C. L. R. James Quotes

There is no alternative to class struggle.

The identification of the intellectuals with the revolutionary movement is dependent … on their complete rift with bourgeois ideology and liberalism …. The relationship of the intellectuals as a group with the working class is essentially an alliance. But the alliance can be established only on the … unadulterated principles of Marxism-Leninism.

The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.

The accumulated experience of mankind in the struggle against exploitation, synthesized in Marxism, enabled the Mozambican revolutionary movement to benefit from and absorb that experience.

History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.

I promote revolution against the Capitalists and the Social Marxists.

Many workers already realize that the rule of the Socialist or Communist party will be only the concealed form of the rule of the bourgeois class in which the exploitation and suppression of the working class remains.

Overthrow the capitalist class.

It is the historical mission of the Communist International to be the gravedigger of bourgeois society.

Under all circumstances the main task of the working class is the overthrow of the capitalists in its own country.

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.

Marxist literature dealt with wage exploitation, exploitation of women by men, the exploitation of people of color by white peoples, the exploitation of colonial countries by imperialist countries. And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.

Only idiots think that the proletariat will win a majority right away. First we topple the bourgeoisie. Then we seize power. That is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Any member of the party who … advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation, shall be expelled from membership of the party.

Between the working class and the capitalist class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class struggle for life. No glib-tongued politician can vault over it, no capitalist professor or official statistician can argue it away; no capitalist parson can veil it; no labor faker can straddle it; no “reform” architect can bridge it over. It crops up in all manner of ways

Ever greater grows the mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unemployed, ever sharper the contrast between oppressors and oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie and proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps and is the common characteristic of ever industrial country.

History is made in the class struggle and not in bed.

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

The class struggle does not permit supporting any governmental initiative or sharing in political power.

What the proletariat needs is a bath of blood.

I'm a Marxist.

Political economy regards the proletarian like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.

The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time that it constitutes and reveals them as classes.

The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.