Nikola Tesla: Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4725
Ho Chi Minh: In the old society, the feudal landlords, capitalists and imperialists mercilessly oppressed and exploited the other social strata, especially the workers and peasants. They plundered the common property produced by society, turned into their own private property and lived in clover. But they kept ranting about "virtue", "freedom", "democracy"... Refusing to endure this oppression and exploitation for ever, the workers, peasants and other toiling people have risen up and made the revolution in order to liberate themselves and transform the wicked old society into a fine new one, in which all labouring people would like happily, and from which the exploitation of man by man would be banned. To succeed, the revolution must be led by the working class - the most advanced, conscious, resolute, disciplined and best organized class - with the proletarian party as its staff. This has been incontestably borne out by the revolution in the Soviet Union and in the other socialist countries. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4726
Assata Shakur: Everything is a lie in amerika, and the thing that keeps it going is that so many people believe the lie. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4727
Simon Linguet: It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him…He is free, you say. Ah!…What does it mean? They have no master—they have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence…They become the valets of anyone who has money…They live only by hiring out their arms. They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free? The ‘independence’ (of the wage-worker) is one of the most baneful scourges that the refinement of modern times has produced. It augments the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4728
Stalin: Imperialism is the omnipotence of monopolistic trusts and syndicates, banks and financial oligarchies in industrial countries. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4729
Lenin: Social chauvinists are our class opponents, the bourgeois among the working-class movement. They represent a stratum, groups, and layers of workers who have been objectively bribed by the bourgeoisie (the best wages, places of honor, etc.) and who help their bourgeoisie to plunder and strangle small and weak peoples, to fight over the division of capitalist spoils. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4730
Stalin: The inevitable result of the imperialist policy of masked intervention will be that it will draw the “small” nations into the sphere of the revolution and extend the base of socialism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4731
Lenin: Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4732
John Bright: Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was taken and retained when we were not at war with Spain, and it was retained contrary to every law of morality and honour. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4733
James Riddle Hoffa: Too often, the younger generation of workers forgets the bitter hardships and struggles of those who went before them to build the conditions they enjoy today. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4734
Mother Jones: I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4735
William S. Burroughs: What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4736
William Z. Foster: Fascist apologists brazenly lie when they say that Hitler (or Mussolini) has abolished mass unemployment and in- dustrial crises. The fascists have only temporarily obscured these in- curable diseases of capitalism by their present wholesale production of munitions and the gearing of the nation’s whole economy to the waging of war. Only by carrying on the horrible trade of organized mass slaughter can the Nazis keep their industries going, even for the time being. This is true also of American and British capitalism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4737
William Z. Foster: Fascism teaches young people to die and drives them into mass slaughter; socialism shows them the way to live and provides them the means for so doing. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4738
William Z. Foster: As the world capitalist system, caught in the meshes of its own incurable crisis, strangles and smothers, so also its culture withers and dies. Under fascist regimes, which arose where the capitalist crisis reached a very acute stage, the decay of capitalist culture is the most pronounced. In fascist Germany education is decadent, sci- ence is in decline, and the arts are stultified. The whole educational apparatus – universities, colleges, schools, etc. – has been drasti- cally curtailed. The only science the fascists are interested in is that which advances their war technique, and the same tendency is growing in all other capitalist states. The Nazis have a supreme con- tempt for the popular mind. All they seek is the most effective means to deceive the people into obeying their autocratic com- mands. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4739
William Z. Foster: Capitalism, especially in its fascist aspects, corrodes and destroys human per- sonality; socialism develops personality to its utmost. In the Soviet Union there is literally a new type of man in the making, not only in the economic and political sense, but also with regard to his physi- cal, mental and individual characteristics. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4740
