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Karl
Marx |
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 "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various
ways; the point, however, is to change it."
Marx, Theses
on Feuerbach, 1845
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs."
Marx, Critique of
the Gotha Programme, 1875
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles."
Marx &
Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"Social reforms are never carried by the weakness of the
strong, but always by the strength of the weak."
Engels, The
Free Trade Congress at Brussels, Sept. 1847
"Practice without theory is blind. Theory without practice is
sterile. Theory becomes a material force as soon as it is absorbed by the
masses."
Engels,
Letter to F.A. Sorge, London, Nov.29, 1886
"Without revolutionary theory, there can be no
revolutionary movement."
Lenin, What
Is To Be Done?, 1902
"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is
true."
Lenin,
Three Sources & Three Component Parts of Marxism, March 1913
"Socialism
is the embodiment of a society whose international role will be peace, because
its national ruler will be everywhere the same - labor!"
Marx, Civil War in France, 1870-71
"Democracy
means equality."
Lenin,
The State & Revolution, 1917, Democracy Under Socialism
"So long as the state exists there is no
freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state."
Lenin, The State & Revolution,1917
"I must say that the tasks of the youth in general, and of the
Young Communist League and all other organizations in particular, may be summed
up in one word: Learn."
Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth
Leagues, Oct. 2, 1920
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to
win."
"WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!"
Marx
& Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
1.
The
Communists and the Communist Party
This section deals with the necessity
of a special role for Communists and a Communist Party, according to Marx and
Engels in "The Communist Manifesto" and Lenin in "What Is To Be
Done." Democratic centralism and the principles of organization are
discussed by Lenin, as well as factionalism and inner Party democracy.
"The
Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement
of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the
present, they also represent and take care of the future of that
movement..."
Marx
& Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"Working-class
consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are
trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no
matter what class is affected - unless they are trained, moreover, to respond
from a Social-Democratic point of view and no other. The consciousness of the
working masses cannot be genuine class- consciousness, unless the workers learn,
from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe
every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical,
and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist
analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of
all classes, strata, and groups of the population."
Lenin,
What Is To Be Done? Feb. 1902
more
2.
Theory
of the Struggle for Progress and Socialism
The quotations in this section deal
with the subjective side, human activity, the theory of socialist revolution,
what policies, activities, issues of struggle, forms of struggle and
organizations are required to win progress and socialism. Such policies are
treated as needing to be "scientifically based and artfully applied."
"It
is not enough to be a revolutionary and an adherent of socialism or a Communist
in general. You must be able at each particular moment to find the particular
link in the chain which you must grasp with all your might in order to hold the
whole chain and to prepare firmly for the transition to the next link; the order
of the links, their form, the manner in which they are linked together, the way
they differ from each other in the historical chain of events, are not as simple
and not as meaningless as those in an ordinary chain made by a smith."
Lenin,
The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, April 1918
more
3.
The Socialist and Communist Stage of Social
Development
Marx and Engels discuss why
capitalism leads to socialism and how socialism resolves the contradictions of
capitalism. They also distinguish between utopian and scientific socialism and
discuss the distinction between the first socialist transitional phase and the
communist phase itself.
"...the
first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat
to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy."
Marx
& Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"In
a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the
individual to the division of labour and therewith also the antithesis between
mental and physical labor has vanished; after labour has become not only a means
of life but life's prize want; after the productive forces have also increased
with the all-round development of the individual and all the springs of
co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of
bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
"Between
capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary
transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a
political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the
revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
Marx, Critique of
the Gotha Programme, 1875
"All
nations will arrive at socialism - this is inevitable, but all will do so in not
exactly the same way. Each will contribute something of its own to some form of
democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the
varying rate of socialist transformation in the different aspects of social
life."
Lenin,
A Caricature of Marxism & Imperialist Economism Aug.-Oct. 1916
more
4.
Peace,
War and Internationalism
Given the nature of weaponry today,
the struggle for peace is one of the most important, one of the struggles
through which tactics brings to life a strategic policy.
"...the union of the working classes of the different countries must
ultimately make international wars impossible."
Marx,
Speech on the Attitude of the IWA to the Congress of the League of Peace &
Freedom, at the General Council of the International Workingmen' Association
(IWA), Aug. 17, 1867
"An
end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence -
such is our ideal..."
Lenin,
The Question of Peace, July-Aug. 1915
"Disarmament
is the ideal of socialism".
Lenin, The"Disarmament" Slogan, Oct. 1916
"Capital
is an international force. To vanquish it, an international workers' alliance,
an international workers' brotherhood, is needed. We are opposed to national
enmity and discord, to national exclusiveness. We are internationalists."
Lenin,
Letter to the Workers & Peasants of Ukraine Appropo of the Victories over
Denikin, Dec. 28, 1919 more
5.
Democracy and the State
This section begins with Engels and
Lenin discussing the role of the state and democracy, as a form of the state and
its class characteristics. Lenin then discusses the importance of democracy and
the fight for it under capitalism. A class approach to freedom, equality and
democracy is discussed. There follows a discussion of democracy under socialism,
the initial advances in democracy, problems of its implementation and Lenin's
attitude toward solving those problems.
"Democracy
means equality. The great significance of the proletariat's struggle for
equality and of equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it
as meaning the abolition of classes. But democracy means only formal equality.
And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to
ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labor and wages,
humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing farther,
from formal equality to actual equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule
'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' ."
Lenin,
The State & Revolution, 1917, Democracy Under Socialism
more
Source: Classic
Selections
by CPUSA
Education Department,
Nov , 2002
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