Russian Communists

"The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit."

"The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution.The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about dual power. This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old "formulas"."

"The "Jacobins" of the twentieth century would not guillotine the capitalists - to follow a good example does not mean copying it. It would be enough to arrest fifty to a hundred financial magnates and bigwigs, the chief knights of embezzlement and of robbery by the banks. It would be enough to arrest them for a few weeks to expose their frauds and show all exploited people " who needs the war." Upon exposing the frauds of the banking barons, we could release them, placing the banks, the capitalist syndicates, and all the contractors "working" for the government under workers' control."

"No idea could be more erroneous or harmful than to separate foreign from domestic policy."

"Popular ignorance of foreign policy is incomparably greater than of domestic policy."

"You must side with one of the two immensely wealthy and immensely powerful groups of imperialist predators - that is how capitalist reality poses the basic issue of present-day foreign policy."

"In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia's part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible."

"In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace."

"The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government."

"Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but a republic of Soviets."

"Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker."

"It is not our immediate task to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies."

"It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain."

"Capitalism in its imperialist stage arrives at the threshold of the most complete socialization of production. In spite of themselves the capitalists are dragged, as it were, into the new social order, which marks the transition from complete free competition to complete socialization. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The framework of formally recognized free competition remains, but the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable."

"The statement that cartels can abolish crises is a fable spread by bourgeois economists who at all costs desire to place capitalism in a favorable light. On the contrary, when monopoly appears in certain branches of industry, it increases and intensifies the anarchy inherent in capitalist production as a whole."

"Crises of every kind - economic crises more frequently, but not only these - in their turn increase very considerably the tendency towards concentration and monopoly"

"The principal and primary function of banks is to serve as an intermediary in the making of payments. In doing so they transform inactive money capital into active capital, that is, into capital producing a profit; they collect all kinds of money revenues and place them at the disposal of the capitalist class."

"The transformation of numerous intermediaries into a handful of monopolists represents one of the fundamental processes in the transformation of capitalism into capitalist imperialism."

"All the rules of control, the publication of balance sheets, the drawing up of balance sheets according to a definite form, the public auditing of accounts, the things about which well-intentioned professors and officials - that is, those imbued with the good intention of defending and embellishing capitalism - discourse to the public, are of no avail. For private property is sacred, and no one can be prohibited from buying, selling, exchanging or mortgaging shares, etc."

"A monopoly, once it is formed and controls thousands of millions, inevitably penetrates into every sphere of public life, regardless of the form of government and all other "details"."

"Generally speaking, under capitalism, the ownership of capital is separate from the application of capital to production; money capital is separate from industrial or productive capital; the rentier, living entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all those directly concerned in the management of capital."

"Thus, in one way or another, the whole world is more or less the debtor to and vassal of these forn international banker countries, the four "pillars" of world finance capital."

"Under the old type of capitalism, when free competition prevailed, the export of goods was the most typical feature. Under modern capitalism, when monopolies prevail, the exporter of capital has become the typical feature."

"The principal feature of modern capitalism is the domination of monopolist combines of the big capitalists."

"Finance capital is not only interested in the already known sources of raw materials; it is also interested in possible sources of raw materials, because present-day technical development is extremely rapid, and because land which is useless today may be made fertile tomorrow if new methods are applied (to devise these new methods a big bank can equip a whole expedition of engineers, agricultural experts, etc.), and large amounts of capital are invested."

"We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly."

"Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; 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 partition of all the territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed."

"Capitalism is commodity production at the highest stage of development, when labor power itself becomes a commodity. The growth of internal exchange, and particularly of international exchange, is a special feature of capitalism. The uneven and spasmodic character of the development of individual enterprises, of individual branches of industry and individual countries, is inevitable under the capitalist system."

"The war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital."

"When nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole world had been divided up, there was inevitably ushered in the era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of particularly intense struggle for the division and the redivision of the world."

"Modern monopolist capitalism on a world-wide scale — imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists."

"Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations — all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism."

"Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field. Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexations, i.e., the violation of national independence (for annexation is nothing but the violation of the right of nations to self-determination)."

"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes relentlessly persecute them, and treat their teachings with malicious hostility, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating the revolutionary doctrine of its content, vulgarizing it and blunting its revolutionary edge.'"

"At the present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists in the labor movement concur in this "revision" of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of its doctrine, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie."

"In such circumstances, in view of the incredibly widespread nature of the distortions of Marxism, our first task is to restore the true doctrine of Marx on the state."

"The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it creates "order," which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collision between the classes."

"The state is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability class antagonisms. The state arises when, where and to the extent that class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable."

"The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population - the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians - in the work of organising a socialist economy."

"Although the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905-07 displayed no such “brilliant” successes as at time fell to the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions, it was undoubtedly a "real people's" revolution, since the mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups, crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped on the entire course of the revolution the imprint of their own demands, their attempt to build in their own way a new society in place of the old society that was being destroyed."

"We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public power which is an attribute of every state is not "directly identical" with armed population, with its "self-acting armed organization""

"A state arises, a special force is created in the form of special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, demonstrates to us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving not the exploiters but the exploited."

"In a democratic republic, Engels continues, "wealth wields its power indirectly, all the more effectively," first, by means of the "direct corruption of the officials (America); second, by the means of "the alliance between the government and the Stock Exchange (France and America)."

"Revolution alone can "put an end" to the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only "wither away"."

"We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism; but we have no right to forget that wage-slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic."

"The substitution of the proletarian state for the bourgeois state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of "withering away"."

"The exploiting classes need political rule in order to maintain exploitation, i.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority and against the interests of the vast majority of the people. The exploited classes need political rule in order completely to abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the interests of the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners - the landlords and the capitalists."

"The proletariat needs state power, the centralized organization of force, the organization of violence, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of leading the great mass of the population - the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians - in the work of organizing a socialist economy."

"The centralized state power that is peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the period of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions are most characteristic of this state machine: bureaucracy and a standing army."

"Imperialism - the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, the era of the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism - has particularly witnessed an unprecedented strengthening of the "state machine" and an unprecedented growth of its bureaucratic and military apparatus, in connection with the increase in repressive measures against the proletariat in the monarchical as well as in the freest republican countries."