William Z. Foster: For the capitalists the way out of the crisis is by forcing great masses of unemployed into semistarvation, driving down the wage levels of the employed, waging desperate imperialist war, and instituting a regime of Fascist terrorism. This is the way the whole capitalist world development goes. For the workers, the capitalist way out means deeper enslavement and poverty than ever. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4741
William Z. Foster: The capitalists will never voluntarily give up control of society and abdicate their system of exploiting the masses. Regardless of the devastating effects of their decaying capitalism; let there be famine, war, pestilence, terrorism, they will hang on to their wealth and power until it is snatched from their hands by the revolutionary proletariat. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4742
William Z. Foster: The capitalists will not give up of their own accord; nor can they be talked, bought or voted out of power. To believe otherwise would be a deadly fatalism, disarming and paralyzing the workers in their struggle. No ruling class ever surrendered to a rising subject class without a last ditch open fight. To put an end to the capitalist system will require a consciously revolutionary act by the great toiling masses, led by the Communist party; that is, the conquest of the State power, the destruction of the State machine created by the ruling class, and the organization of the proletarian dictatorship. The lessons of history allow of no other conclusion. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4743
William Z. Foster: The Social Fascists make a great parade of their theory of the “gradual” evolution of capitalism into Socialism through a process of peaceful parliamentarism. Thus Mr. Hilquit, the millionaire leader of the Socialist party says: “In the more democratic countries, especially those in which the Socialist and labor movements constitute important political and social factors, the necessary transitional reforms, or at least a large part of them, may be gradually conquered through the direct control by the proletariat of important organs of the State, such as municipalities or legislatures, or through the indirect influence of the growing labor movement.”1 Mr. Hillquit, like Social Fascists generally, goes on to say that the present imperialist government is actually the “Socialist transitional State, although it would be impossible for us to say just when we entered it”. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4744
William Z. Foster: This Social Fascist theory of “gradualness” is the most insidious that the workers have to deal with. But there are many others, if less important, that tend in a similar direction. Among these are the “folded-arm” general strike conception of the Syndicalists; the sectarian scholasticism of the Socialist Labor party and the Proletarian party; the petty bourgeois Anarchist theories of individual violence; Gandhi’s non-cooperation, non-violence program; the capitalistic Utopias of Carver, Gillette and others for the workers directly to buy out the capitalist industries (expressed in their books respectively, The Present Economic Revolution in the United States and The People’s Corporation); the fatalism of Veblen who, in The Price System and the Engineers, maintains that capitalism will eventually, through the working of its inner contradictions, get into such a chronic and devastating crisis that in desperation society will spontaneously call upon the engineers to take over the operation of the industries and the government. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4745
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William Z. Foster: The question of the revolution is not merely one of a ripe objective situation. Such is, of course, a first requisite for the revolution. But the subjective factor is no less decisive. Capitalism will not grow into Socialism. The great masses of toilers must be in a revolutionary mood; they must have the necessary organization and revolutionary program; they must smash capitalism. This all means that they must be under the general leadership of the only revolutionary party, the Communist party. The real measure of a revolutionary situation in any given country is the strength of the Communist party. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4746
William Z. Foster: Capitalism established itself as a world system by force. It defeated feudalism and laid the basis of its own power in a whole series of revolutionary civil wars in England, the United States, France, etc. Moreover, it has lived by violence, its regime being marked by the most terrible exploitation and devastating wars in human history. And capitalism will die sword in hand, fighting in vain to beat back the oncoming revolutionary proletariat. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4747
William Z. Foster: The Social Fascists try to create the legend that the difference between them and the Communists is that while they fight for immediate demands, the Communists confine themselves simply to ultimate aims. This is not so. The difference is that while the Communists fight for the immediate demands as well as the final goal, the Social Fascists betray both. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4748
