On this day, 28 January 1917, Carmelita Torres, a 17-year-old Mexican maid who worked in the United States, refused to take the mandatory gasoline bath given to day labourers at the border, and convinced 30 other trolley passengers to join her. Her protest spread in what became known as the bath riots.
Torres was one of many workers who crossed the border between Juarez and El Paso each day. In the name of public health, Mexican workers were frequently subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment. They had to strip naked, bathe, undergo a toxic gasoline bath, and have their clothes steamed. The stated aim of the programme was to kill lice, which can spread typhus. However, it was not applied to everyone crossing the border: just working class Mexicans. In addition to gasoline being poisonous, it was also a deadly fire risk. A group of prisoners in El Paso being treated with gasoline were burned to death in an accidental fire. Furthermore, US health workers were secretly photographing naked Mexican women.
On January 28, anger at the practice finally exploded, and within a few hours Torres had amassed a crowd of several thousand mostly women protesters. They blocked all traffic and trolleys into El Paso. They pelted immigration officers with rocks and bottles when they try to disperse them, and when US and then Mexican troops arrived they received the same treatment. The riots were eventually suppressed by the soldiers, and Torres herself was arrested. This appeared to have the effect of discouraging future protests.
The enforced bathing and fumigation of Mexican workers with toxic chemicals like gasoline, and later DDT and Zyklon B, continued until the 1950s. The use of Zyklon B at the border appealed to scientists in Nazi Germany, who in the late 1930s began using the agent at borders and in concentration camps for delousing. Although notoriously they later used it to exterminate millions of people in the Holocaust.
Working Class History
Torres was one of many workers who crossed the border between Juarez and El Paso each day. In the name of public health, Mexican workers were frequently subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment. They had to strip naked, bathe, undergo a toxic gasoline bath, and have their clothes steamed. The stated aim of the programme was to kill lice, which can spread typhus. However, it was not applied to everyone crossing the border: just working class Mexicans. In addition to gasoline being poisonous, it was also a deadly fire risk. A group of prisoners in El Paso being treated with gasoline were burned to death in an accidental fire. Furthermore, US health workers were secretly photographing naked Mexican women.
On January 28, anger at the practice finally exploded, and within a few hours Torres had amassed a crowd of several thousand mostly women protesters. They blocked all traffic and trolleys into El Paso. They pelted immigration officers with rocks and bottles when they try to disperse them, and when US and then Mexican troops arrived they received the same treatment. The riots were eventually suppressed by the soldiers, and Torres herself was arrested. This appeared to have the effect of discouraging future protests.
The enforced bathing and fumigation of Mexican workers with toxic chemicals like gasoline, and later DDT and Zyklon B, continued until the 1950s. The use of Zyklon B at the border appealed to scientists in Nazi Germany, who in the late 1930s began using the agent at borders and in concentration camps for delousing. Although notoriously they later used it to exterminate millions of people in the Holocaust.
Working Class History
#Resistance #Solidarity #CarmelitaTorres #Mexico
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The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical political meaning of that term. To this extent, the bourgeois, or the bourgeois-democratic, revolution in Russia is completed.
Lenin, Letters on Tactics (1918)
@Communism
Lenin, Letters on Tactics (1918)
#Lenin
@Communism
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"Lenin in Gorki", painting by Dmitry Arkadyevich Nalbandyan, 1960
@Communism
The Bolshevik slogans and ideas on the whole have been confirmed by history; but concretely things have worked out differently; they are more original, more peculiar, more variated than anyone could have expected..
Lenin, Letters on Tactics (1918)
@Communism
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"The ideas of Leninism are winning!", soviet poster, 1961
@Communism
“The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” has already become a reality in the Russian revolution, for this “formula” envisages only a relation of classes, and not a concrete political institution implementing this relation.
Lenin, Letters on Tactics (1918)
@Communism
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The Belgian embassy in DR Congo was set on fire as demonstrations escalated across the capital. Protesters also targeted the Dutch, French, and US embassies, expressing outrage over the escalating conflict in eastern DR Congo.
