QUOTES

 This week in "Quotes", I take you to the other end of the political spectrum.  Vladimir Lenin was the founder of the Soviet Russian Republic in 1917 and then headed the Soviet Union from 1922 - 1924.  He played a leading role in overthrowing the tsarist government in the successful Russian revolution.  His theories are an outgrowth of those espoused by Karl Marx, the father of communism.  Be aware that I do not necessarily like or promote anything found in his quotations I have found.  They are here to give you a touch of history through his mind.

"There can be no real and effective freedom in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites."

"The only serious organizational principal the active workers of our movement can accept is strict secrecy, strict selection of members and the training of professional revolutionaries."

"The soviets are a new state apparatus which, in the first place, provides an armed force of workers and peasants; and this force is not divorced from the people, as was the old standing army, but is very closely bound up with the people.  From the military point of view, this force is incomparably more powerful than previous forces;  from the revolutionary point of view, it cannot be replaced by anything else."

"Does not the whole history of socialism, particularly of French socialism, which is so rich in revolutionary striving, show us that when the working people themselves take power in their hands the ruling classes resort to unheard-of crimes and shootings if it is a matter of protecting their money bags."

"Experience has taught us that it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by confiscation and expropriation." 

"The war of 1914-1918 [WWI] was imperialist on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital."

"In capitalist society, under the conditions most favorable to its development, we have more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic.  But this democracy is always restricted by the narrow framework of capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in reality, a democracy for the minority, only for the possessing classes, only for the rich.  Freedom in a capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics:  freedom for the slaveowners."

"We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles. "

I might have to do more by Lenin at another time.