Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.

Absurd | Attention | Books | Earth | Evidence | Humanity | Important | Means | Oppression | Order | Paradise | Philosophy | Practice | Proletariat | Question | Reflection | Religion | Society | Struggle | Tomorrow | Unity | Will | Society | Old | Propaganda |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism (although nobody can say just what that definite ‘level of culture’ is, for it differs in every Western European country), why cannot we began by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers’ and peasants’ government and Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Perhaps the profoundest cause of disagreement with the Narodniks is the difference in our fundamental views on social and economic processes. When studying the latter, the Narodnik usually draws conclusions that point to some moral; he does not regard the diverse groups of persons taking part in production as creators of various forms of life; he does not set out to present the sum-total of social and economic relationships as the result of the mutual relations between these groups, which have different interests and different historical roles.

Self-deception | Will |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views.

Art | Important | Life | Life | Politics | Question | Art |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

From the standpoint of theory, this idea disregards the elementary propositions of Marxism concerning the inevitability of capitalist development where commodity production exists. Marxism teaches that a society which is based on commodity production, and which has commercial intercourse with civilised capitalist nations, at a certain stage of its development, itself, inevitably takes the road of capitalism.

Initiative | Present | Struggle |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defensism” is permissible.

Discontent | Enemy | Government | Literature | Protest | Government |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

Doctrine | Man | Men | World |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

We fully regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary.

Play | Time | Will |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

International unity of the workers is more important than the national.

Criticism |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The first step towards the emancipation of the people from this penal servitude is the confiscation of the landed estates, the introduction of workers’ control and the nationalization of the banks. The next steps will be the nationalization of the factories, the compulsory organization of the whole population in consumers’ societies, which are at the same time societies for the sale of products, and the state monopoly of the trade in grain and other necessities.

Democracy | Individuality | Revolution | Will |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Let the “socialist” snivelers croak, let the bourgeoisie rage and fume, but only people who shut their eyes so as not to see, and stuff their ears so as not to hear, can fail to notice that all over the world the birth pangs of the old, capitalist society, which is pregnant with socialism, have begun.

Failure | Politics | Will | Failure | Understand |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants.

Beginning | Enemy | Opinion | Public | Regard | World |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it. 2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant), or that we can and must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume)—all this is the sheerest nonsense, Schrulle, crotchet, invention. 3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.

Proletariat | Reality |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.

Duty |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.

Bourgeoisie | Character | Means | Necessity | Rule | System |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

A bourgeois revolution is absolutely necessary in the interests of the proletariat. The more complete and determined, the more consistent the bourgeois revolution, the more assured will be the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie for Socialism. Only those who are ignorant of the rudiments of scientific Socialism can regard this conclusion as new or strange, paradoxical.

Need | Revolution |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Tsar Nicholas the Bloody, who has dispersed the First and Second Dumas, who has drowned Russia in blood, enslaved Poland and Finland, and is in alliance with out — and-out reactionaries conducting a policy of stifling the Jews and all “aliens”, the tsar whose loyal friends shot down the workers on the Lena and ruined the peasants to the point of starvation all over Russia — that tsar pretends to be the champion of Slav independence and freedom!"

Change | Justice | Need | People | Struggle | System | Will | Crisis |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.

Better | Bourgeoisie | Brutality | Church | Gold | Government | Haste | Lesson | Means | Order | People | Principles | Property | Sense | Struggle | Sympathy | Wealth | Will | Work | Government | Think |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

If the Congress was a struggle between the Iskra-ist and the anti-Iskra-ist elements, were there no intermediate, unstable elements who vacillated between the two? Anyone at all familiar with our Party and with the picture generally presented by congresses of every kind will be inclined a priori to answer the question in the affirmative.

People |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Human child birth is an act which transforms the woman into an almost lifeless, bloodstained heap of flesh, tortured, tormented and driven frantic by pain.

Ability | Correctness | Devotion | Discipline | Self-sacrifice | Leadership |