78 quotes
The owl of wisdom flies, as is well known, after sunset. Thus the theory of a "socialist" system of money and prices was developed only after twilight of inflationist illusions.
The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
Independent character is like independent thought, it cannot be developed without criticism.
The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
A nationalized planned economy needs democracy, as the human body needs oxygen.
Stalin's Problems of Leninism constitutes a codification of this ideological garbage, an official manual of narrow-mindedness, an anthology of enumerated banalities.
The Permanent Revolution (1929)
The Constituent Assembly placed itself across the path of the revolutionary movement, and was swept aside.
Terrorism and Communism (1920)
Stalin's secret police, the GPU (NKVD), has fall to the same level of the Nazi Gestapo.
An ally has to be watched just like an enemy.
The [Soviet Union] bureaucracy not only has not disappeared, yielding its place to the masses, but has turned into an uncontrolled force dominating the masses.
The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
It was as the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.
The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism.
As long as I breathe I hope for everything. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future.
Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality.
In Defense of Marxism (1942)
No, the Soviet woman is not yet free.
The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
In the period of crisis the hegemony of the United States will operate more completely, more openly, and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom.
In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.
The Russian Revolution (1930)
Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto a terrorist.
We communists know only one possession that is sacred — the life of the working man, the life of the worker, his wife and his children. That is the only possession which is sacred so far as we are concerned, and it gives us the right to do anything and everything.
How the Revolution Armed (1923)
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified, From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man.
Their Morals and Ours (1938)
The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable.
The Permanent Revolution (1929)
I know well enough, from my own experience, the historical ebb and flow. They are governed by their own laws. Mere impatience will not expedite their change.