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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
    1•2 years ago

    “Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun” - Karl Marx

    “It is the work of a man in deep sorrow who expresses his hope that the anger and hatred so generally evoked by suffering can be transformed into compassion and love; But what a strange logic, one that ties the very act of prediction of the mysteries of the dark ground, whereby ‘x is y’ really means, ‘that which is x is that which is y.’ Sheared of predicates of its own, the ground of unity (‘that which is’) is ensnared in darkness, where it is mysteriously joined to the heart. To speak (or sing) its truth is to lighten its burden through 'the generation of sound and meaning out of an interior so full that it can no longer remain in itself; What they all attempted to disclose was, mythically construed, the history of God’s becoming. Forged in the painful contractions of primordial nature, god-Cronus, driven by alternating waves of fear and greed, devours his children. But when the gentle son steps forth, even old Cronus becomes gentle (and for the first time truly the Father), affirming the world in what we still celebrate as the act of creation; His purpose in illuminating the abyss of the pass was to uncover the origin of time itself; Caught between these poles is, of course, the world we now experience; In itself, the absolute future, like the absolute past, is hidden away in eternity; God in his wisdom hides in dark night not only the end of time to come from the beginningg of time past; Recognising it as such is the most difficult task facing humanity. Far from there being hame in the failure to complete the task, the failure itself is one of the secrets of divine wisdom: the compassionate heart is held open by the eternal return of the suffering it seeks to overcome; Imagining the contractions through which God was to give birth to himself was simply too much to bear: 'For man helps man; even God helps him. But nothing can assist the primal being, lost in its terrifying solitude. It has no choice but to fight through its chaotic condition alone and by itself; the image of a not-yet God himself undergoing hell, represents the only possible solution to the problem of why God would allow so much suffering in the world. To the degree that we are where God was, the affirmation of our need to suffer is a function of God’s own self-affirmation; If Christianity has had to declare the very heart of Christianity heretical, it is presumably because its truth is too heavy to bear; Eighteen-eleven was the year of his solitude, when, still in mourning after the death of his Caroline; an exploration of his primordial past, the disclosure of the hell that God had to climb out of in order first to become God, a hell that those any less than divine still have to struggle with” - Karl Marx

    “If we find that even in the country of complete political emancipation, religion not only exists, but displays a fresh and vigorous vitality, that is proof that the existence of religion is not in contradiction to the perfection of the state” - Karl Marx

    “On the contrary, the perfect Christian state is the atheistic state, the democratic state, the state which relegates religion to a place among the other elements of civil society” - Karl Marx

    “Everyone should be able to relieve religious and bodily nature without the police sticking their noses in” - Karl Marx

    “Political democracy is Christian since in it man, not merely one man but everyman, ranks as sovereign, as the highest being” - Karl Marx

    “That which is a creation of fantasy, a dream, a postulate of Christianity, i.e., the sovereignty of man - but man as an alien being different from the real man - becomes, in democracy, tangible reality, present existence, and secular principle” - Karl Marx

    “Christianity attains, here, the practical expression of its universal-religious significance” - Karl Marx

    “The consummation of the Christian state is the state which acknowledges itself as a state and disregards the religion of its members. The emancipation of the state from religion is not the emancipation of the real man from religion” - Karl Marx

    “Political emancipation is, at the same time, the dissolution of the old society on which the state alienated from the people, the sovereign power, is based. What was the character of the old society? It can be described in one word - feudalism” - Karl Marx

    “Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself, is the real, conscious standpoint and the virtue of the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade!” - Karl Marx

    “In America, which was the ‘vanguard’ of the age; the absolute separation of church and state had brought a religious renaissance in the great awakenings” - Karl Marx

    “You can start a Communist revolution with the four gospels and revelation” - Friedrich Engels

    “Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognised state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain” - Friedrich Engels

    “If [one] wonders […] why, with the enormous concentration of landownership under the Roman emperors and the boundless sufferings of the working class of the time, which was composed almost exclusively of slaves, ‘socialism did not follow the overthrow of the Roman Empire in the West,’ it is because he cannot see that this ‘socialism’ did in fact, as far as it was possible at the time, exist and even became dominant - in Christianity” - Friedrich Engels

    “The only service which one can still render to God is to declare atheism a compulsory article of faith” - Friedrich Engels

    “If [a person] works honestly, takes part in our events, stands by our side in everything and expresses the wish to become a Communist - they must be admitted into the Party, whether they believe in Allah with his Muhammad or any other Totemic animal; this does us no harm” - J.V. Stalin

    “The Soviet Government considers that the Sharia, as common law, is as fully authorised as that of any other of the peoples inhabiting Russia” - J.V. Stalin

    “One should not close off people’s worship. In any case, the people worship and pray. One should even open temples. But the books they read should be in Mongolian. And the monks should be in your hands” - J.V. Stalin

    “The Soviet people, as Bolsheviks, have the following principle of building the leading organs of the state: if the Muslims prevail in the country, then the majority of government members should also be Muslim. You cannot violate people’s religion. People will not understand, why the state is not led by the Muslims, while the majority of the country’s population is Muslim. These are elementary things, but they did not understand that in Yugoslavia. It does not mean that only Muslims should be in the government. We should select capable people from among the national minorities in order to keep the unity of the people intact. Participation in the government of the representatives of ethnic and religious minorities will ensure the stability of the government” - (J.V. Stalin, speaking with Enver Hoxha)

    “Regarding the three largest religious faiths of the world (Christianity, Islam and Buddhism), even up until now it exerts an enormous influence over the peoples of the world. Admittedly, our knowledge of these religions is small as currently our country does not have a proper research institution that uses a Marxist lens to analyse, research and study them, for example, right now there is not a single scholarly work that of which we can read and study this topic” - Mao Zedong

    [In which moment did you become Communist?] “I became Communist because I was Catholic. I did not change religion, but I remained profoundly Catholic. I don’t go to church but this doesn’t matter; you don’t ask people to go to church. I remained a Catholic, that is, an internationalist universalist” - Louis Althusser

    [What role does Catholic culture have today?] “Oh… it has a giant role. In my view, today social revolution or a profound social change depends on the alliance between Catholics (I am not saying the church, though the church can also be part of it), the Catholics of the world, all religions of the world, and Communists” - Louis Althusser