This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations — all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.
Problems | Revolution | Will | Learn |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Socialism, by organizing production without class oppression, by ensuring the well-being of all members of the state, gives full play to the “sympathies” of the population, thereby promoting and greatly accelerating the drawing together and fusion of the nations.
Proletariat | Revolution | Struggle | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament–this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people.
Insecurity | Majority | Question | Sense | Old |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
No natural science can hold its own in the struggle against the onslaught of bourgeois ideas and the restoration of the bourgeois world outlook unless it stands on solid philosophical ground. In order to hold his own in this struggle and carry it to a victorious finish, the natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The working class cannot play its world-revolutionary role unless it wages a ruthless struggle against this renegacy, spinelessness, subservience to opportunism and unexampled vulgarization of the theories of Marxism.
Hunger | People | Qualities | Revolution | Work |
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
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
The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.
Bourgeoisie | Desire | Freedom | Will |
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
There are at present 300,000 bourgeois in the Crimea. These are a source of future profiteering, espionage and every kind of aid to the capitalists. However, we are not afraid of them. We say that we shall take and distribute them, make them submit, and assimilate them.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.
Revolution | Work |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The real education of the masses can never be separated from their independent political, and especially revolutionary, struggle. Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.
Proletariat | Revolution | Struggle |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The working class must break up, smash the “ready-made state machinery,” and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
In view of the fact that this criticism of Marxism has long been directed from the political platform, from university chairs, in numerous pamphlets and in a series of learned treatises, in view of the fact that the entire younger generation of the educated classes has been systematically reared for decades on this criticism, it is not surprising that the new critical trend in Social-Democracy should spring up, all complete, like Minerva from the head of Jove.
Revolution | Following |
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
The revolutionary way is the way of quick amputation, which is the least painful to the proletariat, the way of the direct removal of the decomposing parts, the way of fewest concessions to and least consideration for the monarchy and the disgusting, vile, rotten and contaminating institutions which go with it.
Revolution | War |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power.
Defeat | Government | Government |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.