Leninism

“ He considered it the best means to pursue a clear revolutionary policy and, in this sense, he developed his activities in the Communist International. Lenin was, for the Third International, what Marx was for the First. The revolutionary workers of all countries have still a lot to learn from Lenin's works, particularly from his actions, because Leninism and Communism are one and the same thing. ”

“ Marxism-Leninism - an expanded form of communism developed by Lenin from doctrines of Karl Marx; Lenin saw imperialism as the final stage of capitalism and shifted the focus of workers' struggle from developed to underdeveloped countries. ”

“ If we are not anarchists, we must admit the necessity of a state; that is, of compulsion, for the transition from capitalism to Socialism. The form of compulsion is determined by the degree of development of the particular revolutionary class, then by such special circumstances as, for instance, the heritage of a long and reactionary war, and then by the forms of resistance of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. There is therefore absolutely no contradiction in principle between the Soviet (Socialist) democracy and the use of dictatorial power of individuals. ”

“ Now this Republic proclaims that the Soviets are organisations of the proletarians and the poor peasants. The well-to-do peasants are deprived of the suffrage in the elections to the Soviets. The poor peasant is here recognised to be a permanent and mass product of the socialist agrarian reform under the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ ” (p. 48) .
What deadly irony! It is the kind that may be heard in Russia from any bourgeois: they all jeer and gloat over the fact that the Soviet Republic openly admits the existence of poor peasants. They ridicule socialism. ”

“ They will find their way into the Soviets, and into the courts of law, and into every sphere of administration, as it is impossible to build up Communism otherwise than out of the human material created by capitalism. Since it is impossible to expel and to destroy the bourgeois intelligentsia, it becomes indispensable to conquer this intelligentsia, to change, to re-train and to re-educate it, just as it is necessary to re-educate, in the process of a long struggle, the proletariat itself, on the basis of proletarian dictatorship. ”

“ Lenin possessed clarity of vision and an iron will. He knew how to make his comrades in Russia and outside of it believe that his scheme was true Socialism and his methods the revolution. No wonder that Lenin felt such contempt for his flock, which he never hesitated to fling into their faces. “Only fools can believe that Communism is possible in Russia now,” was Lenin’s reply to the opponents of the new economic policy. ”

“ The soviet organization of the state is designed to place the leadership of the state in the hands of the proletariat as the class which has undergone the greatest concentration and enlightenment under Capitalism. The experiences of all revolutions and of all movements of enslaved classes, the experiences of the international Socialist movement teach that only the proletariat is capable of carrying along and uniting the scattered and backward levels of the working and exploited population. ”

“ He knew how to unite around himself large masses of human beings, to draw them into a mass movement, and to lead them into struggles. He always stood at the central point of the class struggle. He was charged with energy, with faith, with absolute conviction, transmitting all this not only to those who stood close to him but also to hundreds of thousands and to millions. The international reformists speak of Lenin as the destroyer of socialism, a sectarian, an intolerant spirit, and so forth. Yes, we will admit that Lenin was the destroyer of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties. ”

“ The experience of our revolution shows with blinding evidence that such a state of affairs would bring the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks to an even feebler condition. They would become more and more separated from the masses, whose indignation and fury would retaliate and whose sympathies for the revolutionary party the Bolsheviks would considerably increase. The proletariat in the capital would be nearer related than at present to the Commune, to the workers' insurrection, the conquest of power, and to civil war in its most definite and decisive form. ”

“ In the constant development of our movement, in the constant growth of the Communist ideas and Communist Parties, in the extended influence of the Communist International and the Red International of Labor Unions, in the internationalization of our methods of struggle and in the elasticity of our revolutionary tactics, in the growing international unity between the various sections of the revolutionary proletariat—in all this we can see the firm hand and the great genius of Lenin. He stands out in the history of the international labor movement as one of its foremost and greatest leaders. ”

“ But in the time of revolution, when political life reaches, one may say, the boiling point, an organization like the Soviets, which embraces all workers, all industries, and ultimately also all soldiers, and the entire laboring and poor population of the villages, must inevitably, in the course of the struggle, and by the mere logic of attack and defence, bring the questions of power to a direct issue. All attempts to take up a middle position and to "reconcile" the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, appear then as acts of imbecility and prove a miserable failure. ”

“ Lenin strove for a democratic republic managed by soviets of workers, soldiers, and peasant deputies. He demanded the immediate convocation of the Constituent Assembly, speedy general peace, no indemnities and no annexations, and the abolition of secret treaties. His program included the return of the land to the peasant population according to need and actual working ability, control of industries by the proletariat, the formation of an International in every land for the complete abolition of the existing governments and capitalism, and the establishment of human solidarity and brotherhood. ”

“ Our S.R.'s and our Mensheviks have taken up a reactionary position by keeping the peasants under bourgeois influence, by making them enter into an alliance with the bourgeoisie and by preventing them from uniting with the proletariat.
The experience of revolution rapidly teaches the masses. The reactionary policy of the S.R.'s and the Mensheviks is bankrupt: they have been beaten in the soviets of the two capitals. The opposition of the "Left" increases steadily within the two democratic, petit-bourgeois parties. ”

“ Historic conditions have made the Russian workers, perhaps for a short period, the leaders of the international proletariat, but Socialism cannot now prevail in Russia. We can expect only an agrarian revolution, which will help to create more favorable conditions for further proletarian development. The main result of the present Revolution will have to be the creation of forces for more revolutionary activity, and to influence the more highly-developed European countries into action. ”