In North Kivu province, the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group has seized significant territory, including the provincial capital, Goma, after intense fighting. The violence has claimed at least 17 lives and left 370 people injured, as the rebels solidify their control in the region.
theredstream
In North Kivu province, the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group has seized significant territory, including the provincial capital, Goma, after intense fighting. The violence has claimed at least 17 lives and left 370 people injured, as the rebels solidify their control in the region.
theredstream
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✍🏻 V. I. Lenin
🔴 A Liberal Professor on Equality
1️⃣
Liberal Professor Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky is on the war path against socialism. This time he has approached the question, not from the political and economic angle, but from that of an abstract discussion on equality (perhaps the professor thought such an abstract discussion more suitable for the religious and philosophical gatherings which he has addressed?).
“If we take socialism, not as an economic theory, but as a living ideal,” Mr. Tugan declared, “then, undoubtedly, it is associated with the ideal of equality, but equality is a concept ... that cannot be deduced from experience and reason.”
This is the reasoning of a liberal scholar who repeats the incredibly trite and threadbare argument that experience and reason clearly prove that men are not equal, yet socialism bases its ideal on equality. Hence, socialism, if you please, is an absurdity which is contrary to experience and reason, and so forth!
Mr. Tugan repeats the old trick of the reactionaries: first to misinterpret socialism by making it out to be an absurdity, and then to triumphantly refute the absurdity! When we say that experience and reason prove that men are not equal, we mean by equality, equality in abilities or similarity in physical strength and mental ability.
It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. If Mr. Tugan is quite unable to think, he is at least able to read; were lie to Lake the well-known work of one of the founders of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, directed against Dühring, he would find there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining that economic equality means anything else than the abolition of classes. But when professors set out to refute socialism, one never knows what to wonder at most—their stupidity, their ignorance, or their unscrupulousness.
Since we have Mr. Tugan to deal with, we shall have to start with the rudiments.
By political equality Social-Democrats mean equal rights, and by economic equality, as we have already said, they mean the abolition of classes. As for establishing human equality in the sense of equality of strength and abilities (physical and mental), socialists do not even think of such things.
Political equality is a demand for equal political rights for all citizens of a country who have reached, a certain age and who do not suffer from either ordinary or liberal-professorial feeble-mindedness. This demand was first advanced, not by the socialists, not by the proletariat, but by the bourgeoisie. The well-known historical experience of all countries of the world proves this, and Mr. Tugan could easily have discovered this had he not called “experience” to witness solely in order to dupe students and workers, and please the powers that be by “abolishing” socialism.
The bourgeoisie put forward the demand for equal rights for all citizens in the struggle against medieval, feudal, serf-owner and caste privileges. In Russia, for example, unlike America, Switzerland and other countries, the privileges of the nobility are preserved to this day in all spheres of political life, in elections to the Council of State, in elections to the Duma, in municipal administration, in taxation, and many other things.
Even the most dull-witted and ignorant person can grasp the fact that individual members of the nobility are not equal in physical and mental abilities any more than are people belonging to the “tax-paying”, “base”, ‘low-born” or “non-privileged” peasant class. But in rights all nobles are equal, just as all the peasants are equal in their lack of rights.
Does our learned liberal Professor Tugan now under stand the difference between equality in the sense of equal rights, and equality in the sense of equal strength and abilities?
🔴 A Liberal Professor on Equality
1️⃣
Liberal Professor Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky is on the war path against socialism. This time he has approached the question, not from the political and economic angle, but from that of an abstract discussion on equality (perhaps the professor thought such an abstract discussion more suitable for the religious and philosophical gatherings which he has addressed?).
“If we take socialism, not as an economic theory, but as a living ideal,” Mr. Tugan declared, “then, undoubtedly, it is associated with the ideal of equality, but equality is a concept ... that cannot be deduced from experience and reason.”
This is the reasoning of a liberal scholar who repeats the incredibly trite and threadbare argument that experience and reason clearly prove that men are not equal, yet socialism bases its ideal on equality. Hence, socialism, if you please, is an absurdity which is contrary to experience and reason, and so forth!
Mr. Tugan repeats the old trick of the reactionaries: first to misinterpret socialism by making it out to be an absurdity, and then to triumphantly refute the absurdity! When we say that experience and reason prove that men are not equal, we mean by equality, equality in abilities or similarity in physical strength and mental ability.
It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. If Mr. Tugan is quite unable to think, he is at least able to read; were lie to Lake the well-known work of one of the founders of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, directed against Dühring, he would find there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining that economic equality means anything else than the abolition of classes. But when professors set out to refute socialism, one never knows what to wonder at most—their stupidity, their ignorance, or their unscrupulousness.
Since we have Mr. Tugan to deal with, we shall have to start with the rudiments.
