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(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital’, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; 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 division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. (Lenin’s Collected Works, vol. 22, pp. 266-7.)
Anarchists Without Borders ‪@anarchswoborders.bsky.social‬ No it isn't. That's antichristianity. Constantine did to Christ what Rothbard did to anarchy, and what Lenin and Hitler did to Marx. Tyrants steal whatever's popular and twist it into it's opposite. Becausevno opportunity to explain how Leninism is fascist trash should ever be missed. Name one material distinction between national socialism and Leninism if you can
"The free people's state has been transferred into the free state. Taken in its grammatical sense, a free state is one where the state is free in relation to its citizens, hence a state with a despotic government. The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. The 'people's state' has been thrown in our faces by the anarchists to the point of disgust, although already Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Communist Manifesto say plainly that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state dissolves of itself [sich auflost] and disappears. As the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a 'free people's state'; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore propose replacing the state everywhere by Gemeinwesen, a good old German word which can very well take the place of the French word commune." (pp.321-22 of the German original.) -V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
A Communist must be clear about the correct relationship between personal and Party interests. The Communist Party is the political party of the proletariat and has no interests of its own other than those of the emancipation of the proletariat. The final emancipation of the proletariat will also inevitably be the final emancipation of all mankind. Unless the proletariat emancipates all working people and all nations - unless it emancipates mankind as a whole - it cannot fully emancipate itself. The cause of the emancipation of the proletariat is identical with and inseparable from the cause of the emancipation of all working people, all oppressed nations and all mankind. Therefore, the interests of the Communist Party are the emancipation of the proletariat and all mankind, are communism and social progress.. When a Party member''s personal interests are subordinated to those of the Party, they are subordinated to the interests of the emancipation of the class and the nation, and those of communism and social progress. Comrade Mao Zedong has said: At no time and in no circumstances should a Communist place his personal interests first; he should subordinate to the interests of the nation and of the masses. Hence selfishness, slacking, corruption, seeking the limelight are most contemptible, while selflessness, working with all one's energy, whole hearted devotion to public duty, and quiet hard work will command respect.1 The test of a Party member's loyalty to the Party, the revolution, the cause of communism is whether or not he can subordinate his personal interests absolutely and unconditionally to the interests of the Party whatever the circumstances. Liu Shaoqi, How to Be a Good Communist (1939)
What has anarchism, at one time dominant in the Romance countries, contributed in recent European history? – No doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory. – Fragmentation of the working-class movement. – Complete fiasco in the experiments of the revolutionary movement (Proudhonism, 1871; Bakuninism, 1873). – Subordination of the working class to bourgeois politics in the guise of negation of politics. -V.I. Lenin, Anarchism and Socialism (1901)
[he] is wrong, however, when he makes it appear that the Zionists were the sole backers of Jewish emigration to Palestine. Perhaps he does not know that the Jewish masses in every country and especially in the United States of America have contributed vast amounts of money for the same purpose. They have given unstintingly out of their earnings in the hope that Palestine may prove to be an asylum for their brothers, cruelly persecuted in nearly every European country. The fact that there are many non-Zionist communes in Palestine goes to prove that the Jewish workers who have helped the persecuted and hounded Jews have done so not because they are Zionists, but for the reason I have already stated, that they might be left in peace in Palestine to take root and live their own lives. Comrade Reynolds resents the contention of the Jews that Palestine had been their homeland two thousand years ago. He insists that this is of no importance as against the Arabs who have lived in Palestine for generations. I do not think either claim of great moment, unless one believes in the monopoly of land and the right of Governments in every country to keep out the newcomers. Surely Reginald Reynolds knows that the Arab people have about as much to say who should or should not come into their country as the under-privileged of other lands. In point of fact our friend admits as much when he states that the Arab feudal lords had sold the land to the Jews without the knowledge of the Arab people. This is of course nothing new in our world. The capitalist class everywhere owns, controls and disposes of its wealth to suit itself. The masses, whether Arab, English or any other, have very little to say in the matter. In claiming the right of the Arabs to keep out Jewish immigration from Palestine, our good friend is guilty of the same breach of Socialism as his comrade...
Jews. Write an article against this race that poisons everything by sticking its nose into everything without ever mixing with any other people. Demand its expulsion from France with the exception of those individuals married to French women. Abolish synagogues and not admit them to any employment. Demand its expulsion Finally, pursue the abolition of this religion. It’s not without cause that the Christians called them deicides. The Jew is the enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated. H. Heine, A. Weill, and others are nothing but secret spies ; Rothschild, Crémieux, Marx, Fould, wicked, bilious, envious, bitter, etc. etc. beings who hate us. The Jew must disappear by steel or by fusion or by expulsion. Tolerate the elderly who no longer have children. Work to be done – What the peoples of the Middle Ages hated instinctively I hate upon reflection and irrevocably. The hatred of the Jew like the hatred of the English should be our first article of political faith. Moreover, the abolition of Judaism will come with the abolition of other religions. Begin by not allocating funds to the clergy and leaving this to religious offerings. – And then, a short while later, abolish the religion.
The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.
Speaking to a PLO delegation in March 1965, Mao stated that “Imperialism is afraid of China and the Arabs. Israel and Formosa are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the front gate of the great continent, and we are the rear. They created Israel for you, and Formosa for us. Their goal is the same. . . Asia is the biggest continent in the world, and the West wants to continue exploiting it.”
It is, I think, almost universally realised at present that the Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party, or without the fullest and unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class, that is, from all thinking, honest, devoted and influential elements in it, capable of leading the backward strata or carrying the latter along with them. The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will. I repeat: the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie. V.I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)
The state is a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class. What class must the proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting class, i.e., the bourgeoisie. The working people need the state only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this suppression, can carry it out. For the proletariat is the only class that is consistently revolutionary, the only class that can unite all the working and exploited people in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, in completely removing it. The exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation, i.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the vast majority of all people. The exploited classes need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners — the landowners and capitalists. The petty-bourgeois democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy fashion — not as the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class, but as the peaceful submission of the minority to the majority which has become aware of its aims. This petty-bourgeois utopia, which is inseparable from the idea of the state being above classes, led in practice to the betrayal of the interests of the working classes, as was shown, for example, by the history of the French revolutions of 1848 and 1871, and by the experience of “socialist” participation in bourgeois Cabinets in Britain, France, Italy and other countries at the turn of the century. V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened. Karl Marx, Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy (1874)
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world. F. Engels, On Authority (1872)
first of all the question arises: how is the discipline of the revolutionary party of the proletariat maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its perseverance, self-sacrifice and heroism. Secondly, by its ability to link itself with, to keep in close touch with, and to a certain extent, if you like, to merge with the broadest masses of the toilers—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian toiling masses. Thirdly, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided that the broadest masses have been convinced by their own experience that they are correct. V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder (1920)
The cornerstone of anarchism is the individual, whose emancipation, according to its tenets, is the principal condition for the emancipation of the masses, the collective body. According to the tenets of anarchism, the emancipation of the masses is impossible until the individual is emancipated. Accordingly, its slogan is: "Everything for the individual." The cornerstone of Marxism, however, is the masses, whose emancipation, according to its tenets, is the principal condition for the emancipation of the individual. That is to say, according to the tenets of Marxism, the emancipation of the individual is impossible until the masses are emancipated. Accordingly, its slogan is: "Everything for the masses." J.V. Stalin, Anarchism or Socialism? (1906)
In an alliance of this sort, the anarchists will not be an asset, but a liability; they will merely bring disorganisation and thus weaken the force of the joint assault; to them it is still “debatable” whether political reform is urgent and important. The exclusion of anarchists from the fighting alliance which is carrying out, as it were, our democratic revolution, is quite nec essary from the point of view of this revolution and is in its interests. There can be a place in a fighting alliance only for those who fight for the aim of that alliance. V.I. Lenin, Socialism and Anarchism (1905)
The socialist revolution is not one single act, not one single battle on a single front; but a whole epoch of intensified class conflicts, a long series of battles on all fronts, i.e., battles around all the problems of economics and politics, which can culminate only in the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. -V.I. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1916)
The distinction between Marxists and the anarchists is this: (1) The former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognize that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution, as the result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the state. The latter want to abolish he state completely overnight, not understanding the conditions under which the state can be abolished. (2) The former recognize that after the proletariat has won political power it must completely destroy the old state machine and replace it by a new one consisting of an organization of the armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The latter, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have a very vague idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should use the state power, they reject its revolutionary dictatorship. (3) The former demand that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilizing the present state. The anarchists reject this. V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
The new commanders of the work of building the new economy and the new culture are called new precisely because they must abruptly and irrevocably break with the old methods of commanding. Not divorce from the masses, but the closest connection with them; not feeling superior to the masses, but going in front of them and leading them; not alienation from the masses, but merging with them and winning their confidence and support — such are the new methods of management that must be employed by the new commanders. Without these methods no kind of socialist construction is conceivable. J.V. Stalin, To the First All-Union Conference of Proletarian Students (1925)
The difficult thing to understand for someone not living through the experience of the revolution is this close dialectical unity between the individual and the mass, in which both are interrelated and, at the same time, in which the mass, as an aggregate of individuals, interacts with its leaders. Some phenomena of this kind can be seen under capitalism, when politicians appear capable of mobilizing popular opinion. But when these are not genuine social movements — if they were, it would not be entirely correct to call them capitalist — they live only so long as the individual who inspires them, or until the harshness of capitalist society puts an end to the people's illusions. Che Guevara, Socialism and man in Cuba: Participation of the masses (1965)
...the mistake of the Russian “permanentists” lay not only in their under-estimation of the role of the peasantry, but also in their under-estimation of the strength of the proletariat and its capacity to lead the peasantry, in their disbelief in the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat. -J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism (1926)
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. -Marx-Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence. -V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
The distinction between the Marxists and the anarchists is this : The former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognise that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution, as the result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the state. The latter want to abolish the state completely overnight, not understanding the conditions under which the state can be abolished. The former recognise that after the proletariat has won political power, it must completely destroy the old state machine and replace it by a new one consisting of an organisation of the armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The latter, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have a very vague idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should use the state power, they reject its revolutionary dictatorship. The former demand that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilising the present state. The anarchists reject this. -V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
Hi, We've reviewed a Post on your account @iyae.bsky.social and found it violates Bluesky's Community Guidelines on Public Safety. We keep our community safe by stopping people from using our platform for criminal activities. For example: - Do not coordinate, promote, recruit or disseminate content for criminal organizations, terrorist groups, or human trafficking networks. - Do not provide instruction for criminal or terrorist activities: - Detailed tutorials for committing crimes or terrorist acts. - Coordination of harmful acts, including swatting or mob violence. - Do not share violence content for harmful purposes: - Content serving criminal or terrorist organizational operations. - Videos exploiting victims of abuse or violence. The following Post was removed: > God bless this Hamas.
Grandpa saying Stalin was a great man, he would have shot the interviewers' great grandfather for good reason.
— 24 — How do communists differ from socialists? The so-called socialists are divided into three categories. [ Reactionary Socialists: ] The first category consists of adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society which has already been destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big industry and world trade and their creation, bourgeois society. This category concludes, from the evils of existing society, that feudal and patriarchal society must be restored because it was free of such evils. In one way or another, all their proposals are directed to this end. This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming partisanship and their scalding tears for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically opposed by the communists for the following reasons: (i) It strives for something which is entirely impossible. (ii) It seeks to establish the rule of the aristocracy, the guildmasters, the small producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs, officials, soldiers, and priests – a society which was, to be sure, free of the evils of present-day society but which brought it at least as many evils without even offering to the oppressed workers the prospect of liberation through a communist revolution. (iii) As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and communist, these reactionary socialists show their true colors by immediately making common cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians.
DPRK ASSISTS TERRORIST GROUPS Seoul VANTAGE POINT in English Vol 1, No 6, Oct 78 pp 18-20 [Article: "Pyongyang's Activities in Support of Terrorist Groups''7 [Text/ Article 16 of the north Korean Constitution reads: “. . . The State, in ac: cordance with the principles of Marxism-Leninism and_ proletarian Inter- nationalism, unites with the Socialist countries, unites with all the people of the world opposed to imperialism and actively supports and encc:rages their struggles for national liberation and their revolutionary struggles.’ Standing on this principle is, among others, north Korea's extension of financial and military aid to terrorist groups in many foreign countries. Pyongyang’s moves are directly connected with its efforts to form and enlist international support for its unification policy. President Kim Il-sung stressed at the eighth plenary session of the fourth-term Workers’ Party Central Com- mittee the need for uniting with international revolutionary potential as well as for strengthening and developing revolutionary potential in south and north Korea in order to achieve unification on Pyongyang’s terms. He reiterated the same strategy at the fifth Party Congress held in November, 1970. North Korea first translated Kim's words into action in 1966 when it provided the Forces for National Liberation (FALN) in Venezuela with $50,000 in support of the FALN scheme to overthrow the Caracas government. The programs expanded among the Asian and African continents as well as other countries in Latin America. Pyongyang’s move in this direction got a new momentum in 1972 when it established a gucrrilla training camp in the vicinity of Pyongyang. Defectors from north Korea pinpointed the camp’s location as Wonhung-ri, Kangdong-gun, South Pyongang Province., Following is data on north Korea’s activities in support of terrorist groups all over the world, compiled by Naewoe Press,
September 1988: Kim Jong-Il meets with Korean People's Army personel
Black and white angler-fish drawing.
... And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,[1] (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society . Abstract from Marx to J. Weydemeyer in New York Written: March 5, 1852 Transcription/Markup: Brian Baggins Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000
Kim Jong Il in 1992. (COR/XINHUA/AFP) He stands in-front of a body of water surrounded by middle-aged men on a sunny and windy day, with hills in the background.
Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il embraces and comforts the People at the Grand Monument at Mansu Hill on the occasion of the sad demise of Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.
被称为纸老虎的美国，1950年8月的《人民画报》。 A paper tiger with a U.S. flag, symbolizing American imperialism, People's Pictorial, August 1950
South Yemen, PDRY, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen جمهورية اليمن الديمقراطية الشعبية
K I M J O N G I L ON CORRECTLY ANALYZING AND REVIEWING THE HISTORY OF THE PRECEDING REVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGY OF THE WORKING CLASS Talks to Social Scientists May 20, June 17 and September 30, 1966 In studying the works of Marxism-Leninism, we should take account of the following points. First, we should consider the background of the times when Marxism was formulated and its social basis. Marxism appeared in the period before the transition from capitalism to imperialism, that is, when capitalism was on the upswing. This was the background against which Marx and Engels, while living in this period, analyzed the historical stage of pre-monopoly capitalism and presented their doctrine. The resultant limitations are reflected vividly in all their works, as well as the revolutionary theories, strategies and tactics they proposed. Marxism is also a revolutionary doctrine based on an analysis of social, economic and class relations in Britain, Germany and other developed capitalist countries. So this doctrine does not provide solutions to the theoretical and practical problems in the revolution and construction in former colonies and semi-colonies which make up the overwhelming majority of the nations on earth.
Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers’ societies, and office employees’ unions. Without big banks socialism would be impossible ... our task is here merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive ... This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods; this will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society. Vladimir Lenin Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?[1] Written: October 1, 1917 First Published: October 14, 1917 in the magazine Prosveshcheniye No. 1-2. Published according to the magazine text.
J. V. Stalin ANARCHISM or SOCIALISM? December, 1906 — January, 1907 I THE DIALECTICAL METHOD Lastly, the Anarchists tell us reproachfully that "dialectics . . . provides no possibility of getting, or jumping, out of oneself, or of jumping over oneself" (see Nobati, No. 8. Sh. G.). Now that is the downright truth, Messieurs Anarchists! Here you are absolutely right, my dear sirs: the dialectical method does not, indeed, provide such a possibility. But why not? Because "jumping out of oneself, or jumping over oneself" is an exercise for wild goats, while the dialectical method was created for human beings. That is the secret! . . . Such, in general, are the Anarchists' views on the dialectical method. Clearly, the Anarchists fail to understand the dialectical method of Marx and Engels; they have conjured up their own dialectics, and it is against this dialectics that they are fighting so ruthlessly. page 313 All we can do is to laugh as we gaze at this spectacle, for one cannot help laughing when one sees a man fighting his own imagination, smashing his own inventions, while at the same time heatedly asserting that he is smashing his opponent.
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung ON CONTRADICTION August 1937 II. THE UNIVERSALITY OF CONTRADICTION In war, offence and defence, advance and retreat, victory and defeat are all mutually contradictory phenomena. One cannot exist without the other. The two aspects are at once in conflict and in interdependence, and this constitutes the totality of a war, pushes its development forward and solves its problems. Every difference in men's concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction. Objective contradictions are reflected in subjective thinking, and this process constitutes the contradictory movement of concepts, pushes forward the development of thought, and ceaselessly solves problems in man's thinking. Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party's life would come to an end. Thus it is already clear that contradiction exists universally and in all processes, whether in the simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological phenomena.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. - Karl Marx
As a national war of resistance is going on, we must also contend for military power for the nation. If we fall victim to infantil- ism on the question of military power, we shall achieve nothing. It is very difficult for the working people, who have been for several thousand years de- ceived and intimidated by the reactionary ruling classes, to awaken to the importance of having guns in their own hands. Now that the oppression of Japa- nese imperialism and the nation-wide resistance have pushed the working people into the arena of war, Com- munists should prove themselves the most conscien- tious leaders in this war. Every Communist must grasp this truth: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.~' Our principle is: the Party controls the gun, the gun will never be allowed to control the Party. But it is also true that with guns in our hands we can build up the Party organizations, as the Eighth Route Army has built up a powerful Party organiza- tion in northern China. We can also train cadres, estab- lish schools, develop culture and promote mass move- ments. Everything in Yenan has been brought about by the gun. Anything can grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the main component of the political power of the state. Whoever wants to seize state.power and to keep it must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the omnipotence of war; yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolu- tionary war, and this is good, not bad - indeed it is a Marxist concept. With the help of guns the Russian Communists brought about socialism. We shall bring about a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism shows us that the working class and the labouring people cannot defeat the armed bourgeois and landlords unless they have guns, and in this sense we can even say that the whole world can be reshaped only with the gun. We are for the abolition of war, [...]
Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational liberalism. People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work. Liberalism is a manifestation of opportunism and conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the revolution. We must use Marxism, which is positive in spirit, to overcome liberalism, which is negative. A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses; he should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any private person, and more concerned about others than about himself. Only thus can he be considered a Communist. All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.