“ Such, and such only, must be the understanding of the statesman who is not afraid of the truth, and who wishes sanely to balance and evaluate the social forces that are aligned in the revolution at any given moment. This is necessary not only from the standpoint of the present peculiarities of these forces, but also from the standpoint of their more fundamental bearings, the deeper juxtaposition of the interests of proletariat and bourgeoisie, in Russia and throughout the world. ”

“ Lenin was the founder of a great party, the Communist Party of Russia. He was the leader of the first successful proletarian revolution. He was for over six years the head of the first Workers' and Peasants' Government in the world. He was also the founder and recognized leader of the Communist International. For us, working class militants in the cause of labor, there is a world to learn from the experiences of Lenin as to how to educate, organize and arouse the masses to action against their capitalist exploiters. ”

“ If we have succeeded in the village itself in awakening class-consciousness amongst the labouring peasantry; if, by the very agency of the Capitalist revolts, its interests have been separated from those of the Capitalist class; if the labouring peasants, in their committees of the poor and their reconstructed Soviets, are becoming more and more closely united with the workers of the towns—then we have the only, the truest, the best pledge that the work of Socialist reconstruction in Russia has been put at last on a firm footing. ”

“ They represented that conservative middle class which in previous revolutions had always acted against and betrayed the proletariat. The interests of this class of peasants moved within the orbit of the bourgeois regime of property, and its representatives acted accordingly. In the normal times of peaces the well-to-do, bourgeois-aspiring peasants first awoke to political consciousness, constituted the real force in the Social-Revolutionary Party, and imparted to the party its petty bourgeois ideology. ”

“ Therein—and not in any mere academic interest such as history can never have for a class in bondage or struggling for power-lies the historical significance to the workers of all Lenin's writings, and this applies in a very special way to On the Road to Insurrection, for there exists no other complete or comparable work of day-to-day studies of the practical strategical problems of an immediately imminent proletarian revolution; and without such understanding as is here found of the actual struggle for power no Marxism or Socialism is genuine. ”

“ His tactics were always elastic, which enabled him to utilize even the slightest mistake of his opponent in order to drive a wedge into the ranks of the enemy. He never shunned responsibility, especially in decisive moments of struggle. He always knew what he wanted. The most characteristic feature of the political and moral physiognomy of Lenin, this gigantic concentration of the will of the proletariat, were his extraordinary will power and his all-inclusive spirit. ”

“ The Party of Lenin is the power of the people, It leads us to the triumph of Communism. In the victory of the immortal ideas of Communism We see the future of our country, And to the Red banner of our glorious Fatherland We shall always be selflessly true. Glory to our free Fatherland, The stronghold of the friendship of the peoples! The Party of Lenin is the power of the people, It leads us to the triumph of Communism. ”

“ His heart and his mind wished to direct it toward the crimson portals of socialism. Russia, however, in its stampede seems to have slowed up dangerously near the old, familiar gates of capitalism. Nevertheless, she will never be the same; Lenin is responsible for it that Russia has forever gained the larger fruits of the revolution.
Legends spring up around every famous man, manufactured largely by his enemies, who spread tales of his lavish extravagance, his vices, his affairs with women. ”

“ Against the traditional Socialist view that class distinctions must be wiped out and the class war ended by the victorious proletariat, Lenine proposed to make the class division more rigid and enduring. He proposed to give the sole control of Russia into the hands of not more than two hundred thousand workers in a land of one hundred and eighty millions of people, more than one hundred and thirty-five millions of whom were peasants! ”

“ But they who always had preached Socialism now shelve Socialism as a problem of the future, conceiving Socialism as an abstract problem of the days to come instead of as a dynamic theory of immediate revolutionary struggle. The Revolution was a proletarian revolution in fact—this was the great circumstance. Where revolutions do not act immediately and aggressively, particularly the proletarian revolution, reaction appears and controls the situation; and the formerly revolutionary representatives of the masses accept and strengthen this reaction. ”

“ This transition is characterized by the maximum of "legality" (Russia now is the freest of all the belligerent nations of the world) , by the absence of violence of the masses, and, finally, by the masses' trustful, unconscious attitude towards the government of capitalists, the worst enemies of peace and Socialism.
This peculiarity demands of us the ability to adapt ourselves to certain conditions of partisan work among the broad masses of the proletariat, who have only now awakened to political life. ”

“ We, indeed, have lost hundreds of Left Social-Revolutionaries, hundreds of spineless intellectuals, hundreds of village vultures, but we have gained millions of the poorer peasantry. [1] One year after the proletarian revolution in the capitals the turn came, under its influence and with its assistance, of the proletarian revolution in the country-side, which finally consolidated the power of the Soviets and Bolshevism, and finally proved that the latter had no longer to fear any hostile power in the interior. ”

“ The bourgeois revolution was crowned with success, inasmuch as Russia became a democratic republic with a government consisting of Cadets, Mensheviki and Social-Revolutionists. But, in the course of three years the war has driven us thirty years ahead, has made compulsory military service universal in Europe, has led to a forced monopolization of industry and brought the most developed nations to hunger and unparalleled destruction, forcing them to take definite steps toward Socialism. ”

“ The liberal representatives of the bourgeoisie were preparing a palace revolt, the "reformation" of Czarism, by means of which the Czar would recognize the right to power and rule of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois liberals did not want to overthrow the monarchy, but to bend the monarchy to their will,—as the imperialistic bourgeoisie did in Germany. They did not want a revolution, being afraid that in that event the proletariat might seize power—and how prophetic was their fear! ”