Joseph Stalin in national Tajik costume in the Kremlin, during a meeting with leading collective farmers of Tajikistan. Moscow, 1935
@Communism
The revolution cannot satisfy everyone and everybody. One of its sides always satisfies the toiling masses, while the other strikes at the overt and covert enemies of the masses.
It is therefore necessary to choose: either with the workers and poor peasants for the revolution, or with the capitalists and landlords against the revolution.
Joseph Stalin
The Provisional Government
@Communism
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The only choice is — either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a “third” ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology
Vladimir Lenin
What is to be done
@Communism
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✍🏻 V. I. Lenin
🔴 Speech On The Nationalisation Of The Banks
Delivered At A Meeting Of The All-Russia Central Executive Committee December 14(27), 1917
The last speaker tried to intimidate us by asserting that we are heading towards an abyss, towards certain destruction. There is, however, nothing new for us in this intimidation. Novaya Zhizn, the newspaper that expresses the views of the group to which the speaker belongs, said before the October days that our revolution wou!d bring nothing but disorders and anarchic riots. Talk about our travelling the wrong road is, therefore, a reflection of bourgeois psychology that even disinterested people cannot get rid of. (Voice from among the internalionalists: Demagogy!") No, that is not demagogy, it is your constant talk of the axe that is real demagogy.
The measures proposed in the decree are only an effective way of ensuring control.
You speak of the intricacy of the machinery, of its fragility and of the involved nature of the problem—these are elementary truths that everybody is aware of. But if these truths are merely used to put a brake on all socialist undertakings, we say that anyone who takes that line is a demagogue, and a dangerous demagogue at that.
We want to begin an inventory of the vaults, but the learned specialists tell us there is nothing in them but documents and securities. Then what is there bad about representatives of the people checking them?
If what they say is true, why do those same learned specialists who criticise us not come out with it openly? Whenever the Council makes decisions they declare that they agree with us, but only in principle. This is the way of the bourgeois intelligentsia, of all conciliators, who ruin everything with their constant agreement in principle and disagreement in practice.
If you know so much about all these things and have the experience, why don't you help us. why do we meet with nothing but sabotage from you in our difficult task?
You proceed from a correct scientific theory, but for us theory forms the basis of actions to be undertaken, it gives us confidence in those actions and does not scare the life out of us. Of course it is difficult to make a beginning and we often come up against fragile things; nevertheless we have coped with them, are coping with them and shall continue to cope with them.
If book-learning were to serve no other purpose than that of hampering every new step and instilling eternal fear of the new, it would be useless.
Nobody,with the exception of the utopian socialists, has ever asserted that victory is possible without resistance, without the dictatorship of the proletariat and without seizing the old world in an iron grip.
You accepted this dictatorship in principle, but when that word is translated into Russian, called an “iron grip ” and applied in practice, you warn us of the fragility and involved nature of the matter.
You stubbornly refuse to see that the iron hand that destroys also creates. It is an undoubted advantage to us to go over from principles to deeds.
To effect control we have called upon the bankers and together with them have elaborated measures that they agreed to, so that loans could be obtained under full control and properly accounted for. But there are people among the bank employees who have the interests of the people at heart and who have told us:“They are deceiving you, make haste and check their criminal activity that is directly harmful to you“ And we did make haste.
We realise that this is an involved measure. None of us, even those who are trained economists, will undertake to carry it out. We shall invite the specialists who are engaged in that work, but only when we have the keys in our own hands. Then we shall even be able to draw advisers from the former millionaires. We invite anybody who wants to work as long as he does not try to reduce every revolutionary enterprise to mere words; that is something we shall not stand for. We use the words "dictatorship of the proletariat" in all seriousness and we shall effect that dictatorship.
Source
🔴 Speech On The Nationalisation Of The Banks
Delivered At A Meeting Of The All-Russia Central Executive Committee December 14(27), 1917
The last speaker tried to intimidate us by asserting that we are heading towards an abyss, towards certain destruction. There is, however, nothing new for us in this intimidation. Novaya Zhizn, the newspaper that expresses the views of the group to which the speaker belongs, said before the October days that our revolution wou!d bring nothing but disorders and anarchic riots. Talk about our travelling the wrong road is, therefore, a reflection of bourgeois psychology that even disinterested people cannot get rid of. (Voice from among the internalionalists: Demagogy!") No, that is not demagogy, it is your constant talk of the axe that is real demagogy.
The measures proposed in the decree are only an effective way of ensuring control.
You speak of the intricacy of the machinery, of its fragility and of the involved nature of the problem—these are elementary truths that everybody is aware of. But if these truths are merely used to put a brake on all socialist undertakings, we say that anyone who takes that line is a demagogue, and a dangerous demagogue at that.
