World revolution

“ The theme throughout was plain: the world revolution is coming, by inescapable economic laws discovered by our theory. The world revolution, which will come, will remove the owning classes from control of the productive capital, and will put all capital in the hands of the workers. ”

“ To revolution, then, or to the compact federation which can alone pave the way for revolution, the Manifesto incites the sufferers of the world with the historic phrase: "Workers of the world, unite." ”

“ Its influence has been, and continues to be, planet-wide. Consciously or unconsciously, human beings have been brought into contact with influences that are transforming them as they revolutionize human society.
Western man and his way of life have been primarily responsible for this great revolution. The changes brought about in the human life pattern in the course of the great revolution have created a new world--in structure, in function, in outlook, in stepped-up capacity for even more spectacular changes in the future. ”

“ The revolution then of the great year of the world is that space of time in which, through the most diverse customs and effects, and by the most opposite and contrary means, it returns to the same again. ”

“ Reaction against western civilization went beyond revolt to include the rejection of the obsolete concepts, forms and practices inherent in civilization. Rejection has been accompanied and followed by proposals for replacing civilization by concepts, forms and practices more in keeping with the social relations and situations resulting from the current world revolution. ”

“ It is time that the form of government should, if possible, be settled, and the political revolution brought to a close; the prolongation of the struggle, with all the appeals to passion and other sinister motives which it involves, is seriously affecting character and collecting difficulties round the government of the future, while a deeper and more momentous revolution, in the religious and social sphere, threatens the stability of civilization, and demands with increasing urgency the attention of the world. ”

“ Look over the history of the world, and you will find that every great reformatory movement in society, every revolution in favor of popular rights, every sudden onward stride in the progress of civilization, has had to pass through two distinct periods — first, the struggle for its achievement, and then the struggle for the preservation of its results; the first, the period of action; the second, the period of reaction.
When the struggles of the first period are over, and the victory seems decided, the discomfited forces of society gradually wake up from the torpor of their defeat ”

“ There is only needed an education of the people into the principles of free government “of the people, for the people, and by the people” to complete the most remarkable political revolution the world has yet known. ”

“ It is for this great organic change, this world-wide social revolution, that the Socialists of all countries are organizing, that it may be intelligently guided, and come, if possible, in peace and order when the people and conditions have been prepared for it. ”

“ "THE times that tried men's souls,"* are over- and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished. ”

“ The causes of revolutions lie mostly in the power of transforming the surrounding conditions, e.g., that by which man can alter the relation of the world-forces with one another and bring about new international arrangements. It is such creations of circumstances and new conditions in the environment that are really responsible for the diversity of national fortunes during the same age, e.g., industrial revolution in one country but political decadence in another, or religious propagandism among one people and literary enthusiasm among another ”

“ For, to speak plainly, this change from the conditions of the older world seems to me far greater and more important than all the other changes you have told me about as to crime, politics, property, marriage.”
“You are right there,” said he. “Indeed, you may say rather that it is this change which makes all the others possible. What is the object of Revolution? Surely to make people happy. Revolution having brought its foredoomed change about, how can you prevent the counter-revolution from setting in except by making people happy? What! shall we expect peace and stability from unhappiness? ”

“ The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. ”

“ Well may rulers and ruling classes pause and consider. This is revolution. And, further, these 7,000,000 men are not an army on paper. Their fighting strength in the field is 7,000,000. To-day they cast 7,000,000 votes in the civilized countries of the world.
Yesterday they were not so strong. To-morrow they will be still stronger. And they are fighters. They love peace. They are unafraid of war. They intend nothing less than to destroy existing capitalist society and to take possession of the whole world. ”

“ In many cases a revolution is judged by its fruits, by the application of a utilitarian standard. Should it prove successful, its leaders and initiators are commended; should it fail, an unfavourable judgment is passed. That is the way in which the world judges wars, and most other enterprises. ”

“ By "Revolution", we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized and a world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and misery of imperial wars. ”

“ The scientific and industrial revolution which began two centuries ago has, in the last 50 years, caught up the peoples of the globe in a common destiny. Two world-shattering wars have proved that no corner of the earth can be isolated from the affairs of mankind. ”

“ L.—There is a general revolution which changes the tastes of the mind as well as the fortunes of the world. ”

“ Preparation for the future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings. ”

“ I know well enough that revolutionists in neutral countries are writing and proclaiming the ideas of the old International of the workers, protesting against this stand of which I write, and are dreaming of revolution after the war. ”

“ The Revolution began at the top,—in the world of fashion, birth, and intellect,—and propagated itself downwards. ”

“ The revolution, I feel convinced, will spread from these shores, and effect, more or less, every part of Europe. You will everywhere see your chosen society changing around you, and increasing its distance from your sympathies. ”

