘Universals’ and Lenin’s hobby of an ‘independent Ukraine’ had been invented, the Ukraine was the stronghold of the Russian revolutionary movement. From there, from Rostov, from Odessa, from the Donetz region, flowed out the first lava streams of the revolution (as early is 1902-1904), which kindled all South Russia into a sea of flame, thereby preparing the uprising of 1905. The same thing was repeated in the present revolution, in which thc South Russian proletariat supplies the elite troops of the proletarian phalanx. Poland and the Baltic lands have been, since 1905, the mightiest and most dependable hearths of revolution, and in them the socialist proletariat has played an outstanding role. How does it happen then, that in all these lands the counter-revolution suddenly triumphs? The nationalist movement, just because it tore the proletariat loose from Russia, crippled it thereby, and delivered it into the hands of the bourgeoisie of the border countries; To be sure, without the help of German imperialism, without ‘the German rifle butts in German fists,’ as Kautsky’s ‘Neue Zeit’ put it, the Lubinskys and other little scoundrels of the Ukraine, the Erichs and Mannerheims of Finland, and the Baltic barons would never have gotten the better of the socialist masses of the workers in their respective lands. But national separatism was the Trojan horse inside which the German ‘comrades,’ bayonets in hand, made their entrance into all those lands. The real class antagonisms and relations of military force brought about German intervention; Ukrainian nationalism in Russia was something quite different from, let us say, Czechish, Polish or Finnish nationalism in that the former was a mere whim, a folly of a few dozen petty-bourgeois intellectuals without the slightest roots in the economic, political or psychological relationships of the country; it was without any historical tradition, since the Ukraine never formed a nation or government, was without any national culture, except for the reactionary-romantic poems of Shevschenko. It is exactly as if, one fine day, the people living in the Wasserkante should want to found a new Low-German (Plattdeutsche) nation and government! And this ridiculous pose of a few university professors and students was inflated into a political force by Lenin and his comrades through their doctrinaire agitation concerning the ‘right of self-determination including etc.’ To what was at first a mere farce they lent such importance that the farce became a matter of the most deadly seriousness - not as a serious national movement for which, afterward as before, there are no roots at all, but as a shingle and rallying flag of counter-revolution! At Brest, out of this addled egg crept thc German bayonets” - Rosa Luxemburg

    “The British are as cunning as the fox and as changeable as the weather and they are not ashamed of themselves… Britain seeks friendship only with those which can render her services, and when her friends are too weak to be of any use to her, they must be sacrificed in her interests. Britain’s tender regard for her friends is like the delicate care usually shown by farmers in the rearing of silkworks; after all the silk has been drawn from the cocoons, they are destroyed by fire or used as food for the fish. The present friends of Britain are no more than silkworms; When England befriends another country, the purpose is not to maintain a cordial relationship for the sake of friendship but to utilise that country as a tool to fight a third country. When an enemy has been shorn of his power, he is turned into a friend, and the friend who has become strong, into an enemy. England always remains in a commanding position; she makes other countries fight her wars and she herself reaps the fruits of victory; The key policy of England is to attack the strongest enemy with the help of the weaker countries and join the weakened enemy in checking the growth of a third country. The British foreign policy has remained basically unchanged for two centuries” - Sun Yat-sen

    “Sometimes the emergence of independent states means the strengthening of imperialism” - (N. Bukharin, The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period)

    “This does not mean, of course, that the proletariat must support every national movement, everywhere and always, in every individual concrete case. It means that support must be given to such national movements as tend to weaken, to overthrow imperialism, and not to strengthen and preserve it. Cases occur when the national movements in certain oppressed countries came into conflict with the interests of the development of the proletarian movement. In such cases support is, of course, entirely out of the question” - J.V. Stalin

    “The same must be said of the revolutionary character of national movements in general. The unquestionably revolutionary character of the vast majority of national movements is as relative and peculiar as is the possible revolutionary character of certain particular national movements. The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement. The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such ‘desperate’ democrats and ‘Socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism. For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British ‘Labour’ Government is waging to preserve Egypt’s dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are ‘for’ socialism. There is no need to mention the national movement in other, larger, colonial and dependent countries, such as India and China, every step of which along the road to liberation, even if it runs counter to the demands of formal democracy, is a steam-hammer blow at imperialism, i.e., is undoubtedly a revolutionary step” - J.V. Stalin