By political equality Social-Democrats mean equal rights, and by economic equality, as we have already said, they mean the abolition of classes. As for establishing human equality in the sense of equality of strength and abilities (physical and mental), socialists do not even think of such things.
Political equality is a demand for equal political rights for all citizens of a country who have reached, a certain age and who do not suffer from either ordinary or liberal-professorial feeble-mindedness. This demand was first advanced, not by the socialists, not by the proletariat, but by the bourgeoisie. The well-known historical experience of all countries of the world proves this, and Mr. Tugan could easily have discovered this had he not called “experience” to witness solely in order to dupe students and workers, and please the powers that be by “abolishing” socialism.
The bourgeoisie put forward the demand for equal rights for all citizens in the struggle against medieval, feudal, serf-owner and caste privileges. In Russia, for example, unlike America, Switzerland and other countries, the privileges of the nobility are preserved to this day in all spheres of political life, in elections to the Council of State, in elections to the Duma, in municipal administration, in taxation, and many other things.
Even the most dull-witted and ignorant person can grasp the fact that individual members of the nobility are not equal in physical and mental abilities any more than are people belonging to the “tax-paying”, “base”, ‘low-born” or “non-privileged” peasant class. But in rights all nobles are equal, just as all the peasants are equal in their lack of rights.
Does our learned liberal Professor Tugan now under stand the difference between equality in the sense of equal rights, and equality in the sense of equal strength and abilities?
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✍🏻 V. I. Lenin
🔴 A Liberal Professor on Equality
2️⃣
We shall now deal with economic equality. In the United States of America, as in other advanced countries, there are no medieval privileges. All citizens, are equal in political rights. But are they equal as regards their position in social production?
No, Mr. Tugan, they are not. Some own land, factories and capital and live on the unpaid labour of the workers; these form an insignificant minority. Others, namely, the vast mass of the population, own no means of production and live only by selling their labour-power; these are proletarians.
In the United States of America there is no aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat enjoy equal political rights. But they are not equal in class status: one class, the capitalists, own the means of production and live on the unpaid labour of the workers. The other class, the wage-workers, the proletariat, own no means of production and live by selling their labour-power in the market.
The abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth.
This explanation of socialism has been necessary to enlighten our learned liberal professor, Mr. Tugan, who may, if he tries hard, now grasp the fact that it is absurd to expect equality of strength and abilities in socialist society.
In brief, when socialists speak of equality they always mean social equality, equality of social status, and not by any means the physical and mental equality of individuals.
The puzzled reader may ask: how could a learned liberal professor have forgotten these elementary axioms familiar to anybody who has read any exposition of the views of socialism? The answer is simple: the personal qualities of present-day professors are such that we may find among them even exceptionally stupid people like Tugan. But the social status of professors in bourgeois society is such that only those are allowed to hold such posts who sell science to serve the interests of capital, and agree to utter the most fatuous nonsense, the most unscrupulous drivel and twaddle against the socialists. The bourgeoisie will forgive the professors all this as long as they go on “abolishing” socialism.
🔴 A Liberal Professor on Equality
2️⃣
We shall now deal with economic equality. In the United States of America, as in other advanced countries, there are no medieval privileges. All citizens, are equal in political rights. But are they equal as regards their position in social production?
No, Mr. Tugan, they are not. Some own land, factories and capital and live on the unpaid labour of the workers; these form an insignificant minority. Others, namely, the vast mass of the population, own no means of production and live only by selling their labour-power; these are proletarians.
In the United States of America there is no aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat enjoy equal political rights. But they are not equal in class status: one class, the capitalists, own the means of production and live on the unpaid labour of the workers. The other class, the wage-workers, the proletariat, own no means of production and live by selling their labour-power in the market.
The abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth.
This explanation of socialism has been necessary to enlighten our learned liberal professor, Mr. Tugan, who may, if he tries hard, now grasp the fact that it is absurd to expect equality of strength and abilities in socialist society.
In brief, when socialists speak of equality they always mean social equality, equality of social status, and not by any means the physical and mental equality of individuals.
The puzzled reader may ask: how could a learned liberal professor have forgotten these elementary axioms familiar to anybody who has read any exposition of the views of socialism? The answer is simple: the personal qualities of present-day professors are such that we may find among them even exceptionally stupid people like Tugan. But the social status of professors in bourgeois society is such that only those are allowed to hold such posts who sell science to serve the interests of capital, and agree to utter the most fatuous nonsense, the most unscrupulous drivel and twaddle against the socialists. The bourgeoisie will forgive the professors all this as long as they go on “abolishing” socialism.
