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Here are a collection of quotes for fellow Marxism-Leninist’s to counter Ultra-Leftism and Dogmatism from misguided comrades.

Part 1 of This Series:

“The Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however is to change it” - Karl Marx

“‘Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?’ - No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity” - Friedrich Engels

“The struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility is the struggle of town against country, industry against landed property, money economy against natural economy; and the decisive weapon of the bourgeoisie in this struggle was its means of economic power, constantly increasing through the development of industry, first handicraft, and then, at a later stage, progressing to manufacture, and through the expansion of commerce” - Friedrich Engels

“The masses must make themselves heard in order to propel the party ship forward. Then we will be able to face the future confidently” - Rosa Luxemburg

“You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state - monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism! For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest? Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic. Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy - and then it is a step towards socialism. For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly” - V.I. Lenin

“For the socialist of another country cannot expose the government and bourgeoisie of a country at war with ‘his own’ nation, and not only because he does not know that country’s language, history, specific features, etc., but also because such exposure is part of imperialist intrigue, and not of internationalist duty” - V.I. Lenin

“I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy” - (J.V. Stalin, to V. Molotov, 1943)

“As Stalin has said, leaders must maintain close ties with the masses, and the experience gained by both leaders and masses must be synthesised. Only thus can there be correct leadership” - Zhou Enlai

“The contradictions between ourselves and the enemy are antagonistic contradictions. Within the ranks of the people, the contradictions among the working people are non-antagonistic, while those between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a non-antagonistic as well as an antagonistic aspect. There have always been contradictions among the people, but they are different in content in each period of the revolution and in the period of building socialism. In the conditions prevailing in China today, the contradictions among the people comprise the contradictions within the working class, the contradictions within the peasantry, the contradictions within the intelligentsia, the contradictions between the working class and the peasantry, the contradictions between the workers and peasants on the one hand and the intellectuals on the other, the contradictions between the working class and other sections of the working people on the one hand and the national bourgeoisie on the other, the contradictions within the national bourgeoisie, and so on. Our People’s Government is one that genuinely represents the people’s interests, it is a government that serves the people. Nevertheless, there are still certain contradictions between this government and the people. These include the contradictions between the interests of the state and the interests of the collective on the one hand and the interests of the individual on the other, between democracy and centralism, between the leadership and the led, and the contradictions arising from the bureaucratic style of work of some of the state personnel in their relations with the masses. All these are also contradictions among the people. Generally speaking, the fundamental identity of the people’s interests underlies the contradictions among the people” - Mao Zedong

“Our policy toward the national bourgeoisie has been to redeem their property; on the contrary, in that period our policy should still have been to protect the national bourgeoisie and win it over so as to enable us to concentrate our efforts on fighting the chief enemies” - Mao Zedong

“In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie comes under the category of contradictions among the people. By and large, the class struggle between the two is a class struggle within the ranks of the people, because the Chinese national bourgeoisie has a dual character. In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, it had both a revolutionary and a conciliationist side to its character. In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class for profit constitutes one side of the character of the national bourgeoisie, while its support of the Constitution and its willingness to accept socialist transformation constitute the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between exploiter and exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. But in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic contradiction between the two classes, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods. However, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie will change into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy if we do not handle it properly and do not follow the policy of uniting with, criticising and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy of ours” - Mao Zedong

“Poverty is not socialism… socialism means eliminating poverty. Unless you are developing the productive forces and raising people’s living standards, you cannot. To be rich is glorious” - Deng Xiaoping

“Nevertheless, the superiority of the socialist system has already been proved, even though it still needs to be displayed in more convincing ways, but first and foremost it must be revealed in the rate of economic growth and in economic efficiency. Otherwise, there will be no point in our trying to blow our own horn. And to achieve a high rate of economic growth and high efficiency, it is essential to carry out our political line consistently and unfalteringly” - Deng Xiaoping

“I am convinced that more and more people will come to believe in Marxism, because it is a science. Using historical materialism, it has uncovered the laws governing the development of human society… So don’t panic, don’t think that Marxism has disappeared, that it’s not useful anymore and that it has been defeated. Nothing of the sort!” - Deng Xiaoping

“If your not an Anarchist by the time your twenty you have no heart, if your not a Marxist-Leninist by thirty you have no brain” - Erich Honecker

“All party organs and members should be frugal and make determined efforts to oppose ostentation and reject hedonism” - Xi Jinping

“The capitalist road was tried and found wanting; reformism, liberalism, social Darwinism, anarchism, pragmatism, populism, syndicalism - they were all given their moment on the stage. They all failed to solve the problems of China’s future destiny. It is Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought that guided the Chinese people out of the darkness of that long night and established a New China” - Xi Jinping

“Western Marxism is basically a kind of Marxism which has, as a key characteristic, never exercised political power. It is a Marxism that has, more and more frequently, concerned itself with philosophical and aesthetic issues. It has pulled back, for example, from criticism of political economy and the problem of the conquest of political power. More and more it has taken a historical distance from the concrete experiences of socialist transition in the Soviet Union, China, Viet Nam, Cuba and so forth. This Western Marxism considers itself to be superior to eastern Marxism because it hasn’t tarnished Marxism by transforming it into an ideology of the State like, for example, Soviet Marxism, and it has never been authoritarian, totalitarian or violent. This Marxism preserves the purity of theory to the detriment of the fact that it has never produced a revolution anywhere on the face of the Earth - this is a very important point. Wherever a victorious socialist revolution has taken place in the West, like Cuba, it is much more closely associated with the so-called eastern Marxism than with this western Marxism produced in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of South America” - Michael Parenti

Comrades if you have anymore good quotes to combat Ultra-Leftism feel free to add them in the comments.

Part 2:

  • enigmaOP
    2•2 years ago

    “Thus in the field of private property, morality teaches that theft is to be condemned; While Communists do not believe in the sacredness of private property, they do not approve of stealing; It is true that Communists by no means recognise the inviolability of private property; the nationalisation of factories is an expropriation of the bourgeoisie; the working class appropriates “the property of others”, trangresses the right of private property, undertakes a ‘despotic intervention in the right of property’ But Communists condemn stealing, for the reason that individual thefts by each worker from the capitalists, for his own advantage, would not result in common struggle, but would make the worker a petty bourgeois. Horse-thieves and swindlers will not fight in the class struggle, even though they may be offspring of the proletariat. If many members of the proletariat should become thieves, the class would break down and be condemned; Therefore Communists condemn stealing, not in order to protect private property, but in order to maintain the integrity of their class, to protect it from ‘demoralisation’ and ‘disintegration’, without which protection the proletariat can never be transformed into the next following stage. We are therefore dealing witth a class standard in the conduct of the proletariat. It is obvious that the rules we have considered are determined by the economic conditions of society” - Karl Marx

    “One could just as well have said that only in society can useless and even socially harmful labour become a branch of gainful occupation, that only in society can one live by being idle, etc., etc. - in short, once could just as well have copied the whole of Rousseau” - Karl Marx

    “Observation has persuaded me that you are not very industrious by nature, despite spasmodic feverish activity and good intentions. In these circumstances, you will need external support if you are to set out in life with my daughter. I know nothing of your family. Although they may enjoy a comfortable living, that does not in itself mean that they would be disposed to make sacrifices for you. I do not even know with what favour they regard your proposed alliance. I repeat that I must have positive clarification on all these matters. Moreover, as an avowed realist, you cannot, of course, expect that I should behave as an idealist in respect of my daughter’s future” - Karl Marx

    “Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars - in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème; from this kindred element Bonaparte formed the core of the Society of December 10. A ‘benevolent society’ - insofar as, like Bonaparte, all its members felt the need of benefiting themselves at the expense of the labouring nation. This Bonaparte, who constitutes himself chief of the lumpenproletariat, who here alone rediscovers in mass form the interests which he personally pursues, who recognises in this scum, offal, refuse of all classes the only class upon which he can base himself unconditionally, is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte sans phrase. An old, crafty roué, he conceives the historical life of the nations and their performances of state as comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade in which the grand costumes, words, and postures merely serve to mask the pettiest knavery” - Karl Marx

    “The ‘dangerous class,’ the lumpenproletariat, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue” - Karl Marx

    “The same relation holds for all services which workers exchange directly for the money of other persons, and which are consumed by these persons. This is consumption of revenue, which, as such, always falls within simple circulation; it is not consumption of capital. Since one of the contracting parties does not confront the other as a capitalist, this performance of a service cannot fall under the category of productive labour. From wh*re to pope, there is a mass of such rabble. But the honest and ‘working’ lumpenproletariat belongs here as well; e.g. the great mob of porters etc. who render service in seaport cities etc” - Karl Marx

    “The lumpenproletariat, this scum of the decaying elements of all classes, which establishes headquarters in all the big cities, is the worst of all possible allies. It is an absolutely venal, an absolutely brazen crew. If the French workers, in the course of the Revolution, inscribed on the houses: Mort aux voleurs! (Death to the thieves!) and even shot down many, they did it, not out of enthusiasm for property, but because they rightly considered it necessary to hold that band at arm’s length. Every leader of the workers who utilises these gutter-proletarians as guards or supports, proves himself by this action alone a traitor to the movement” - Friedrich Engels

    “Rosa acted and felt as a Communist when in an article she championed the cause of the prostitutes who were imprisoned for any transgression of police regulations in carrying on their dreary trade. They are, unfortunately, doubly sacrificed by bourgeois society. First, by its accursed property system, and, secondly, by its accursed moral hypocrisy. That is obvious. Only he who is brutal or short-sighted can forget it. But still, that is not at all the same thing as considering prostitutes - how shall I put it? - to be a special revolutionary militant section, as organising them and publishing a factory paper for them. Aren’t there really any other working women in Germany to organise, for whom a paper can be issued, who must be drawn into your struggles? The other is only a diseased excrescence. It reminds me of the literary fashion of painting every prostitute as a sweet Madonna. The origin of that was healthy, too: social sympathy, rebellion against the virtuous hypocrisy of the respectable bourgeois. But the healthy part became corrupted and degenerate” - V.I. Lenin

    “For example. In the eighties of the last century a great controversy flared up among the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. The Narodniks asserted that the main force that could undertake the task of ‘emancipating Russia’ was the petty bourgeoisie, rural and urban. Why? - the Marxists asked them. Because, answered the Narodniks, the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie now constitute the majority and, moreover, they are poor, they live in poverty. To this the Marxists replied: It is true that the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie now constitute the majority and are really poor, but is that the point? The petty bourgeoisie has long constituted the majority, but up to now it has displayed no initiative in the struggle for ‘freedom’ without the assistance of the proletariat. Why? Because the petty bourgeoisie as a class is not growing; on the contrary, it is disintegrating day by day and breaking up into bourgeois and proletarians. On the other hand, nor is poverty of decisive importance here, of course: ‘tramps’ are poorer than the petty bourgeoisie, but nobody will say that they can undertake the task of ‘emancipating Russia.’ As you see, the point is not which class today constitutes the majority, or which class is poorer, but which class is gaining strength and which is decaying” - J.V. Stalin