“ Speaking broadly, such a period in the life of any society may be described as a revolutionary situation—one in which changes are made frequently, rapidly and with far reaching consequences. In a word, the existing social pattern is in process of being turned over, turned upside down, transformed by forces which seem to operate according to their own principles and often quite independently of human intention or intervention.
Our society—western civilization—is undergoing a revolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Throughout the past two centuries mankind has been confronted by an epoch-making, many sided development--the great revolution of 1750-1970. As I write, the great revolution is modifying the structure and functioning of human society and, consequently, the forces which condition, shape and, in large measure, determine the directions and channels in which humanity lives, moves and has its being. ”

“ I would not touch one of them except in cases of extreme necessity.' But the simple introduction of peace, law, order, free competition for wealth and honour, with an education to match, will inevitably cause a social revolution. By merely suppressing violence and intestine war, you produce such a revolution in a country, which has for centuries been the theatre of disorder and war, as surely as by damming a river you produce a lake. ”

“ Civil war, again, is distinguished from revolution, and we distinguish between revolution from above and revolution from below. Reaction is a form of revolution, for reaction is the counter-revolution. ”

“ For, with the fall of the ancient governments which rested like an incubus upon the people of the central empires, has come political change not merely, but revolution; and revolution which seems as yet to assume no final and ordered form. ”

“ It has, however, little value on account of the number of men who fought or who fell; but it lives as the opening scene of a great revolution based on principle, and destined to change the character of human governments and the condition of the human race. ”

“ And the same is true of the shaking of the children of earth—the call, sounding to the nations in succeeding centuries, which has shattered custom, convention, security, and all the accepted ways. Each revolution is always the last revolution, the final effort of a violence which has expired in this ultimate convulsion. Now, at last, and after all the centuries, mankind is to be allowed to “settle down” in reasonable comfort to accept and to enjoy. ”

“ The swift changes in our industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure of society. ”

“ We see a country which for many years—during the lifetime of the oldest amongst us—has been the most peaceful, and prosperous, and the most free amongst the great nations of the earth—we see it plunged at once into the midst of a sanguinary revolution, whose proportions are so gigantic as to dwarf all other revolutionary records and events of which we have any knowledge. ”

“ What form will the social revolution take? Will it be unbridled, unguided; will it run through a long period of anarchy before the fermentation begun shall have been completed, or shall it be handled, in all the nations concerned, by leaders who understand and sympathize with the evolutionary trend, who are capable of controlling it, of taking the necessary international steps of co-operation in order that it may become secure and mutually beneficial to all? ”

“ When they both take place, the one following and supplementing the other, the second is the conclusion of the first, the revolution is only the characteristic crisis which ends and gives real effect to a period of evolution. ”

“ You need not be told in what manner revolutions in opinion bring about the fate of empires; and upon this ground you ought to regard the state of the world, both at home and abroad, with fear, rather than with hope. ”

“ There have been crises in the history of nations, as at the time of the Crusades or the Reformation, or the French Revolution, when the same inspiration has taken hold of whole peoples, and permanently raised the sense of freedom and justice among mankind. ”

“ And I saw the world-wide war which is waged in every land against freedom and union—the fight of caste against caste, of class against class, of masters with slaves, of the state against its citizens, of the thousand and one Frankenstein monsters of commerce and industry and politics and religion, fighting against the human beings who have created them. ”

“ I have sought to show that in peace and war alike a process has been and is at work, a process with all the inevitableness and all the patience of a natural force, whereby the great swollen, shapeless, hypertrophied social mass of to-day must give birth at last to a naturally and informally organized, educated class, an unprecedented sort of people, a New Republic dominating the world. ”

“ Our sincere wish is that the social revolution, when its evolution shall be ripe, may be effected peacefully, as so many other revolutions have been, without blood-shed—like the English Revolution, which preceded by a century, with its Bill of Rights, the French Revolution; like the Italian Revolution in Tuscany in 1859 ”

“ Ambitious attempts at world-power, the most splendid combinations to group nations into a civic unity, have tottered to their fall, as surely as the little systems which have had their day and ceased to be,—shifting, fleeting, impotent. ”

“ The causes and significance of your patriotic, national, humanitarian, honest, serious and true revolution, capable of long struggle, cannot be explained but in terms of the sublimity and profoundness of its objectives. Thus, amidst humanity, the Revolution has aggrandized in depth and width. ”

“ From the closet and the public halls the debate has been transferred to the field; and the world has been shaken by wars of unexampled magnitude, and the greatest variety of fortune. A day of peace has at length succeeded; and now that the strife has subsided, and the smoke cleared away, we may begin to see what has actually been done, permanently changing the state and condition of human society. ”