Robert M. La Follette Quotes

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

The revolution... is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

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

The socialist proletariat rejects any responsibility for the events being brought about by a blinded, a maddened ruling class …. All responsibility falls to the wielders of power today! It is "to be or not to be!" World-history is the world-court!

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

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

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.

Communism is in conflict with human nature.

The slaves of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss.

The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society.

Every class struggle is a political struggle

Liberation is no longer, and can be no longer, merely a national concern. The dimension of the struggle, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks so clearly saw, is international: its road is the socialist revolution

The majority in every society is always the backward. The diligent are no more than thirty percent of the society. It is a natural law that the diligent breed will exploit the backward breed as best they can, like the fish at sea, where the strong eat the weak. It is inconsequential whether the diligent are capitalists and merchants, as in the bourgeois government, or whether the diligent are the managers and supervisors, the intellectuals and the allotters as in the communist government. Ultimately, the diligent will exploit the laboring backward to the best of their ability.

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

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.

When socialism comes into power, the Roman Church will advocate socialism with the same vigor [with which] it is now favoring feudalism and slavery.

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.

Marxist revolutions generally happened in countries that otherwise could not have carried out an industrial revolution.

This relationship between freedom and responsibility has not always been clearly understood. Some ideologies have placed greater importance on the concept of individual freedom, while others on the unquestioning commitment to the social group. Without a proper balance, unrestricted freedom is as dangerous as imposed social responsibility. Great social injustices have resulted from extreme economic freedom and capitalist greed, while at the same time cruel oppression of people's basic liberties has been justified in the name of communist ideals and society's interests. Either extreme is undesirable.

Organize, transport your class antagonisms from the economic sphere, where they are perpetrated against you, where they alone can succeed. Take power, become the master of the state. Then, instead of being subject to capitalist law you will make socialist law.

The Constituent Assembly sets for itself as a fundamental task the suppression of all forms of exploitation of man by man and the complete abolition of class distinctions in society. It aims to crush unmercifully the exploiter, to reorganize society on a socialistic basis, and to bring about the triumph of Socialism throughout the world

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

Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it.

The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.

There are two great enemies of thought and progress, the aristocracy of royalty and the aristocracy of gold.