William Z. Foster: A cornerstone of the Communist class struggle policy is a ruthless fight against the Social Fascist leaders, especially those of the “left,” phrasemongering type. “Class Against Class” implies a war to the finish against such elements, who are part of the oppressive machinery of the capitalist class. They are enemies within the gates of the working class and must be treated as such. They head the labor movement only in order to behead it. They are a menace and an obstacle to all struggle by the workers. With their prestige as labor leaders, their demagogy is especially demoralizing; with their control of the workers’ mass organizations, they are able to effectively sabotage the struggle. It is idle to try to “convince” the Social Fascist leaders or to “force them to fight by mass pressure,” because they are class enemies of the workers. They must be politically obliterated. To accomplish this is a first condition for successful working class struggle and it is one never lost sight of by the Communist party. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4749
William Z. Foster: It is characteristic that the Social Fascist and Fascist leaders of the Socialist party and A.F. of L., together with many liberals, are advocates of capitalist “planning.” They try to prove that the revolution is not necessary for an ordered economy and prosperity for the workers. As agents of finance capitalism, these elements always manage to find “progress” in every new step that the capitalists find necessary for the exploitation of the workers. The A.F. of L. leaders’ demand now for “planning” and the abrogation of the antitrust laws is just as much in the service of the employers as their support of the tariff, the rationalization of industry, the present wage-cut drive, etc. But these capitalistic economic “plans” must and do fail. They are wrecked on the same reefs as the trusts and cartels: viz., the inability of capitalism, whether “planned” or not, to sell its commodities in a market that lacks the wherewithal to buy them; and the hopelessly competitive character of the capitalist system. Capitalism “cannot eat its cake and have it.” “Planned” capitalist economy cannot bridge over the basic economic and political contradictions of capitalism. It is as fruitless as capitalist “efforts” to end war. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4750
William Z. Foster: The theory of organized capitalism is found best developed in Hilferding’s and Kautsky’s conception of super-imperialism, and it is a foundation premise of Social Fascism in general. Kautsky and other Social Fascist theoreticians hold that the process of capitalist trustification is overcoming and will continue to overcome the contradictions of capitalism. That is, eventually trustification will become world-wide, thus at once liquidating the economic crisis, abolishing the class struggle, and dissolving the war conflicts between the rival imperialist nations into an organized and monopolized world system of production and distribution. Meanwhile, as this develops, capitalism will at the same time, by a process of purchase by the ever-more democratic State, be gradually turned into a system of Socialism. This is the theory of the peaceful evolution of capitalism into Socialism. But this whole theory of organized capitalism goes contrary to the most basic development of capitalism. The capitalist system cannot be “organized”; it is fundamentally competitive and chaotic. An ordered, balanced social system is incompatible with the private ownership of the industries and land and with production for profit. Monopolization, instead of diminishing the contradictions of the capitalist system, is increasing and deepening them. While trustification undoubtedly brings a modicum of regulation and system within the confines of its direct organization, it at the same time, aggravates the conflicts within capitalism as a whole. With the development of monopolization, in this period of imperialism, of the decline of capitalism and of the rise of Socialism, the collisions increase in severity between trusts and untrustified industry, between the trusts themselves, between industries as such, between the various imperialist nations, between the producers and the exploiters, and between the decaying capitalist system and the advancing Soviet Union. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4751
William Z. Foster: But the development of the general crisis of capitalism has changed the complexion though not the basic role of the Social Reformistic “lieutenants of capital.” The employers, trying to find a way out of their difficulties and to preserve their profits at the expense of the workers, intensify their wage-cut drive, reduction of unemployment benefits, etc.; not even the skilled workers, although they are partly shielded, escaping the rapid downward trend. The old system of concessions to the skilled workers, the basis of Social Reformism, becomes increasingly narrowed down and is succeeded by more direct and rigorous methods of repression. Adapting themselves to the needs of the employers, the reformist Socialist and trade union leaders have developed their movement into an organ of the bosses for the Fascist repression and intensified exploitation of the