Sam Dolgoff Quotes

We are not making this demand for the sake of a principle, but in the interests of the proletarian class.

The working class will not halt until socialism has been realized.

I was working with C. L. R. James; I believed in Marxist ideas about the labor and movement and the workers being the secret to the future. And I learned differently just by being in Detroit and being married to Jimmy Boggs.

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

Socialism has not struck root very deeply in the United States, the very heart of the capitalist world, and that the workers there have not yet succeeded in organizing an independent political party on the English model.

The American Communists had thrived as champions of domestic reform.

Early in 1888 one or two of us got together to establish our own Sheffield Socialist Society.

We are with you in this work. Workingmen must form a party of their own, take charge of the government, dispose gilded fraud, and put honest toil in power.

I was taken in by what might be called the Hard Times version of the Communists' advertising or recruiting technique.

To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists or landlords form an integral part. ORGANIZE, that a solid, compact and intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of action for the revolutionary forces of the future.

It is impossible for any political party of "Labor" to reach power without concessions to the Right--to the middle class--at the expense of basic principles. "Labor" (or "Socialist") parties lose their identity and eventually are found to differ only on minor points from the "conservative" contenders for power. Labor Partyism is class-collaboration in the political field and it is just as disastrous for the workers as class-collaboration has been in the economic field

In Russia bureaucracy as the ruling class is master of production and produce, and the Russian workers are an exploited class.

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

Why does the great body of workingmen still permit itself to be ruled and exploited by the capitalists? Why are they not in a position to drive the minority of exploiters from power? Because they are an unorganized, undisciplined, individualistic and ignorant mass. The majority is impotent because it consists of a divided crowd of individuals each one of whom wishes to act according to his own impulse, regard his own interests.

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

Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal.... Of far greater importance is the economic organization of the working class.

The Communist is a Socialist in a violent hurry.

Ever since I left college, my political interests have been centered in the work of the Communist Party …. My poetry has contained social implications that can be resolved only by the success of the Communist Party.

A struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the Earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.

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

The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown

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.

Labor is, on the one hand, more and more furnished by a class; Property or Capital, on the other, held and controlled by another class. Here you have workers without property—the proletariat. There you have property without work—or capital…. The workers without property are excluded from their products, from the riches they create—which accumulate in the hands of the property holders, capitalists and large land-owners.

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