237 quotes
To Bring political knowledge to the workers the Social-Democratss must go among all classes of the population, must dispatch units of their army in all directions
What is to be Done? (1902)
Crises of every kind - economic crises more frequently, but not only these - in their turn increase very considerably the tendency towards concentration and monopoly
Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)
To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin; and in order to apply and develop, “simple interpretation” is obviously not enough.
Communism is Soviet government plus the electrification of the whole country. Otherwise the country will remain a country of small peasant economy, and it is up to us to realize this quite clearly.
New External and Internal Position and the Problems of the Party (1920)
The danger is great. The enemy is far stronger than we are economically, just as yesterday he was far stronger than we were militarily.
Humanity has not yet evolved and we do not as yet know a type of government superior to and better than the Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Deputies.
Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.
April Thesis (1917)
Comrades, the question of substituting a tax for grain requisitioning is primarily and mainly a political question for it is essentially a question of the attitude of the working class to the peasantry.
The real emancipation of the Chinese people from age-long slavery would be impossible without the great, sincerely democratic enthusiasm which is rousing the working masses and making them capable of miracles, and which is evident from every sentence of Sun Yat-sen's platform.
To hoard surpluses of grain and other food products at a time when the people in Petrograd, in Moscow, and in dozens of non-agricultural uyezds are not only suffering from a shortage of bread, but are cruelly starving, is an enormous crime deserving the most ruthless punishment.
I don't care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it ... All this is only the road to a World Revolution.
A basic condition for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organisation of comprehensive political exposure.
What is to be Done? (1902)
Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but a republic of Soviets.
April Thesis (1917)
Under the old type of capitalism, when free competition prevailed, the export of goods was the most typical feature. Under modern capitalism, when monopolies prevail, the exporter of capital has become the typical feature.
Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)
The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government.
April Thesis (1917)
The practical activity of man had to lead his consciousness to the reptetition of various logical figures thousands of millions of times in order that these figures could obtain the significance of axioms.
We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public power which is an attribute of every state is not "directly identical" with armed population, with its "self-acting armed organization"
The State and Revolution (1917)
Our aim is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war.
It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie.
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism is combined with absorption in the narrowest forms of practical activity.
What is to be Done? (1902)