Johann Most Quotes

Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.

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

The masses of the working-people of Scotland have read history, and are no revolutionary levelers.

The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles...Social democracy...is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh. Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.

Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.

On the other hand, one factor helps us that no other liberation struggle in this region could count on - our liberation front is characterized by relatively highly developed class forces, tested in political struggles.

You need a vanguard organization in order to overcome the dangerous potential brought about by the uneven development of class militancy and class consciousness.

The Russian revolution was to an unprecedented degree the cause of the proletariat of the whole world becoming more revolutionary.

In most revolutions, where events are drawn out, particularly after the initial flush of victory, the masses can feel the gains of the revolution slipping from their hands. The advanced sections of the proletariat, realizing the dangerous situation, begin to become impatient and attempt to recapture the initiative

We must not regard what is obsolete to us as something that is obsolete to the class, to the masses...How can one say that ‘parliamentarianism is politically obsolete’, when ‘millions’ and ‘legions’ of proletarians are not only in favor of parliamentarianism in general, but are downright ‘counter revolutionary’!?

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.

When the proletariat is not organized enough to conduct a successful struggle against the political power of the ruling class, it must be trained for such a purpose by steady and hostile instigation.

Revolution is the duty of the worker and the peasant masses and not of just a few heroes, hence the necessity to organize these masses and draw them into the struggle.

Workers thought that the moment was ripe to take possession once [and] for all the means of production. They armed for self-defense... and began to organize production on their own.... It was the right of property abolished in fact... it was a new regime, a new form of social life that was being ushered in. And the government stood by because it felt impotent to offer opposition.

From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.

The Italian proletariat needs a blood bath for it force to be renewed.

The apparent weak point of true socialist war policy lies in the fact that revolutions cannot be made “on command”

In a situation like that obtaining in Germany, I can only conceive a political general strike as a unique event in which the entire proletariat throughout the nation engages with all its might, as a life-and-death struggle, one in which our adversary is beaten down or else all our organizations, all our strength shattered or at least paralysed for years to come

In the class-struggle the conflict must always concern itself with immediate, practical objects

History by no means guarantees in advance that the broad strata of the Negro population, holding varied and confused views, many dominated by ideas alien to the class-conscious proletariat will fall into the organization of the Communist movement.

Our party is a party of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletarian revolution is the only solution of the labour problem and all our work must lead to this goal.

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

Militant Communism remains dedicated to the destruction of our society.

A bourgeois revolution is always a revolution of a minority against the majority. The proletarian revolution which aims at being truly Communist, must be a revolution of the majority against the minority

It is to the interest of the workers’ party to embitter the conflicts which lacerate the capitalist class, instead of seeking to pacify them – these antagonisms quicken the disorganization of the ruling class