September 30

Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.

Karl Marx
from Letter to Bracke (In Brunswick) in Critique of the Gotha Progamme (May 5, 1875)

September 29

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

Frederick Engels
from The Principles of Communism (1847)

September 28

It is only in revolutionary struggle against the capitalists of every country, and only in union with the working women and men of the whole world, that we will achieve a new and brighter future-the socialist brotherhood of the workers.

Alexandra Kollontai
from Our Tasks (1917)

September 27

The revolution will move forward until its consolidation is total. The time is still far off when there can be a period of relative calm. And life is always revolution.

Antonio Gramsci
The Russian Maximalists (1916)

September 26

The practical task of a reconstruction of society may be correctly solved by the application of a scientific policy of the working class, i.e., a policy based on scientific theory; this scientific theory, in the case of the proletarian, is the theory founded by Karl Marx.

Nikolai Bukharin
from the Introduction to Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology (1921)

September 25

They have done their best and their worst to crush and enslave us. Their politicians have betrayed us, their courts have thrown us into jail without trial and their soldiers have shot our comrades dead in their tracks.

The worm turns at last, and so does the worker.

Eugene V. Debs
from Arouse, ye slaves! (1906)

September 24

Anyone who doubts the inevitability of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a necessary stage of its victory over the bourgeoisie, facilitates the conditions for the victory of the latter; anyone who doubts or renounces the political party of the proletariat, is helping to weaken and disorganize the working class.

Lev Kamenev
from The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (June 1920)

September 23

If, contrary to all the efforts of our enemies, the modern labor movement marches triumphantly forward, its head raised high, then it owes this first and foremost to its calm understanding of the lawfulness of objective historical development, its understanding that "capitalist society with the inevitability of a natural process creates its own negation, namely, the expropriation of the expropriators, the socialist overturn." In this, its understanding, the labor movement sees a reliable guarantee of its final victory. And from this same source it draws not only its ability to surge forward but also its patience ; not only strength for action, but also the courage to stand firm and to endure.

Rosa Luxemburg
from Marxist Theory and the Proletariat (1903)

September 22

The division of society into a small, excessively rich class and a large, propertyless class of wage-workers results in a society suffocating from its own superfluity, while the great majority of its members is scarcely, or even not at all, protected from extreme want. This state of affairs becomes daily more absurd and — more unnecessary. It must be abolished, it can be abolished.

Frederick Engels
from the Introduction to Marx's Wage Labor and Capital (1891)

September 21

Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught. The movement will then find itself on sure and firm ground. "Quantity will do it"

Rosa Luxemburg
from the Introduction to Reform or Revolution (1900)

September 20

It is common knowledge that the class interests of the bourgeoisie are built on the foundation of capitalist exploitation. It seeks profits and still more profits.

The bourgeois class itself is divided into several strata, and each of those into several groups. In their pursuit of profits, the capitalists not only unscrupulously exploit the proletariat; even within their own class the capitalists do not scruple to swallow up their rivals in competition — the big fish swallows the little fish, the big bourgeoisie swallows the petty and middle bourgeoisie, one group squeezes out and swallows another group.

The bourgeoisie strives to possess the means of production and the market of its own country. And since its greed for profits knows no limits, the bourgeoisie strives to expand beyond its own country, to seize foreign markets, sources of raw materials and areas for capital investment, thus subjugating other nations and exploiting them. At the same time it squeezes out the bourgeoisie or rival capitalists of other countries.

The exploitation of wage labour, competition, the squeezing out, suppressing and swallowing of rivals among the capitalists themselves, the resorting to war and even world war, the utilization of all means to secure a monopoly position in its own country and throughout the world — such is the inherent character of the profit-seeking bourgeoisie. This is the class basis of bourgeois nationalism and of all bourgeois ideologies.

Liu Shaoqi
from "The Bourgeois-Nationalist Concept of the Nation" in Internationalism and Nationalism (1952)

September 19

Revolutions take place where there are a series of insurmountable contradictions in a country...It is the example of a small people that challenges the laws of a false science called "geopolitics" and — in the very jaws of the monster, as Martí called it — ventures to hurl its cries of liberty.

Che Guevara
from Political Sovereignty and Economic Independence (March 20, 1960)

September 18

(A)ll science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

Karl Marx
from Chapter 48: The Trinity Formula of Capital Vol. III (1863-1883)

September 17

We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!

VI Lenin
from Dogmatism And “Freedom of Criticism” in What Is To Be Done? (1901)

September 16

Never become alienated from the masses; learn from them and help them. Lead a collective life, inquire into the concerns of the people around you, study their problems their problems and abide by the rules of discipline

Zhou Enlai
from Guidelines for Myself (March 18, 1943)

September 15

And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord.

V.I Lenin
from "The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State"
in The State and Revolution (1917)

September 14

(A) revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

Mao Zedong
from Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (March 1927)

September 13

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it — when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., — in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realisations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property — labour and conversion into capital.

Karl Marx
from "Private Property and Communism" in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

September 12

We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
from "Proletarians and Communists", in Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

September 11

Ending terrorism is our task. It is the task of us who fight for people’s equality, for their rights and dignity. State terrorism will end by overthrowing terrorist states. Non-state terrorism must be eradicated by putting an end to the hardships, discrimination, exploitation and suppression that lead people to desperation and make them fall prey to reactionary and inhuman organisations. It can be eradicated by exposing religion, ethnicism, racism and any reactionary ideology, which has no respect for people. Our response is to fight for the creation of an open, free and equal society in which people, their lives, dignity and well being are valued.

Mansoor Hekmat
from Ending Terrorism is Our Task (September 14, 2001)

September 10

Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source – next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.

Frederick Engels
The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1876)

September 9

The political freedoms, the right of assembly and association, and the freedom of the press — those are our weapons. Are we to sit back and abstain while somebody tries to rob us of them? It is said that a political act on our part implies that we accept the exiting state of affairs. On the contrary, so long as this state of affairs offers us the means of protesting against it, our use of these means does not signify that we recognise the prevailing order.

Frederick Engels
from Apropos Of Working-Class Political Action (September 21, 1871)

September 8

It is folly, not revolutionism, to deprive ourselves in advance of any freedom of action, openly to inform an enemy who is at present better armed than we are whether we shall fight him, and when. To accept battle at a time when it is obviously advantageous to the enemy, but not to us, is criminal; political leaders of the revolutionary class are absolutely useless if they are incapable of "changing tack, or offering conciliation and compromise" in order to take evasive action in a patently disadvantageous battle.

V.I. Lenin
from Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)

September 7

No matter how hard the reactionaries try to prevent the advance of the wheel of history, revolution will take place sooner or later and will surely triumph.

Mao Zedong
from "Speech at the Meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution" (November 6, 1957)

September 6

Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.

V.I. Lenin
from The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913)

September 5

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.

from Socialism and Man in Cuba (1965)
Ernesto Che Guevara

September 4

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

from Theses On Feuerbach (1845)
by Karl Marx