Reference Quote
ShuffleSimilar Quotes
Quote search results. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
In order that the social crisis may bring about the proletarian revolution, it is necessary that, besides other conditions, a decisive shift of the petty bourgeois classes occurs in the direction of the proletariat. This gives the proletariat a chance to put itself at the head of the nation as its leader.
In the future, at any time, the best friends of a revolution in this country will be any worsening or collapse of the economy along with any large-scale disaster, disruption, or upheaval from any source. We want, first, for the System to "crap out" before one and all so that the evil Jinni, the illusion that's been holding it together for these past decades, will be once and for all dispelled. We want its pimps to be deprived of their entire purpose, their entire excuse for living (as well as their protection) - which depends completely on this economy's survival. And we especially want to see the System and its hired hoods under attack by the identical forces they created and unleashed upon our segment of the population as part of their "master plan" of control. We want to see the System's strength and structure largely destroyed, initially by forces independent of our own. Only at that time will we be able to begin undertaking bold and sweeping actions toward assuming open control for ourselves. By that time, and it could come much sooner than anyone expects, we will absolutely need to have a strong and well-functioning revolutionary organization already operational and with a full spectrum of direct experience under its belt. It is in this area and nowhere else that the breakthrough must be made. The area of revolutionary organization. Without it, the revolution must go to someone else who DOES possess the strength of discipline and the will necessary to move and achieve it. First and last, the responsibility is entirely ours.
PREMIUM FEATURE
Advanced Search Filters
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity. What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the .
The French Revolution liberated people from the power of the aristocrats. But the bourgeoisie that took over represented the exploitation of man by man, and had to be destroyed — as in the Russian Revolution, which then degenerated into totalitarianism, Stalinism, and genocide. The more you make revolutions, the worse it gets. Man is driven by evil instincts that are often stronger than moral laws … there is a higher order, but man can separate himself from it because he is free — which is what we have done. We have lost the sense of this higher order, and things will get worse and worse, culminating perhaps in a nuclear holocaust — the destruction predicted in the Apocalyptic texts. Only our apocalypse will be absurd and ridiculous because it will not be related to any transcendence. Modern man is a puppet, a jumping jack.
The contemporary world is being pulled apart by two contrary tendencies — one toward social death, one toward the birth of a new society. Many of the phenomena of the present crisis are ambivalent and can either mean death or birth depending on how the crisis is resolved. The crisis of a civilization is a mass phenomenon and moves onward without benefit of ideology. The demand for freedom, community, life significance, the attack on alienation, is largely inchoate and instinctive. In the libertarian revolutionary movement these objectives were ideological, confined to books, or realized with difficulty, usually only temporarily in small experimental communities, or in individual lives and tiny social circles. It has been said of the contemporary revolutionary wave that it is a revolution without theory, anti-ideological. But the theory, the ideology, already exists in a tradition as old as capitalism itself. Furthermore, just as individuals specially gifted have been able to live free lives in the interstices of an exploitative, competitive system, so in periods when the developing capitalist system has temporarily and locally broken down due to the drag of outworn forms there have existed brief revolutionary honeymoons in which freer communal organization has prevailed. Whenever the power structure falters or fails the general tendency is to replace it with free communism. This is almost a law of revolution. In every instance so far, either the old power structure, as in the Paris Commune or the Spanish Civil War, or a new one, as in the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, has suppressed these free revolutionary societies with wholesale terror and bloodshed.
Each person’s private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous. We have learned to live together and organize our complex societies slowly and incrementally, over vast stretches of time, and we do not understand with sufficient exactitude why what we are doing works. Thus, altering our ways of social being carelessly in the name of some ideological shibboleth (diversity springs to mind) is likely to produce far more trouble than good, given the suffering that even small revolutions generally produce.
Try QuoteGPT
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
It is highly important to grasp this fact. It enables us to understand that revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society and that without them, it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power. Communists must expose the deceitful propaganda of the reactionaries, such as the assertion that social revolution is unnecessary and impossible. They must firmly uphold the Marxist-Leninist theory of social revolution and enable the people to understand that social revolution is not only entirely necessary but also entirely practicable, and that the whole history of mankind and the triumph of the Soviet Union have confirmed this scientific truth.
Those who think we need millions - or even tens of thousands - have no understanding. We don't desire merely to dominate or monopolize in the manner of Democrats or Republicans. We're not content with mere power if it means the continued decline of the White Race the way we are seeing it today. We have much more than this to do: radical programs to be enforced, a huge but rotten System to be gotten out of the way first, etc. It can only be done by a sharp cutting edge, never by muscle-bound bulk. The ruling parties are monstrously huge, fat and rich but they are rotten to the core and threaten to pull the country down with them if they are allowed to do so. We are tiny but desperate and the conditions imposed upon us have made us hard as steel and sharp as razors. Let me just jog your imagination by unequivocally stating that four men properly motivated and determined - could set this country on its EAR overnight! And what's more, we don't need to sit about like helpless old ladies and WISH it were so - we have them, and more, NOW! Shall you be with us in grappling with and mastering reality or will you remain among the useless dreamers and escapists wishing things were other than what they are? As revolutionaries we know only one compulsion: circumstances as we find them, the way they exist - in short, REALITY!
The victory of the Germans over Russia was the pre-condition for the revolution, which was the pre-condition for Lenin, who was the pre-condition for Brest! The same applies in the west! First victory in the west and collapse of the Entente, then we shall make conditions which they have to accept! And they will be framed purely in accordance with our interests.
Since we are no prophets, none of us can say exactly how many months or years will pass before the victory of the proletarian revolution in the first of those important countries which really determine the fate of the World Revolution. One thing, however, we know exactly, and the new analysis of Europe’s economic situation at the Third Congress has again completely convinced us of it: The revolution is not over. We are not very far distant from the period in which new conflicts will begin, which will shake Europe and the whole world in a much greater degree than the sum total of all previous struggles.
Loading more quotes...
Loading...