Murray Bookchin Quotes

It's not the possibility of Stalinism in the U.S. that's worrying me, it's the fact that the Stalinist C.P. seems doomed to fail and to bring down with it all the humanitarian tendencies I personally believe in--all the while acting as a mould on which its obverse the fascist mentality is made--and this recent massacre is certainly a sign of Stalinism's weakness not of its strength. None of that has anything to do with Marx's work--but it certainly does influence one's attitude towards a given political party.

I would say that today the real support for State power and totalitarianism comes from the Communist parties and the Socialist parties and, where they are sizable, the Trotskyist groups. They are the ones that really frighten me.

I categorically deny that. The American left today as I know it - and believe me, I am very familiar with the American left - is going toward authoritarianism, toward totalitarianism. It's becoming the real right in the United States.

Those who are leftists, once in power, are not different from other parties.

We can't afford to go down the dead end roads of Parliamentary Socialism or Fascistic Bolshevism.

The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian.

A part of society in our countries would still prefer an authoritarian regime today. These are people with the mentality of Homo sovieticus. But they also exist in France - just think of Le Pen - and even in Finland and Sweden.

I got deeply involved with the Trotskyists. I assumed simply that my enemy's enemies were my friends.

I don't advocate Stalinist monolithic state structures any more than I advocate capitalistic monoliths. Unfortunately, human society tends to the monolithic, whether you go to the left or right, everybody in leathers, or everybody holding Chairman Mao's book, and if everybody goes to one end of the pitch, I always go to the other.

The Democratic Party went far to the left, I think, and left some of us stranded on the beach, so we went to the Republican Party.

The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.

I'm not politically motivated. I used to be - passionately. I used to be very Left wing. Then I went very Right wing, and now I rest somewhere in the middle.

There are lots of bad Republicans, there are no good Democrats.

The greatest danger for our people [Nazi Party members] is not to be found in Marxism but rather in our middle class parties.

The difference between the Socialists and the Communists is that … the Communists mean it.

The Left is deeply invested in Obama's presidency; they believe he's too important, symbolically, to fail.

Well-intentioned liberalism always leads to progressivism. There's no choice there. Once that action is taken the only thing you can run on is totalitarianism - you have no choice.

I've been politically radical my whole life, so when the left attacks, that hurts more.

I so totally refuse to 'make an effort to understand' the people who have become vectors for a fascist spectacular politics.

But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail.

The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is 'left' and what is 'right'? Why should Hitler be 'right' and Stalin, his temporary friend, be 'left'? Who is 'reactionary' and who is 'progressive'? Reaction against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos is not to be commended.

A lot of my father's generation were thinking about communism and had deep liberal and progressive connections. He never admitted whether he was a card-carrying communist party member but I think its possible.

If you read Mein Kampf, Hitler's book, which I have outside, I bought it when I was eleven, Hitler said, "democracy inevitably leads to Marxism" - now you work that one out. It's so interesting that when the poor have the vote they will use it to remove the privileges of the rich.

[He] saw communism for the sham that it was--a bunch of brutes who seized power in the name of the people, only to repress the very people they claimed to champion.

(T)he Left has moved so far to the left that this pro-choice, lesbian feminist is now considered a Right-Winger!