#lenin quotes

[workersolidarity]

"Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps."

Vladimir Lenin

[phobic-human]

It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives. It is far more difficult—and far more precious—to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist.

Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

[stillnaomi]

The bourgeoisie does its job splendidly; it makes all sorts of promises, but in effect pursues only its class policy.

Lenin, 1917

[estherax]

Generating plasm and stacking matchboxes: how to build a better future through collective consciousness.

Alternatively - Steban and Ulixes were building Tatlin's Tower so I have to talk about the symbolism or I will explode!!

While completing the communist vision quest you get an opportunity to build a model of "The Tower of History", depicted on the last page of "A Brief Look at Infra-Materialism": a leaning tower wrapped in a dramatic helix. The scale model you make is a mirror image of Tatlin's Tower - a design for a grand monumental building to the Third International: the government organization advocating for world communism.

The main idea of the monument was to produce a new type of structure, uniting a purely creative form with a utilitarian form. Meaning it would function as an office building while also serving as a symbol of cultural significance. And let me tell you, this bad boy can fit so much symbolism in it.

Tatlin was commissioned to develop a design in 1919, after the 1917 February Revolution - a parallel to Disco Elysium's Insulinde we're witnessing post-Antecentennial Revolution.

Tatlin's work was inspired by high revolutionary goals, which are evident in the visual direction of the tower as well, expressing the ideological strive for achieving something that has never been done before, overcoming the odds. The structure "oscillates like a steel snake, constrained and organized by the one general movement of all the parts, to raise itself above the earth. The form wants to overcome the material and the force of gravity..."

The tower has meaning packed even in the materials. For example, the glass structures (marked A, B, C on the architectural rendering) were meant to serve legislative, executive and informative initiatives while rotating around their axes at different speeds. The material signified the purity of initiatives, their liberation from material constraints and their ideal qualities.

But here's the best part. The spirals.

"The spiral is the movement of liberated humanity. The spiral is the ideal expression of liberation: with its base set in the earth, it flees from the ground and becomes a symbol of the suspension of all (...) earthy interests." They are "the most elastic and rapid lines which the world knows" that represent movement and aspiration, continuing the themes of progress and freedom, but they also refer to something else.

In the process of building the matchbox model Rhetoric points out: "It's almost exactly as Nilsen's sketch imagined, a physical manifestation of the dialectical spiral of history."

The shape of the tower is a representation of dialectical development of history, first visualized as a spiral by G. W. F. Hegel. He pictured transformational change as "both linear and circular in order to be short-term responsive, i.e. possibly negating itself, and long-term strategic, i.e. a process of development."

Hegel's dialectics would later be reinterpreted through the prism of materialism by Marx and Engels to create dialectical materialism - the basis for historical materialism.

"Still, this idea, as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegels’ philosophy, is far more comprehensive and far richer in content than the current idea of evolution is. A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis, (...) a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line; a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; (...) the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon (history constantly revealing ever new aspects), a connection that provides a uniform, and universal process of motion, one that follows definite laws - these are some of the features of dialectics as a doctrine of development that is richer than the conventional one."

The tower embodies progress in materialist understanding of history while also indicating the connection to ideological plasm, a manifestation of "the proletariat's embrace of historical materialism", necessary to create a better future.

According to Nilsen, the proletariat of a revolutionary state can generate enough plasm to create extra-physical architecture that "disregards the laws of 'bourgeois physics' and instead relies on the revolutionary faith of the people for structural integrity."

This function of plasm implies that The Tower of History can be created only under revolutionary circumstances - without a sufficient amount of plasm even the matchbox model didn't stay up. The exact same sentiment is expressed about Tatlin's Tower: "We maintain that only the full power of the multimillion strong proletarian consciousness could bring into the world the idea of this monument and its forms. The monument must be realized by the muscles of this power, because we have an ideal, living and classical expression the pure and creative form of the international union of the workers of the whole world."

Nilsen called it "the highest expression of Communist principles, a society whose literal foundation is the faith of its people."

Tatlin's Tower was a symbol of faith in the revolutionary future, the global triumph of Marxist socialism. A monument "made of iron, glass and revolution."

It was never built in real life, and neither was The Tower of History in the world of Elysium.

But you can try to see if there's enough plasm between the three of you. And the matchbox tower stays up for a long moment, quivering with an improbable energy. You believe it can say up - and it does.

