Jules Guesde Quotes

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

Peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin. It is much more likely, of course, that even in small states socialism will not be achieved without civil war, and for that reason the only program of international Social-Democracy must be recognition of civil war, though violence is, of course, alien to our ideals.

This is the absolute truth: and on this truth our tactics must be based. All tactics that are not based on this are false, and lead the proletariat to terrible defeat.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

Above all, what socialist, without flushing with shame, maintains he is not a revolutionary? We say: none!.

You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying.

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.

We do not believe that the Marxist program, which embodies the continuity of the experience of the actual class struggle and real revolutions of the last one hundred and fifty years, is a definitely closed book.

Our battle is against the bourgeoisie as the enemy of German Socialism and the saboteur of national freedom.

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.

Overthrow the capitalist class.

Workers! Leave the Socialist Party. It is your enemy and ours.

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

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

The workers under capitalism have no fatherland …. We shall not let ourselves be dragged into warring for one set of masters against another.

Mass action [demonstrations and general strikes] is the instinctive action of the proletariat, gradually developing more conscious and organized forms …. It is extra-parliamentary in method, although political in purpose and result…. Mass action is the proletariat itself in action, dispensing with bureaucrats and intellectuals, acting through its own initiative; precisely this … horrifies the soul of petty bourgeois Socialism.

The identification of the intellectuals with the revolutionary movement is dependent … on their complete rift with bourgeois ideology and liberalism …. The relationship of the intellectuals as a group with the working class is essentially an alliance. But the alliance can be established only on the … unadulterated principles of Marxism-Leninism.

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

Marxist literature dealt with wage exploitation, exploitation of women by men, the exploitation of people of color by white peoples, the exploitation of colonial countries by imperialist countries. And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.

Only idiots think that the proletariat will win a majority right away. First we topple the bourgeoisie. Then we seize power. That is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Harmony? No! Class war! Hatred to the death for the criminal bourgeoisie!

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.

War is coming. That’s inevitable. The capitalist world has reached a state of putrid ferment, and people are already affected by the poison of chauvinism and nationalism. I think we shall yet witness an all-European war. The proletariat? I hardly think the proletariat will find the strength to prevent a blood-bath…The proletariat will suffer terribly, of course, such, alas, is its fate for the time being. But its enemies will enfeeble one another; that, too, is inevitable.

A bourgeois-and-workers' revolution is a betrayal of the working class

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