Vladimir Lenin Quotes

The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.

Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.

The state is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies.

With the coming of peace, the workers are no longer needed as soldiers; they are no longer comrades, defenders of the fatherland, heroes. Once more they become beasts of burden, objects of exploitation.

[Capitalism is] a special machine for the suppression of one class by another.

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.

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.

Whether the state be Marxist or capitalist, it makes no difference. The dominant ideology is that of sovereignty.

The contest will be between the capitalists and operatives; for into these two classes it must ultimately divide society.

There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital.

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

This is the problem for which revolutionary theory has yet to find the right solution, if there is one. The difficulty is that the economic interests of the two classes are antagonistic.

It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - 'voluntarily' sell - himself every day and hour to the 'beast of property.'

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

The system has for its object an increase of persons that are to intervene between the producer and the consumer, living on the product of the land and labour of others, diminishing the power of the first, and increasing the number of the last.

It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

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

Capitalists personally are often the mildest-mannered men that ever shattered a family or drained a workingman of his marrow.

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.

The profit-grinding system is maintained by competition, or veiled war, not only between the conflicting classes, but also within the classes themselves: there is always war among the workers for bare subsistence, and among their masters, the employers and middle-men, for the share of the profit wrung out of the workers; lastly, there is competition always, and sometimes open war, among the nations of the civilised world for their share of the world-market.

The collectivizations and socializations in the economy count for nothing when State power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie.