Socialism
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Here are a collection of quotes which defend the Socialist mode of production.

Part 5 of This Series:

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing” - Karl Marx

“What we have to deal with here is a Communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society - after the deductions have been made - exactly what he gives to it… But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of Communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby” - Karl Marx

“The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialised means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this set the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialised character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialised production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible” - Friedrich Engels

“Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations… 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

“Sometimes, history needs a push; There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” - V.I. Lenin

“They tell you that socialism would destroy your individuality. That would be miraculous - that would be a miracle! Because you have none. No man has any individuality who has got to beg for permission to live” - Eugene Debs

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born” - Antonio Gramsci; (In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear Žižek uses it a lot, although he modifies it a bit: >The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters)

“Reconversion to the production of consumer goods would be at best a painful process, and could be disastrous, for no one knew whether the American economy could maintain full employment in peacetime. The Soviet Union needed heavy industrial equipment, partly to rebuild its war-devastated economy and partly to satisfy its people’s long denied desire for more consumer goods. Moscow could solve its reconstruction problems, it appeared, by placing massive orders for industrial equipment with American firms. Filling these orders would help the United States deal with its own post war reconversion problems and, in the process would begin to integrate the Soviet Union into the multilateral system of world trade to which Washington attached such great importance. Both countries, it seemed, had a strong interest in promoting this most promising of economic partnerships” - (John Gaddis Smith, The United States and the origins of the Cold War)

“If I were asked about my predilection towards socialism I would answer: with regard to this issue what I aspire to is not to increase the wealth of factories but that of life. My concern is not that people should be equal in distribution of food but that every individual should be allowed to exploit his talents and potential. The labourer crushed by his misery may not find in socialism anything except a promise that he may take what he is deprived of, but I view it as continuous and generous giving, as giving to life many times what it has offered us” - Michel Aflaq

“It is the peasants who made the idols, and when the time comes they will cast the idols aside with their own hands; there is no need for anyone else to do it for them prematurely. The Communist Party’s propaganda policy in such matters should be, ‘Draw the bow without shooting, just indicate the motions.’ It is for the peasants themselves to cast aside the idols, pull down the temples to the martyred virgins and the arches to the chaste and faithful widows; it is wrong for anybody else to do it for them” - Mao Zedong

“Civilise the mind and make savage the body; This is an apt saying. In order to civilise the mind one must first make savage the body. If the body is made savage, then the civilised mind will follow. Knowledge consists in knowing the things in the world, and in discerning their laws” - Mao Zedong

“Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn’t. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger; We have to destroy it piecemeal; If we deal with it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the end” - Mao Zedong

“I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath is also to the right; I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power” - (Mao Zedong, speaking to Richard Nixon)

“At present some people, especially young people, are sceptical about the socialist system, alleging that socialism is not as good as capitalism. Such ideas must be firmly corrected. The socialist system is one thing, and the specific way of building socialism is another. Counting from the October Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union has been engaging in building socialism for 63 years, but it is still in no position to boast about how we do it. It is true that we don’t have enough experience either, and perhaps it is only now that we have begun in earnest to search for a better road. 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

“If China will one day change its color, become a superpower, and dominate the world, bullying, invading, and exploiting people everywhere, then the people of the world should give China the hat of social imperialism to wear, you should expose it, oppose it, and work with the Chinese people to defeat it” - Deng Xiaoping

“We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us” - Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

“A socialist economy is a planned economy, managed by its masters, the popular masses. It is an instrinsic requirement of a socialist economy that it be developed rapidly in a planned and balanced way in the common interests of the masses by increasing the creative enthusiasm of the working people and that equitable distribution be made according to the quantity and quality of work done” - Kim Il-sung

“Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life” - Fidel Castro

“It’s hard to believe. That such a peaceful country wants war. And Brezhnev. I never thought he was such a quiet and calm person. It is difficult to imagine that he can be the person who would start a war. I have not seen a hitchhiker on the road. And I have not seen a single beggar on the streets of Soviet Russia. I had never felt so safe. No risk of being robbed. I was told that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union. But Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely here. I think the relationship between our people is bad just because of false propaganda” - Muhammad Ali

“If the people are awakened only for voting but enter a dormant period soon after, if they are given a song and dance during campaigning but have no say after the election, or if they are favored during canvassing but are left out in the cold after the election, such a democracy is not a true democracy” - Xi Jinping

“First, we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands” - Xi Jinping

“To study and research Marxism, one should not adopt a simple and superficial attitude. Some people have not read classics of Marxism, and they express their opinions when they know little about them. This is an irresponsible attitude and goes against the spirit of science” - Xi Jinping

