Joe Slovo Quotes

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

If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.

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

A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect.

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no contradiction between the separate organizations of revolutionary vanguard militants and their participation in the mass organizations of the working class.

No faction is better or worse than any other. All come from the same mould; they are all products of capitalist influence in the working class movement. And they are a poison that destroys our Party and the working class movement in Korea.

It is hard to build a communist state while reformers are slandering socialism, destroying its values, discrediting the party and liquidating its leading role, doing away with social discipline, and sowing chaos and anarchy everywhere.

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.

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

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...

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

History teaches that apparent power of organization and armed resistance are of no avail to a cause psychologically undermined. "Revolutions," as a matter of fact, are primarily psychological phenomena.

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.

The great leaders called the working class first whenever difficult and gigantic tasks arose for the revolution, and ushered in fresh heydays of the revolution by relying on them.

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.

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.

I would have put more emphasis on bringing working class people together to fight for a government that works for all of us.

I would prefer to use a very inclusive definition of the working class. I'd like to include all of those people who are, if they're not exploited by an immediate employer over them, they're exploited by the system and therefore have a cause to want to change the system. Having a very inclusive definition of the working class creates a great opportunity for organizing people.

Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it.[...] This superintendent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment.

In the final account, the fate of our republic will depend upon whether the masses of the peasantry will go hand in hand with the working class

Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism

People of the world, unite and defeat the U. S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.

We Communists are like seeds and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them.

Debs is greater than Lincoln. Debs is the spokesman of the great struggling working class of all races, nationalities, creeds, sexes.