November 1

It’s not communism that expropriates the peasant’s field, or the merchant’s store, that ruins the small and medium industrialists, helpless to put up with the competition of the trusts. It’s not communism that set alight class struggle. But it’s capitalism that destroys the property of the little people in order to take it over; that buys at a low price the labor of the worker and makes weigh upon him the full weight of oppression and coercion. War, economic crisis, unemployment, the expropriation and ruin of the middle classes are not our doing. They are the result of the private property of the great means of production, which has become — after having been a stimulant — a hindrance to economic life and progress. The property of the great means of production is the only one that should be socialized, if we want to lay down the base for a rational economy.

Maurice Thorez
from The Popular Front 1960

October 31

What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

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

October 30

Before a new social system can be built on the site of the old, the site must be swept clean. Remnant old ideas reflecting the old system invariably persist in people's minds for a long time, and they do not easily give way.

Mao Zedong
from Editor's Notes from Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside (1955)

October 29

To work, everybody to work, the cause of the world socialist revolution must and will triumph.

VI Lenin
from Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (October 1917)

October 28

...We should try to link our personal lives with the cause for which we struggle, with the cause of building communism.

Nadezhda K. Krupskaya
from On Communist Ethics (July 12, 1924)

October 27

If it is now, more than ever before, the duty of every State and its leaders not to permit actions which are capable of jeopardizing universal peace. That applies with all the more force to the leaders of the Great Powers.

Nikita Khrushchev
from Of What Freedom Are You Speaking? (April 22, 1961)

October 26

Socialism is not spontaneous. It does not arise of itself. It has abiding principles according to which the major means of production and distribution ought to be socialised if exploitation of the many by the few is to be prevented; if, that is to say, egalitarianism in the economy is to be protected.

Kwame Nkrumah
from African Socialism Revisited (1967)

October 25

As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

Karl Marx
from Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, Section A: Idealism and Materialism in The German Ideology (1845)

October 24

And it is not our object to destroy civilization. We do not desire to "divide up," as people are in the habit of saying; we do not wish to throw humanity back into barbarism; on the contrary, we desire to lift the whole of humanity to the highest thinkable plane of civilization. We wish every individual without exception to have a share in the means of culture and education according to his capacities and his needs. This is the loftiest ideal that the human race can set before itself; and this ideal is possible today because it is only now that, in consequence of the thousands of years of progress towards civilization and of the tremendous acquisitions which man has gained in this age of culture; because only now are all the means and possibilities given through which we may realize this ideal condition in the way that the majority of men desire to realize it.

August Bebel
from Socialism and the Student (December 1905)

October 23

Unity must be won, and only the workers, the class-conscious workers themselves can win it—by stubborn and persistent effort.

V.I. Lenin
from Unity (May 30, 1914)

October 22

The subjective conscious activity of the people is a great motive force.

Liu Shaoqi
from Work Report to the 2nd Session of the 8th National Congress of the Party (May 5, 1958)

October 21

We...reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and forever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. We maintain on the contrary that all moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its indignation against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed. That in this process there has on the whole been progress in morality, as in all other branches of human knowledge, no one will doubt. But we have not yet passed beyond class morality.

Frederick Engels
from Morality and Law Eternal Truths in Anti-Dühring (1877)

October 20

People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.

Mao Zedong
from American Imperialism Is Closely Surrounded By The Peoples Of The World (November 28, 1964>

October 19

Everybody talks about imperialism. But imperialism is merely monopoly capitalism.

VI Lenin
from Can We Go Forward If We Fear To Advance Towards Socialism? in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (October 1917)

October 18

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

Karl Marx
from Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)

October 17

There is no small enemy nor insignificant force, because no longer are there isolated peoples.

Che Guevara
from Speech to the United Nations (December 11, 1964)

October 16

The leaders of the petty bourgeoisie “must” teach the people to trust the bourgeoisie. The proletarians must teach the people to distrust the bourgeoisie.

VI Lenin
from The Peculiar Nature of the Tactics Which Follow from the Above in The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution

October 15

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Karl Marx
from Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

October 14

The masses must have their own staunch vanguard which, for its part, must maintain close ties with the widest possible section of the masses. Only thus will the emancipation of the people be possible.

Liu Shaoqi
from Concerning the Mass Line of Our Party in On the Party (1945)

October 13

When wages have disappeared, when all are upon a basis of economic equality, when the position of manager, director, organiser, etc., brings no material advantage, the desire for it will be less widespread and less keen, and the danger of oppressive action by the management will be largely nullified. Nevertheless, management imposed on unwilling subordinates will not be tolerated; where the organiser has chosen the assistants, the assistants will be free to leave, or change him; where the assistants choose the organiser, they will be free to change him. Co-operation for the common good is necessary, but freedom, not domination, is the goal.

E. Sylvia Pankhurst
from Part One of Communism and its Tactics

October 12

Yes, we must fight, struggle, be ready for defeats and disappointments, but once we have consciously set our feet on the right road, with a clear vision of the task ahead, nothing can daunt us and all causes for pessimism disappear.

M.N. Roy
from On Non-Violence and the Masses (November 10, 1923)

October 11

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.

Karl Marx
from Part I: Feuerbach.
Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, Section D: Proletarians and Communism in The German Ideology (1845)

October 10

We should therefore see ourselves as in need of change and capable of being changed. We should not look upon ourselves as immutable, perfect and sacrosanct, as persons who need not and cannot be changed. When we pose the task of remoulding ourselves in social struggle, we are not demeaning ourselves; the objective laws of social development demand it. Unless we do so, we cannot make progress, or fulfill the task of changing society.

Liu Shaoqi
from Why Communists Must Undertake Self Cultivation in How to be a Good Communist (July 1939)

October 9

The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.

Che Guevara
from Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution (October 8, 1960 )

October 8

Comrades, just as the earth, after a long drought, pants for rain, so the workers of the world pant for the end of the accursed war, for unification. This striving of the workers for unification is the greatest factor in world history.

Gregory Zinoviev
from Closing Address at 2nd Congress of Comintern (August 7, 1920)

October 7

War unleashes — at the same time as the reactionary forces of the capitalist world — the generating forces of social revolution which ferment in its depths.

Rosa Luxemburg
from In the Storm (1904)

October 6

We stand firmly for peace and against war. However, if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of it. Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude towards any disturbance: first, we are against it; second, we are not afraid of it.

Mao Zedong
from On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 27, 1957)

October 5

It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear...

Bhagat Singh
from The Red Pamphlet (April 8, 1929)

October 4

Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years. To interpret history from this viewpoint is historical materialism; standing
in opposition to this viewpoint is historical idealism.

Mao Zedong
from Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle (August 14, 1949)

October 3

Workers in the bourgeois countries must fight for equal rights for men and women.

Nadezhda K. Krupskaya
from Preface to The Emancipation of Women in Writings of V.I. Lenin (November 30, 1933)

October 2

Ours is the age that can meet the challenge of the times when we work out so new a relationship of theory to practice that the proof of the unity is in the Subject's own self-development. Philosophy and revolution will first then liberate the innate talents of men and women who will become whole. Whether or not we recognise that this is the task history has "assigned," to our epoch, it is a task that remains to be done.

Raya Dunayevskaya
from New Passions and New Forces in Philosophy & Revolution (1973)

October 1

Marx's economic doctrine is the most profound, comprehensive and detailed confirmation and application of his theory.

V.I. Lenin
from The Marxist Doctrine in Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism