And by that I mean, "The last capitalist will sell us the rope we use to hang him" or "when our time comes, we will make no excuses for the terror". Those are bangers, to be sure, but they can't really be brought up in casual conversation. And I don't mean to construe them as overly edgy, because I understand a revolution isn't a dinner party, but I think there's something to be said sometimes for stressing the inherent humanity of communism.
Maybe I'm a little soft, but I love
"If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine" - Che Guevara
and
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist." - Helder Camara
I love "women hold up half the sky", its not even communist or anything it's just cool, and people like it and then you tell them it was by mao is great too.
Mao has a lot of good quotes that people don't immediately realize are from a communist perspective.
a small modification should be: men don’t hold up shit.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France
Debs, motherfuckers.
". . . .while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
I love that one. This one also hits:
I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.
I love this one, from his eulogy:
But the funny part of it is that when Debs says 'comrade' it is all right. He means it. That old man with the burning eyes actually believes that there can be such a thing as the brotherhood of man. And that's not the funniest part of it. As long as he's around I believe it myself."
“If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.” -James Connolly
This happening at the same time of unemployment in poor countries is weird.
Is this the same Buckminster Fuller as in buckminsterfullerene? It's crazy how many people you learn about in school turn out to be leftists.
Stephen Jay Gould has a good quote that always stuck with me:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
In the communities where I'm from, we care less about Marx's Capital and more about reshaping what's practical.
That's from his last message to the Chilean people, right? :virgil-sad:
“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.” - Herman Melville
"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by mutual understanding." - Albert Einstein
I also like this passage from Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell:
'Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by "over-production"; it's not caused by drink or laziness; and it's not caused by "over-population". It's caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's Their Land," "It's Their Water," "It's Their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?" And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of the gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you'll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice" in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.'
'In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence.'"
The life of a single human being is worth more than all the property of the richest man on earth.
Che Guevara
A little wordy, but hey we're leftos.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.
-Albert Einstein
Whole essay. It's one of my favorite bits of socialist writing, but it's not terribly quotable.
Thank you for that. Its amazing how the vast majority of that commentary is still applicable. The situation now is the same as it was then.
Very astute prediction by Joey Steel:
What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.
With nothing to compete against, with no fear of a Communist opponent, the capitalist nations may once again enforce their full brutality upon the world.
