Revolutionary leader

“ From the standpoint of revolutionary leaders who today face the possibility of failure, it is critical to reexamine these key assumptions of the classical theory of revolution, because it is this theory and only this theory that educates the vanguard of the proletariat and makes it capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. ”

“ The combination of theorist, organizer, and leader in one person is the rarest thing to be found on this globe; this combination makes the great man. —A revolution cannot surpass the quality of its leadership. —The most sublime theoretical insight has no value and no purpose unless the leader moves the masses towards it. —Those upon whom the revolutionary leadership falls assume an awesome responsibility. The office of the leader is experienced as a personal power, particularly if the entire magnitude of the organization is personified by the leader. ”

“ Nor will it, I trust, be deemed presumptuous on the part of a man of humble and obscure condition to attempt to discuss revolutionary leadership; for in the same way that landscape painters station themselves in the valleys in order to draw mountains or high ground, and ascend an eminence in order to get a good view of the plains, so it is necessary to be a leader to know thoroughly the nature of the people, and one of the populace to know the nature of leaders. ”

“ And it might just help to persuade other Americans that we are capable of governing. —We are now a major campaign issue and we must see ourselves accordingly. —Leadership articulates the goals of the revolution, the methods by which those goals will be attained, while at the same time embodying the ideals of the revolution itself. —What would be the meaning of all leader genius and of all leader impetus unless the brainy theorist were to establish the goals for the human struggle? ”

“ The whole of historical development consists in those theoretical abstractions which originate in the heads of all the revolutionary leaders of the age, and since it is impossible to put all these heads together and induce them to take counsel and register their votes, there must of necessity be one central head, the spearhead, in a word the speculative unity of all these heads, the leader. ”

“ The present century is a period of successful seizures of State power by revolutionary leaders. A substantial part of the world's population is experiencing the social consequences of these successes. ”

“ We can even assume that revolutionary leaders who successfully took State power into their own hands profoundly understood the necessary conditions for their success, even if they did not enrich the classical revolutionary theory with their insights. ”

“ This is why the seizure of power by revolutionary leaders must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people, upon that turning point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people Is at its height, and when the vacillations In the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. ”

“ As the organization grows, its history becomes less the history of anarchic rebellion, and more the familiar history of the party and the leader. —To coin a phrase, 'our day will come.' But it will only come when a great amount of the population see us and themselves as part of a serious alternative to existing American institutions. ”

“ The preliminary condition for the rise of revolutionary leaders is not the independence which dispenses with the need for subordination, control and managers, but the dependence which cannot dispense with them. ”

“ The conditions for the success of revolutionary organizations exist only during the brief moment after the population has expropriated the ruling classes, but when the population has not yet actively appropriated the productive forces, when the active appropriation of the productive forces has not yet conquered the mass psychology of dependence, the anxiety, the fear, the desperation which is the sign for the leader's battle-cry: Our victory is assured! ”

“ They stuck to their guns. And they pushed those guns forward through valleys and across mountains until they had carried their ideal of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” to the furthermost [373] corners of Europe and had stabled their horses in every castle and church of the entire continent.
It is easy enough for us to write that sort of sentence. The revolutionary leaders have been dead for almost one hundred and fifty years and we can poke as much fun at them as we like. We can even be grateful for the many good things which they bestowed upon this world. ”

“ To know how to distinguish the agitation arising from covetousness, from the agitation arising from principles, to fight the one and aid the other, in this lies the genius and the power of great revolutionary leaders. ”

“ The official orators of the Sesquicentennial will portray the revolutionary fathers as demigods, the revolution as a glorious vindication of the eternal rights of man, the institutions created as classless and eternal and unimprovable. ”

“ Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals of whom society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State." —This is an attempt to destroy the faith and respect which the revolutionary leadership has earned from the people. ”

“ It means the presentation of a clear alternative which can win the vast majority of the American people to our side. Part of that task is proving to them that we have a new life to offer and a new future to build. —We become increasingly the only people who have political, economic, social or human answers to the questions that are increasingly going to confront the great masses of students, the great mass of middle class and professional people, the mass of poor and working people. —The success of the revolution depends to a great degree upon the quality of the revolutionary leadership. ”

“ In my desire to offer revolutionary leaders some humble testimony of my devotion, I have been unable to find anything which I hold so dear or esteem so highly as that knowledge of the deeds of great men which I have acquired through a long experience of modern events and a constant study of the past. ”

“ If we place ourselves at the standpoint of statesmen, with all due reserves of course, what are the qualities of a king who issues from a revolution? He may be, and it is useful that he should be, revolutionary; that is to say, have played a personal part in the revolution, have become either compromised or renowned in it, and have wielded the axe or drawn the sword. What are the qualities of a dynasty? ”