So you have to believe; whether it's for collective action or generating ideological plasm. Then, together, maybe you'll be able to build as much as 0.0002% of communism.

[victusinveritas]

'There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.' V.I. Lenin.

[naxalite1967]

Some of my favorite quotes:

"While the state exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state." — Vladimir Lenin

"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror." — Karl Marx

"When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." — Dom Hélder Câmara

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." — Stephen Jay Gould

"They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?" — Fidel Castro

"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." — Mao Zedong

"Those who come with wheat, millet, corn or milk they are not helping us. Those who really want to help us can give us ploughs, tractors, fertilizer, insecticide, watering cans, drills, dams. That is how we would define food aid." — Thomas Sankara

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell." — Edward Abbey

"Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence. And it only gives in when confronted with greater violence." — Frantz Fanon

"The reason Socialism never took root in America is because the oppressed masses don't see themselves as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." — John Steinbeck

"The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth." — Che Guevara

"No altar, no belief, no holy book... have ever been able to reconcile the rich and the poor, the exploiter and the exploited. And if Jesus himself had to take the whip to chase them from his temple, it is indeed because that is the only language they hear." — James Connolly

"We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper in the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom. We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea." — Luis Felipe de la Fuente

"So I decided to become a midwife… I wanted to deliver a thousand babies. And as each one arrives, especially the little girls, I’ll be there first to whisper into her tender little ear: REBEL! REBEL!" — Emma Goldman

"All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self-justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour." — Howard Zinn

"The mine owners did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them." — Carlos Fuentes

"Without authorities and specialists, everyone would be a hundred ways wiser. Without benevolence and righteousness, people would rediscover caring, the familial bond. Without power-schemes and profiteering there'd be no thugs and thieves." — Mikhail Bakunin

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you will be filled ... But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep." — Jesus Christ (from the Gospel of Luke)

"I dream of a society where I would be guillotined as a conservative." — Mikhail Bakunin

"To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt." — Peter Kropotkin

"We Live in Capitalism, it’s power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." — Arundhati Roy

"Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before." — William S. Burroughs

"With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." — Oscar Wilde

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King Jr.

"You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere." — Ursula K. Le Guin

"Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread." — Louis Blanc

[chaosmenu]

soledad brother: the prison letters of george jackson

[katchwreck]

[marxist-lelouchist]

[troythecatfish]

[workersolidarity]

[phobic-human]

[banalityofambiguity]

“You can’t make a revolution in white gloves” people always seem completely unwilling to do literally anything they’d feel bad about in the name of their politics. Like they’re fine fantasizing about just killing everyone they don’t like, but if you ever ask them to do anything actually productive in politics they’ll whine about how unfair it is that they have to go vote for someone they don’t 100% agree with.

[stillnaomi]

There is a well-known saying that if geometrical axioms affected human interests attempts would certainly be made to refute them. Theories of natural history which conflicted with the old prejudices of theology provoked, and still provoke, the most rabid opposition. No wonder, therefore, that the Marxian doctrine, which directly serves to enlighten and organise the advanced class in modern society, indicates the tasks facing this class and demonstrates the inevitable replacement (by virtue of economic development) of the present system by a new order—no wonder that this doctrine has had to fight for every step forward in the course of its life.

Marxism and Revisionism by Lenin

[mesetacadre]

On the Slogan for a United States of Europe

In No. 40 of Sotsial-Demokrat we reported that a conference of our-Party’s groups abroad had decided to defer the question of the “United States of Europe” slogan pending a discussion, in the press, on the economic aspect of the matter.

At our conference the debate on this question assumed a purely political character. Perhaps this was partly caused by the Central Committee’s Manifesto having formulated this slogan as a forthright political one (“the immediate political slogan...”, as it says there); not only did it advance the slogan of a republican United States of Europe, but expressly emphasised that this slogan is meaningless and false “without the revolutionary overthrow of the German, Austrian and Russian monarchies”.

It would be quite wrong to object to such a presentation of the question within the limits of a political appraisal of this slogan—e.g., to argue that it obscures or weakens, etc., the slogan of a socialist revolution. Political changes of a truly democratic nature, and especially political revolutions, can under no circumstances whatsoever either obscure or weaken the slogan of a socialist revolution. On the contrary, they always bring it closer, extend its basis, and draw new sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the semi-proletarian masses into the socialist struggle. On the other hand, political revolutions are inevitable in the course of the socialist revolution, which should not be regarded as a single act, but as a period of turbulent political and economic upheavals, the most intense class struggle, civil war, revolutions, and counter-revolutions.

