Denis Fahey Quotes

Whoever triumphs, the result of the present upheaval will doubtless be to keep the yoke of militarism as firmly as ever on the neck of the people of China. As Europe has learned to its sorrow, it is possible to win the war and lose the peace, so China is beginning to understand that that blessed word democracy does not mean peace, and that prosperity and order are not necessary corollaries of a successful revolution and a republican form of government.

Among other things the Russian experiment, no less than the experience of Socialist parties in Western Europe which have got some degree of power, shows clearly that not even the most cataclysmic revolution can create overnight those habits of mind and that social machinery necessary to the successful functioning of a new social order.

Of course we were communists. The Czar’s Secret Police and the newspapers said anyone who was against the Czar was a communist. So we were. Most of us revolutionaries in the early 1900s were young and had little idea of who Karl Marx was, much less his historical and economic theories. Communists wanted the people to be free and control the government and not the Czar. Today we call that democracy. Communism became something else in Russia..

By Revolution, we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized and a world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and misery of imperial wars.

I will issue a few revolutionary proclamations and then shut up shop

We are revolutionists from head to foot; revolutionists we were; revolutionists we are; revolutionists we shall remain until the very end.

A change for the better in Russia is an indisputable fact. The country is recovering from the epidemic, albeit slowly, and is exhibiting signs of hopeful vitality. The revival, however, is not to be credited to a varying in the dogma of the Communist party. Communism has not tempered its essence. It has only adapted itself to circumstances.

This is only a preliminary step toward a similar revolution everywhere.

It is not national interests we are upholding — we claim that the interests of socialism, the interests of world socialism, rank higher than national interests, higher than the interests of the state. We are defenders of the socialist fatherland.

Only an understanding with the peasant can save the social revolution until the revolution is ready to break out in other countries.... The situation is now this: either we must satisfy economically the peasant of the middle group, or it will be impossible to maintain the power of the proletariat in Russia.

Violence is a holy and historically progressive force.

Ours is a people's democratic dictatorship, led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance.

The sudden collapse of the monarchy that had ruled Russia for three hundred years led to chaos. Russia immediately became, as one participant put it, 'the freest country in the world.'

What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?

Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China - the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war.

My parents fled from North Korea during the Korean War because they despised the North Korean Communist regime. They fled to seek freedom and came to South Korea.

Once there was a need for people like me to fight, to put things in order. Now we have order and prosperity.

Growing terrorism, permissive societies, democracy collapsing through lack of law and order. If things continue on their present track, the disintegration of Western societies will occur much sooner than you think under the hammer blows of fascism and communism. Freedom is not something that does not have a breaking point, and your enemies would like you to reach that point.

A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism.

But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the course of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to Communism.

It's a curious fact about Americans that in their most fiercely patriotic moods they are willing to set aside their Constitution, the guarantor of their freedom, in order to prosecute war -- yet they insist that the war is for 'freedom'.

I hate extremes of any kind. Communism [seeks] the domination of the state over the individual... All my life I have stood against banning Communism or other extremist organisations because, if you do that, they go underground and it gives them an excitement that they don't get if they are allowed to pursue their policies openly. We'll beat them into the ground on argument...

The messages on our banners in 1979 - freedom, opportunity, family, enterprise, ownership - are now inscribed on the banners in Leipzig, Warsaw, Budapest and even Moscow.

In the 19th century it was basically nationality and people trying to define their nationalism and create states which would reflect their nationalism. In the 20th century, ideology came to the fore, largely, but not exclusively, as a result of the Russian Revolution and we have fascism, communism and liberal democracy competing with each other. Well that's pretty much over.

We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.