“ Only a short time after the February revolution, I went to France and there I learned to know the people which, in the present century, is the foremost champion of social liberty. If this people submits at present to the iron dictatorship of kinghood, it is because the Emperor is true to his revolutionary descent, not in word alone, but also in deed. ”

“ It may happen that devoted revolutionary organizers fail to realize their goal. Aspiring revolutionary leaders may find themselves faced with a situation in which almost all of the people whose interests are served by these goals, and who should be, or even are, sympathetic to revolution, neither understand the specific tasks involved in making a revolution nor participate in achieving them. ”

“ It was here that I proposed, for the first time, and in an affirmative manner, to carry out the Revolution from below, by making an appeal to the reason and to the interest of each citizen, and by demanding of power only the notoriety and the impulse which it alone, today, is capable of giving to an idea. ”

“ This means radical leadership and politics no matter how small the beginning. Some can relate to that, and those are the people with whom we will be working. —The problem is how to engage in a struggle around reforms in such a way as to develop revolutionary class consciousness. —Surely, one does not make a revolution without offending people. ”

“ It was the ancient régime contending against a revolutionary uprising, and in poetry, as in politics, the leaders of revolution are sure to be excessive, to force their notes, to frighten their elders, and to scandalise the conservative mind. ”

“ Owing to the absence of political privilege and the comparative uniformity of social conditions, we do not as yet see any party, of sufficient importance to be taken into account, to which the term revolutionary could be applied. ”

“ These are the naïve words of a young man of thirty-seven, the youngest member of the ill-fated revolutionary government of France in 1848. Not every one thought that the revolution could be peacefully accomplished, and, it must be admitted, few seemed to care. ”

“ You need a correct analysis. —There is a role for leadership, for those best able to foresee the course of events, to articulate the general principles of a movement. —The task of building a revolutionary alternative in the heart of the empire is not an easy one. ”

“ The Revolution has come and destroyed scores of superstitions, and has manifested the power of the program which is founded on the revolutionary logic of the development of the masses.
The Revolution has come, and the period of our political infancy has passed. ”

“ We now arrive at the epoch when he developed the whole force of his genius, and acquired immortality, as the great leader of a revolution which, at its first outbreak, commanded the sympathy and respect of the world which looked on; beholding with gladness and hope the overthrow of feudal abuses, and the restoration of the oppressed majority of the French nation to the rights of men and citizens. ”

“ Whatever the character, however, of the people's success, it could not but be an additional success for their leader. The revolution, of which he stood recognized the unquestioned head, was now beyond all danger of royal aggression, except by his own treacherous agency. ”

“ This is the constant and dreadful alternative in which a Revolutionary Government is placed, and which has so uniformly led in past history to what is called a departure from the principles of freedom by its successful leaders. ”

“ At the outset of any movement which, whatever may be its form, is in its essence revolutionary, and only to be justified on grounds that justify a revolution, the leaders, though loud in declamation about the wrongs to be remedied, always hesitate to speak in plain terms concerning the remedies which they really have in mind. ”

“ For years past, the discussion has been going on, among groups which call themselves revolutionary, as to the proper tactics for accomplishing the Revolution; whether the Revolution could be accomplished peacefully or of necessity would have to be brought about by bloodshed, whether the political ballot backed by an adequate industrial force was sufficient to accomplish the Revolution ”

“ The revolutionary impetus is now so strong, the affairs of the pretender or chief of the insurrection in so prosperous a condition, that the success of his cause has nothing to fear from the loss of a battle. ”

“ In the name of the Revolutionary Government I order all regiments to take the offensive against the enemies of the revolutionary democracy, and to take all measures to arrest Kerensky, and also to oppose any adventure which might menace the conquests of the Revolution and the victory of the proletariat. ”

“ The revolutionary character of this period, then, pertains principally to the rapid movement of public opinion, and its action upon and through the Government. It finds its parallel in nearly every revolutionary event of modern times. A dominant power, the slaveholding aristocracy, long submitted to, attempts a glaring encroachment upon the rights of the most active and progressive element of society. The popular mind gradually rises to a clear perception and appreciation of the true nature of the conflict. ”

“ The attempt of individuals to live at the contemporary level of development of the productive forces does not give rise to activities consistent with the quintessence of revolutionary political practice, namely to revolutionary organizations, ideology, leadership and the struggle for State power. ”

“ As to the duty of the educated leaders in the matter of suppressing the growth of the revolutionary movement in future, we beg to point out that all depends on how much faith the governing classes place in the professions of the popular leaders. ”

“ Run radical candidates in the elections? Turn the hippies into Provos? The answer to all these questions is 'Yes' (No little doubt remains that America needs to be fundamentally changed.) We need to move from protest to resistance; to dig in for the long haul; to become full-time, radical, sustained, relevant. In short, we need to make a revolution. ”