working class. They have practically grafted the Social Democracy and the conservative unions onto the capitalist State and the employers’ exploitation machinery. They devote to capitalism their long-established prestige as workers’ leaders, their strong organizational control over the masses, and their unquestioned demagogic skill in covering up their services to capitalism with pleas that it is all necessary in the building of Socialism. Where necessary they do not hesitate to use open violence against the revolutionary toilers. The policy of the Social Democracy is basically that of Fascism; the beating back of the proletarian revolution, the saving of capitalism and the profits of the employers at the expense of the workers. The principal difference is that Social Democracy hides its Fascism under a mask of Marxian Socialism. Thus, in the period of the decline of capitalism, Social Reformism becomes Social Fascism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4752
William Z. Foster: The practice of the Socialist parties and trade unions conforms to this Fascist theoretical degeneration. There have been no demands made upon them by capitalism in crisis which they have not obeyed. When the capitalists of the various countries called upon them to organize the great World War they responded by identifying everywhere their interests with those of their national bourgeoisie and by mobilizing the workers for the slaughter. And ever since they have worked with their capitalist masters to help them prepare the next war. In Great Britain the MacDonald “Socialist” government maintained intact the great war machine of British imperialism; in Germany the Social Fascists voted for the rebuilding of the German navy; in France they prepared the infamous universal military service law now in force; in Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and many other countries they vote the war budgets. Everywhere they are the special decoy ducks of capitalist pacifism, the shield of imperialist war. In the war plans of the capitalist nations against the Soviet Union the Social Democrats play a leading role. They scoff at the danger of capitalist war against the Soviet Union and thus disarm the workers’ defense; they make the capitalist war appear as a fight against autocracy in the U.S.S.R. The Social Fascists hate the Soviet Union because they see in it the living refutation of their whole policy, a menacing threat to the capitalist system of which they are the most profound theoretical and practical defenders. They have never hesitated, (in Georgia and elsewhere), to take up arms against the Soviet Union. The exposures in the recent political trials in Moscow showed that the Second International is working hand-in-glove with the French imperialists in preparing armed intervention against the U.S.S.R. As a recent resolution of the Communist International says: “The Social Democracy has turned itself into a shock-brigade of world imperialism which is preparing for war against the U.S.S.R.”. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4753
William Z. Foster: The special task of the Social Fascists is to discredit the Soviet Union among the workers. As we have seen, they are the most skilled in building up arguments against the Soviet Union, covering their sophistries with a cloak of pseudo-Marxism. They take up every capitalist anti- Soviet lie and assiduously propagate it among the workers. These they alternate with hypocritical pretensions of friendship, knowing that the masses are sympathetic to the U.S.S.R. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4754
William Z. Foster: In the great revolutionary upheavals following the World War the Social Fascists saved European capitalism. In Italy they betrayed the revolution into the hands of Mussolini. In Germany, in their efforts to preserve the capitalist system, they shot down thousands of revolutionary workers. All this was done in the name of fighting for Socialism. The MacDonald “Socialist” government simply displayed its true Social Fascist character by shooting and jailing thousands of revolutionary workers and peasants in India. The Social Fascists were the main force in the speed-up, rationalization movement, their real leader being Henry Ford, not Karl Marx. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4755
William Z. Foster: Now again, when capitalism is trying to find a way out of its deep crisis by reducing the standards of the workers, its main allies are the Social Fascists. The world Social Democracy is not better than a strike-breaking, wage-cutting, dole-slashing tool of the employers. In every capitalist country the Social Fascists are cooperating closely with the capitalists, accepting as their working principle that in the crisis the workers’ living conditions must come down. In the United States J. P. Morgan speaks over the radio for the starvation, “block-aid” system, and so does Norman Thomas. In Great Britain, with the aid of the Labor government, the bosses have deeply cut the wages in every industry, besides making sharp reductions in the State unemployment insurance. In Germany the Bruening and other capitalist governments, all the while receiving the active support of the Social Democratic party, have cut the wages of the workers and the benefits of the jobless to starvation levels. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4756