New forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation changes, the coming crisis will introduce new forms of struggle that we are now unable to foresee.

(the Liberals are hypocritical everywhere, but it is doubtful whether their hypocrisy goes to such lengths and to such refinement as in England)

Those who have not learned to cut at the very roots of disruption are useless as organisers; and without an organisation the working class is nothing.

Study circles of workers and Social-Democratic intellectuals are springing up everywhere, local agitation leaflets are being widely distributed, the demand for Social-Democratic literature is increasing and is far outstripping the supply,

Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine.

The capital-exporting countries have divided the world among themselves in the figurative sense of the term. But finance capital has led to the actual division of the world.

The whole affair proved an ordinary newspaper hoax.

When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it… became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people. Various socialist doctrines immediately emerged as a reflection of and protest against this oppression

Out of this chaos will come order, the order of revolution.

But the government, in its anxiety to serve the capitalists, deliberately obscures a great deal of what is obvious to every worker.

For pity’s sake, comrade! This is indeed sheer emptiness clothed in high-sounding words.

…revolutionary propaganda can and should be conducted even in a situation that is not revolutionary. The difference between the socialists and the Communists consists in the former refusing to act in the way we act in any situation, i.e., conduct revolutionary work.

Nothing can be achieved by isolated strikes…or the vote, because “private property is sacred”, and the capitalists have accumulated such debts that the whole world is in bondage to a handful of men…There is no other way out but to abolish the exploiters’ “private property”

The masses of the workers now see more clearly…, from their own experience—and the learned pedants could see it just by reading Keynes’s book—that the “roots” of Wilson’s policy lay in sanctimonious piffle, petty-bourgeois phrase-mongering, and an utter inability to understand the class struggle

But that is why we are an organised proletarian party—not to lose heart over temporary failures, but stubbornly, unswervingly and consistently to carry on our work, even in the most difficult conditions.

That is amusing! The socialists give strikes a political character! Why… the government itself took all possible measures to give the strikes a political character. Did it not set about seizing peaceful workers, just as though they were criminals? Did it not arrest and deport them?

The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery.

All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!)

Instead of uttering absurd phrases about the necessity of ‘rationalising’ economy, would they not do better first ‘to rationalise’ their notions of the existing economy…?

You are in favour of an official language in Russia. It, is “necessary; it has been and will be of great progressive importance”. I disagree emphatically. I wrote about this long ago in Pravda, and so far have not been refuted. Your argument does not convince me in the least.

Without a strong organisation skilled in waging political struggle under all circumstances and at all times, there can be no question of that systematic plan of action, illumined by firm principles and steadfastly carried out, which alone is worthy of the name of tactics

But it is a bad thing when absurd conclusions are drawn from undeniable truths, by their oversimplification and slapdash application

The open revolutionary struggle by means of strikes, uprisings, etc., and the new election campaign will demand from our Party a clear and precise definition of its attitude to the various parties, and this is possible only on the basis of a scientific, i.e., a class analysis.

The splitting of the people into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat, the growth of ‘the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation’… unrolls before our eyes.

Poor liberals!

The whole point is that a bourgeois state which is exercising the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through a democratic republic cannot confess to the people that it is serving the bourgeoisie; it cannot tell the truth, and has to play the hypocrite.

The history of Russian Social-Democracy teems with tiny groups, which sprang up for an hour, for several months, with no roots whatever among the masses (and politics without the masses are adventurist politics), and with no serious and stable principles. In a petty-bourgeois country,

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,

The opportunist parties have become separated from the “masses”, i.e., from the broadest strata of the working people, their majority, the lowest-paid workers.

At a definite stage in the development of exchange, at a definite stage in the growth of large-scale production, namely, at the stage which was attained towards the turn of the century, exchange so internationalised economic relations and capital,

It is not he who makes no mistakes that is intelligent. There are no such men, nor can there be. It is he whose errors are not very grave and who is able to rectify them easily and quickly that is intelligent.

The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country),

Hence, it is our bounden duty to explain to the proletariat every liberal and democratic protest, to widen and support it, with the active participation of the workers,…

We are bent on more than just the democratic revolution. We are fighting for socialism, i.e., for the complete emancipation of the toilers from all oppression, economic as well as political.

We must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. 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.

This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation. The bourgeoisie are behaving like barefaced plunderers who have lost their heads; they are committing folly after folly, thus aggravating the situation and hastening their doom. All that is true.

Mr. Gorsky, your wriggling is all in vain!

The proletariat cannot achieve complete freedom, unless it achieves complete freedom for women.

After the experience both of Europe and Asia, anyone who speaks of non-class politics and non-class socialism, ought simply to be put in a cage and exhibited alongside the Australian kangaroo or something like that.

It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives.

But at the same time the bourgeoisie sees in Bolshevism only one side—insurrection, violence, terror; it endeavors therefore to prepare itself especially for resistance and opposition in that direction alone.

If you must unite…then enter into agreements to satisfy the practical aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining over principles, do not make theoretical “concessions”. This was Marx’s idea, and yet there are people among us who seek—in his name—to belittle the significance of theory!

What are the broad masses of the people? Those masses are the undeveloped proletarians and petty-bourgeois who are full of prejudices—philistine, nationalist, reactionary, clerical and so on, and so forth.

The working class needs unity. But unity can be effected only by a united organisation whose decisions are conscientiously carried out by all class-conscious workers.

The liberals cannot advocate a struggle, because they are afraid of it. They respond to the intensification of reaction by whining about a constitution, thus corrupting people’s minds, and by intensified opportunism.

Comrade workers! May Day is coming, the day when the workers of all lands celebrate Their awakening to a class- conscious life, their solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of man by man, the struggle to free the toiling millions from hunger, poverty, and humiliation.

What made the May Day celebrations…an event of outstanding importance? The large-scale participation of the workers in the strike, the huge mass meetings in the streets, the unfurling of red flags, the presentation of demands put forth…and the revolutionary character of these demands

Everyone knows that bourgeois politicians always come forward with all sorts of slogans, programmes, and platforms to deceive the people. Bourgeois politicians always, especially before elections, call themselves liberals, progressives, democrats and even “radical socialists”

When a liberal is abused, he says: Thank God they didn't beat me. When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn't kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay.

When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own, to some extent. When bourgeois newspapermen quarrel they reveal to the public the venality of the “big dailies” and the tricks they are up to.