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The abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth.
Lenin, A Liberal Professor on Equality
@Communism
Join the @Communists
Lenin, A Liberal Professor on Equality
@Communism
Join the @Communists
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There are individuals Ð a mere handful in the history of mankind Ð who, while themselves being the product of an imminent catastrophic change, leave their mark upon an entire epoch. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is one such giant mind, one such giant will...
Alexandra Kollantai
A Giant Mind, A Giant Will (1914-1916)
@Communism
Alexandra Kollantai
A Giant Mind, A Giant Will (1914-1916)
@Communism
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The production relations of capitalist society approach more and more the production relations of socialist society. But on the other hand, its political and juridical relations established between capitalist society and socialist society a steadily rising wall. This wall is not overthrown, but is on the contrary strengthened and consolidated by the development of social reforms and the course of democracy. Only the hammer blow of revolution, that is to day, the conquest of political power by the proletariat can break down this wall.
Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
@Communism
Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
@Communism
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The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic apparatus, the bourgeois police.
"The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes," say Marx and Engels in a preface to the Communist Manifesto. The task of the proletarian revolution is "...no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it...this is the preliminary condition for every real people's revolution on the continent," says Marx in his letter to Kugelmann in 1871.
Joseph Stalin
The Foundations of Leninism
@Communism
"The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes," say Marx and Engels in a preface to the Communist Manifesto. The task of the proletarian revolution is "...no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it...this is the preliminary condition for every real people's revolution on the continent," says Marx in his letter to Kugelmann in 1871.
Joseph Stalin
The Foundations of Leninism
@Communism
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On this day, 31 January 1919, striking workers fought police in the centre of Glasgow and the army was deployed to restore order. The strikers demanded the working week be reduced from 54 to 40 hours, to create jobs for demobilised soldiers and increase workers’ leisure time.
The strike began on Monday 27 January, and by Friday 31st, 60,000 workers had downed tools. On January 31, a crowd of between 20 and 60,000 protesters gathered in George and sang “The Red Flag.” The Glasgow Evening News described what happened next: “The police found it necessary to make a baton charge, and strikers and civilians - men, women, and children - were felled in the melée that followed.”
Initially overwhelmed, the workers quickly retaliated and forced the police back. A turning point in the battle came when a lorry carrying glass bottles was trapped by the crowd. As the strikers began to pelt the police with stones and bottles, many police broke ranks and fled. Led by demobilised servicemen, the workers then marched to Glasgow Green, where they were again attacked by the police. This time they uprooted iron railings and counter-charged. Clashes continued until late into the night, and the Secretary of State for Scotland famously told the War Cabinet, “It is a misnomer to call this situation in Glasgow a strike - this is a Bolshevist uprising."
The local sheriff called for military support, and that evening, the first detachments of soldiers arrived in the city. Over the next couple of days, several tanks and 10,000 troops arrived, mostly from across Scotland, with a battalion from Northumberland. Soldiers with fixed bayonets, mortars and machine guns were stationed in key locations throughout the city. Meanwhile, numerous strike leaders were arrested by police, and the trades council office was raided. Picketing activity was greatly curtailed.
On Monday 10 February, after the employers agreed to a 7-hour reduction in the working week with no pay cuts, the strike was called off.
Working Class History
The strike began on Monday 27 January, and by Friday 31st, 60,000 workers had downed tools. On January 31, a crowd of between 20 and 60,000 protesters gathered in George and sang “The Red Flag.” The Glasgow Evening News described what happened next: “The police found it necessary to make a baton charge, and strikers and civilians - men, women, and children - were felled in the melée that followed.”
Initially overwhelmed, the workers quickly retaliated and forced the police back. A turning point in the battle came when a lorry carrying glass bottles was trapped by the crowd. As the strikers began to pelt the police with stones and bottles, many police broke ranks and fled. Led by demobilised servicemen, the workers then marched to Glasgow Green, where they were again attacked by the police. This time they uprooted iron railings and counter-charged. Clashes continued until late into the night, and the Secretary of State for Scotland famously told the War Cabinet, “It is a misnomer to call this situation in Glasgow a strike - this is a Bolshevist uprising."