We want to begin an inventory of the vaults, but the learned specialists tell us there is nothing in them but documents and securities. Then what is there bad about representatives of the people checking them?
If what they say is true, why do those same learned specialists who criticise us not come out with it openly? Whenever the Council makes decisions they declare that they agree with us, but only in principle. This is the way of the bourgeois intelligentsia, of all conciliators, who ruin everything with their constant agreement in principle and disagreement in practice.
If you know so much about all these things and have the experience, why don't you help us. why do we meet with nothing but sabotage from you in our difficult task?
You proceed from a correct scientific theory, but for us theory forms the basis of actions to be undertaken, it gives us confidence in those actions and does not scare the life out of us. Of course it is difficult to make a beginning and we often come up against fragile things; nevertheless we have coped with them, are coping with them and shall continue to cope with them.
If book-learning were to serve no other purpose than that of hampering every new step and instilling eternal fear of the new, it would be useless.
Nobody,with the exception of the utopian socialists, has ever asserted that victory is possible without resistance, without the dictatorship of the proletariat and without seizing the old world in an iron grip.
You accepted this dictatorship in principle, but when that word is translated into Russian, called an “iron grip ” and applied in practice, you warn us of the fragility and involved nature of the matter.
You stubbornly refuse to see that the iron hand that destroys also creates. It is an undoubted advantage to us to go over from principles to deeds.
To effect control we have called upon the bankers and together with them have elaborated measures that they agreed to, so that loans could be obtained under full control and properly accounted for. But there are people among the bank employees who have the interests of the people at heart and who have told us:“They are deceiving you, make haste and check their criminal activity that is directly harmful to you“ And we did make haste.
We realise that this is an involved measure. None of us, even those who are trained economists, will undertake to carry it out. We shall invite the specialists who are engaged in that work, but only when we have the keys in our own hands. Then we shall even be able to draw advisers from the former millionaires. We invite anybody who wants to work as long as he does not try to reduce every revolutionary enterprise to mere words; that is something we shall not stand for. We use the words "dictatorship of the proletariat" in all seriousness and we shall effect that dictatorship.
Source
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On March 12, 1946, in Budapest, Hungarian communists executed fascists and Nazi collaborators, including Ferenc Szálasi and Ladislas Baky.
These individuals were responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of members of the Hungarian Communist Party. They also handed over Jews and Roma people to the Nazis, who then sent them to death camps like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
These individuals were responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of members of the Hungarian Communist Party. They also handed over Jews and Roma people to the Nazis, who then sent them to death camps like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
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The working class must not fight for the crumbs that are thrown from the master banquet table, the working class must fight for power.
Ernesto Che Guevara
He made this statement on August 11, 1961, while speaking as Cuba’s Minister of Economy at the Inter-American Economic and Social Conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
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One of the biggest and most dangerous mistakes made by Communists is the idea that a revolution can be made by revolutionaries alone. On the contrary, to be successful, all serious revolutionary work requires that the idea that revolutionaries are capable of playing the part only of the vanguard of the truly virile and advanced class must be understood and translated into action.
V. I. Lenin
On the Significance of Militant Materialism
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What distinguishes bourgeois society from other class societies – from ancient society and from the social order of the Middle Ages? Precisely the fact that class domination does not rest on “acquired rights” but on real economic relations – the fact that wage labour is not a juridical relation, but purely an economic relation. In our juridical system there is not a single legal formula for the class domination of today. The few remaining traces of such formulae of class domination are (as that concerning servants), survivals of feudal society.
How can wage slavery be suppressed the “legislative way,” if wage slavery is not expressed the laws?
Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
@Communism
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Aaron Bushnell self-immolated on this day one year ago to call attention to the genocide in Palestine. A member of the US Air Force, Bushnell dressed in his military fatigues to self-immolate in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. After pouring a flammable liquid on himself, he repeated “Free Palestine” until he couldn’t speak anymore. He died shortly after.
On February 25, 2024, the morning of his self-immolation, Bushnell posted on Facebook: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is you’re doing it. Right now.”
US leaders were silent on Bushnell’s extreme act of protest, and some media outlets labeled him as “mentally ill.” Bushnell’s sacrifice and courage have been honored by people from Yemen to Palestine, where there is now a street named after him in Jericho.
theredstream
On February 25, 2024, the morning of his self-immolation, Bushnell posted on Facebook: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is you’re doing it. Right now.”
US leaders were silent on Bushnell’s extreme act of protest, and some media outlets labeled him as “mentally ill.” Bushnell’s sacrifice and courage have been honored by people from Yemen to Palestine, where there is now a street named after him in Jericho.
theredstream
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The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit.
Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877
@Communism
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