“Both history and reality tell us that only socialism can save China. Only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China. This is a conclusion of the history and the choice of the people” - Xi Jinping

Part 6:

  • enigmaOP
    1•2 years ago

    – Quotes -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6

    “It is the business of the International Working Men’s Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles. (a.) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers. (b.) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves. (c.) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork. (d.) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment by teaching and preaching. (e.) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest” - Karl Marx

    “The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin state in which it supplies man with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connexion with their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so to say, been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for washing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour is raw material: it can only become so, after it has undergone some alteration by means of labour” - Karl Marx

    “The Communist peasant community no less than the feudal corvée farm and similar institutions maintain their economic organisation by subjecting the labour power, and the most important means of production, the land, to the rule of law and custom” - Rosa Luxemburg

    “Capitalism would not be capitalism if the ‘pure’ proletariat were not surrounded by a large number of exceedingly motley types intermediate between the proletarian and the semi-proletarian (who earns his livelihood in part by the sale of his labour power), between the semi-proletarian and the small peasant (and petty-artisan, handicraft worker and small master in general), between the small peasant and the middle peasant, and so on, and if the proletariat itself were not divided into more developed and less developed strata, if it were not divided according to territorial origin, trade, sometimes according to religion, and so on. And from all this follow the necessity, the absolute necessity, for the vanguard of the proletariat, for its class-conscious section, for the Communist Party, to resort to manoeuvres, agreements and compromises with the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers and small masters” - V.I. Lenin

    “Particular attention should be paid to Marx’s extremely profound remark that the destruction of the bureaucratic-military state machine is ‘the precondition for every real people’s revolution’. This idea of a people’s revolution seems strange coming from Marx, so that the Russian Plekhanovites and Mensheviks, those followers of Struve who wish to be regarded as Marxists, might possibly declare such an expression to be a ‘slip of the pen’ on Marx’s part. They have reduced Marxism to such a state of wretchedly liberal distortion that nothing exists for them beyond the antithesis between bourgeois revolution and proletarian revolution, and even this antithesis they interpret in an utterly lifeless way. If we take the revolutions of the 20th century as examples we shall, of course, have to admit that the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions are both bourgeois revolutions. Neither of them, however, is a ‘people’s’ revolution, since in neither does the mass of the people, their vast majority, come out actively, independently, with their own economic and political demands to any noticeable degree. By contrast, 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. In Europe, in 1871, the proletariat did not constitute the majority of the people in any country on the Continent. A ‘people’s’ revolution, one actually sweeping the majority into its stream, could be such only if it embraced both the proletariat and the peasants. These two classes then constituted the ‘people’. These two classes are united by the fact that the ‘bureaucratic-military state machine’ oppresses, crushes, exploits them. To smash this machine, to break it up, is truly in the interest of the ‘people’, of their majority, of the workers and most of the peasants, is ‘the precondition’ for a free alliance of the poor peasant and the proletarians, whereas without such an alliance democracy is unstable and socialist transformation is impossible. As is well known, the Paris Commune was actually working its way toward such an alliance, although it did not reach its goal owing to a number of circumstances, internal and external. Consequently, in speaking of a ‘real people’s revolution’, Marx, without in the least discounting the special features of the petty-bourgeois (he spoke a great deal about them and often), took strict account of the actual balance of class forces in most of the continental countries of Europe in 1871. On the other hand, he stated that the ‘smashing’ of the state machine was required by the interests of both the workers and the peasants, that it united them, that it placed before them the common task of removing the ‘parasite’ and of replacing it by something new” - V.I. Lenin

    “Can the majority of the peasants in Russia demand and carry out the nationalisation of the land? Certainly it can. Would this be a socialist revolution? It would not. It would still be a bourgeois revolution, for the nationalisation of the land is a measure that is not incompatible with the existence of capitalism. It is, however, a blow to private ownership of the most important means of production. Such a blow would strengthen the proletarians and semi-proletarians far more than was the case during the revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” - V.I. Lenin

    “Indeed, is it not clear that as far as the proletariat is concerned the struggle for the republic is inconceivable without an alliance with the petty-bourgeois masses? Is it not clear that without the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry there is not a shadow of hope for the success of this struggle?; Whatever the form, whatever the origin, whatever the conditions, one thing at any rate is clear - that the provisional revolutionary government must have the support of definite classes. One has only to remember this simple truth to realise that the provisional revolutionary government can be nothing else but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” - V.I. lenin