The local sheriff called for military support, and that evening, the first detachments of soldiers arrived in the city. Over the next couple of days, several tanks and 10,000 troops arrived, mostly from across Scotland, with a battalion from Northumberland. Soldiers with fixed bayonets, mortars and machine guns were stationed in key locations throughout the city. Meanwhile, numerous strike leaders were arrested by police, and the trades council office was raided. Picketing activity was greatly curtailed.
On Monday 10 February, after the employers agreed to a 7-hour reduction in the working week with no pay cuts, the strike was called off.
Working Class History
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@Communism: Not sure how true this article is—it makes some pretty big claims that require further investigation.
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/ai-going-deepseek/
Michael Roberts Blog
AI going DeepSeek
Most readers will know the news by now. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, released an AI model called R1 that is comparable in ability to the best models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and …
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🔴 The life expectancy of Palestinians fell by 11.5 years in the first three months of the genocide
✍🏻 Vijay Prashad
Palestine has been deeply impacted by the genocide. Using estimates from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects 2024, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights analysed the decline in Palestinian life expectancy caused by the Israeli bombardment in Gaza and found that Palestinian life expectancy at birth fell by 11.5 years between 2022 and 2023, from a respectable 76.7 years in 2022 to just 65.2 years in 2023. It was the first three months of the U.S.-backed Israeli bombing—from October to December 2023—that brought about this terrible decline in total life expectancy. We are not aware of such a rapid decline in life expectancy at any other period of modern human history. A Palestinian life is now more than seventeen years shorter than an Israeli one. This gap is greater than that which existed between blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa, which was fifteen years in 1980.
Eleven and a half years lost per Palestinian. That is almost 60 million years lost for the remaining 5.2 million Palestinians who have remained in Palestine and survived the genocide. This loss cannot easily be recovered. It will take years of immense work to rebuild Palestinian society and reach anything near the pre-genocide life expectancy. Health systems will need to be rebuilt: not only hospitals and clinics, which were almost all destroyed in Gaza, but new doctors and nurses will have to be trained to replace those who were killed. Food systems will need to be recovered: not only bakeries, but fields will need to be detoxified and fishing boats repaired. Housing will need to be rebuilt to replace the 92% of homes in Gaza that were destroyed or damaged (what the UN has called a ‘domicide’). Schools will need to be rebuilt. The mental trauma that afflicts children will need to be healed so that they feel that these structures are not graves but places of safety and learning.
Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
✍🏻 Vijay Prashad
Palestine has been deeply impacted by the genocide. Using estimates from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects 2024, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights analysed the decline in Palestinian life expectancy caused by the Israeli bombardment in Gaza and found that Palestinian life expectancy at birth fell by 11.5 years between 2022 and 2023, from a respectable 76.7 years in 2022 to just 65.2 years in 2023. It was the first three months of the U.S.-backed Israeli bombing—from October to December 2023—that brought about this terrible decline in total life expectancy. We are not aware of such a rapid decline in life expectancy at any other period of modern human history. A Palestinian life is now more than seventeen years shorter than an Israeli one. This gap is greater than that which existed between blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa, which was fifteen years in 1980.
Eleven and a half years lost per Palestinian. That is almost 60 million years lost for the remaining 5.2 million Palestinians who have remained in Palestine and survived the genocide. This loss cannot easily be recovered. It will take years of immense work to rebuild Palestinian society and reach anything near the pre-genocide life expectancy. Health systems will need to be rebuilt: not only hospitals and clinics, which were almost all destroyed in Gaza, but new doctors and nurses will have to be trained to replace those who were killed. Food systems will need to be recovered: not only bakeries, but fields will need to be detoxified and fishing boats repaired. Housing will need to be rebuilt to replace the 92% of homes in Gaza that were destroyed or damaged (what the UN has called a ‘domicide’). Schools will need to be rebuilt. The mental trauma that afflicts children will need to be healed so that they feel that these structures are not graves but places of safety and learning.
Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
The Life Expectancy of Palestinians Fell by 11.5 Years in the First Three Months of the Genocide: The Fifth Newsletter (2025)
The US-backed genocide in Gaza has led to a precipitous loss in the population’s life expectancy. Even as the ceasefire allows aid to enter Gaza, this profound demographic loss will take generations to revert.
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"Lenin on vacation", painting by Evgeniy Sapiro, 1962
@Communism
Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.
V. I. Lenin
Unity (April 12, 1914)
Collected Works. Volume 20
@Communism
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