But while the slogan of a republican United States of Europe—if accompanied by the revolutionary overthrow of the three most reactionary monarchies in Europe, headed by the Russian—is quite invulnerable as a political slogan, there still remains the highly important question of its economic content and significance. From the standpoint of the economic conditions of imperialism—i.e., the export of capital and the division of the world by the “advanced” and “civilised” colonial powers—a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary.

Capital has become international and monopolist. The world has been carved up by a handful of Great Powers, i.e., powers successful in the great plunder and oppression of nations. The four Great Powers of Europe—Britain, France, Russia and Germany, with an aggregate population of between 250,000,000 and 300,000,000, and an area of about 7,000,000 square kilometres—possess colonies with a population of almost 500 million (494,500,000) and an area of 64,600,000 square kilometres, i.e., almost half the surface of the globe [...] Add to this the three Asian states—China, Turkey and Persia, now being rent piecemeal by thugs that are waging a war of “liberation”, namely, Japan, Russia, Britain and France. Those three Asian states, which may be called semi-colonies (in reality they are now 90 per cent colonies), have a total population of 360,000,000 and an area of 14,500,000 square kilometres (almost one and a half times the area of all Europe).

Furthermore, Britain, France and Germany have invested capital abroad to the value of no less than 70,000 million rubles. The business of securing “legitimate” profits from this tidy sum—these exceed 3,000 million rubles annually—committees of the millionaires, known as governments, which are equipped with armies and navies and which provide the sons and brothers of the millionaires with jobs in the colonies and semi-colonies as viceroys, consuls, ambassadors, officials of all kinds, clergymen, and other leeches.

That is how the plunder of about a thousand million of the earth’s population by a handful of Great Powers is organised in the epoch of the highest development of capitalism. No other organisation is possible under capitalism. Renounce colonies, “spheres of influence”, and the export of capital? To think that it is possible means coming down to the level of some snivelling parson who every Sunday preaches to the rich on the lofty principles of Christianity and advises them to give the poor, well, if not millions, at least several hundred rubles yearly.

A United States of Europe under capitalism is tantamount to an agreement on the partition of colonies. Under capitalism, however, no other basis and no other principle of division are possible except force. [...] Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, and anarchy in production. To advocate a “just” division of income on such a basis is sheer Proudhonism, stupid philistinism. No division can be effected otherwise than in “proportion to strength”, and strength changes with the course of economic development. [...] There is and there can be no other way of testing the real might of a capitalist state than by war. War does not contradict the fundamentals of private property—on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome of those fundamentals. Under capitalism the smooth economic growth of individual enterprises or individual states is impossible. Under capitalism, there are no other means of restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium than crises in industry and wars in politics.

Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America, who have been badly done out of their share by the present partition of colonies. [...] On the present economic basis, i.e., under capitalism, a United States of Europe would signify an organisation of reaction to retard America’s more rapid development. The times when the cause of democracy and socialism was associated only with Europe alone have gone for ever.

A United States of the World (not of Europe alone) is the state form of the unification and freedom of nations which we associate with socialism—about the total disappearance of the state, including the democratic. As a separate slogan, however, the slogan of a United States of the World would hardly be a correct one, first, because it merges with socialism; second, because it may be wrongly interpreted to mean that the victory of socialism in a single country is impossible, and it may also create misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to the others.

Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic, which will more and more concentrate the forces of the proletariat of a given nation or nations, in the struggle against states that have not yet gone over to socialism. The abolition of classes is impossible without a dictatorship of the oppressed class, of the proletariat. A free union of nations in socialism is impossible without a more or less prolonged and stubborn struggle of the socialist republics against the backward states.

It is for these reasons and after repeated discussions at the conference of R,S.D.L.P. groups abroad, and following that conference, that the Central Organ’s editors have come to the conclusion that the slogan for a United States of Europe is an erroneous one.

On the Slogan for a United States of Europe. V. I. Lenin, 1915

[liberashen]

“It has always been the case in history that after the death of revolutionary leaders who were popular among the oppressed classes, their enemies have attempted to appropriate their names so as to deceive the oppressed classes.”

— Lenin