"In the vocabulary of all civilized nations there exists the word ‘cynicism.’ As a classic example of brazen cynicism, the British government’s defence of the interests of a clique of capitalist exploiters should be introduced into all encyclopedias."
"Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness."
“Tell me anyway–Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”
“As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the “sacredness of human life” remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.”
“The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.”
“Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.”
“…capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.”
“The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions…The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.”
“Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.”
“Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.”
“A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!”
“It is unquestionably true that the need for art is not created by economic conditions. But neither is the need for food created by economics. On the contrary, the need for food and warmth creates economics.” >>24422790
“Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full.”
“A revolution is always distinguished by impoliteness, probably because the ruling classes did not take the trouble in good season to teach the people fine manners.” >>24422831
“Between his consciousness and events stood always that impenetrable medium — indifference.”
“That’s not hunger. When Titus was taking Jerusalem, Jewish mothers ate their children. When I have your mothers eating their young, then you can tell me you’re starving.”
“To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron.”
“The bourgeoisie…by its imperialist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds power, and does not wish to abandon it…The red terror is a weapon utilised against a class, doomed to destruction which does not wish to perish.”
“Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers, there
lives alongside the twentieth century the thirteenth. A hundred
million people use electricity and still believe in the magic powers of signs and exorcisms. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery!”
“The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semianarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime.”
“Terror is a powerful means of policy and one would have to be a hypocrite not to understand this.”
“Both theoretical analysis as well as the rich historical experience of the last quarter of a century have demonstrated with equal force that fascism is each time the final link of a specific political cycle composed of the following: the gravest crisis of capitalist society; the growth of the radicalization of the working class; the growth of sympathy toward the working class, and a yearning for change on the part of the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie; the extreme confusion of the big bourgeoisie; its cowardly and treacherous maneuvers aimed at avoiding the revolutionary climax; the exhaustion of the proletariat; growing confusion and indifference; the aggravation of the social crisis; the despair of the petty bourgeoisie, its yearning for change; the collective neurosis of the petty bourgeoisie, its readiness to believe in miracles, its readiness for violent measures; the growth of hostility towards the proletariat, which has deceived its expectations. These are the premises for a swift formation of a fascist party and its victory.”
“We are concerned here with either real traitors or complete imbeciles. But imbecility, raised to this level, is equal to treason.”
“Lincoln's significance lies in his not hesitating before the most severe means, once they were found to be necessary, in achieving a great historic aim posed by the development of a young nation.”
“…you must remember that the political development of the masses proceeds not in a direct line, but in a complicated curve. And is not this, after all, the essential movement of every material process? Objective conditions were powerfully impelling the workers, soldiers and peasants toward the banners of the Bullshiviks, but the masses were entering upon this path in a state of struggle with their own past, with their yesterday’s beliefs, and partly also with their beliefs of today. At a difficult turn, at a moment of failure and disappointment, the old prejudices not yet burnt out would flare up, and the enemy would naturally seize upon these as upon an anchor of
salvation.”
“He who thinks of renouncing "physical" struggle must renounce all struggle, for the spirit does not live without the flesh.”
“The serious and critical reader will not want a treacherous impartiality, which offers him a cup of conciliation with a well-settled poison of reactionary hate at the bottom, but a scientific conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies—open and undisguised—seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their movement.”
“The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.”
“Every mass action, regardless of its immediate aim, is a warning addressed to the leadership. This warning is at first mild in character, but becomes more and more resolute. By July it had become a threat. In October we have the final act.”
“Cовершенно верно, что по
одним лишь принципам марксизма никогда нельзя судить, отвергнуть или принять произведение искусства. Продукты художественного творчества должны в первую очередь судиться по своим собственным законам, т. е. по
законам искусства. Но только марксизм способен объяснить, почему и откуда в данную эпоху возникло данное направление в искусстве, т. е. кто и почему предъявил спрос на такие, а не на иные художественные формы.
Было бы ребячеством думать, будто каждый класс
полностью и целиком из себя порождает свое искусство и, в частности, будто пролетариат способен создать новое искусство через замкнутые художественные семинарии, кружки, пролеткульты и пр. Вообще, творчество исторического человека есть преемственность. Каждый новый
восходящий класс становится на плечи своих предшественников. Но это преемственность диалектическая, т. е.
находящая себя путем внутренних отталкиваний и разрывов. Толчки в виде новых художественных потребностей спроса на новый литературный или живописный подход даются экономикой через новый класс или — меньше толчки — через новую установку того же класса — под влиянием роста его богатства, могущества культуры. Художественное творчество есть всегда сложная перелицовка старых форм под влиянием новых толчков, исходящих из области, лежащей вне самого художества. В этом широком смысле искусство служебно . Это не бесплотная стихия, сама себя питающая, а функция общественного человека, неразрывно связанная с бытом и укладом его.
И как характерно — в смысле доведения каждого социального предрассудка до абсурда,— что Шкловский додумался до идеи абсолютной независимости искусства от социального уклада в такой период нашей русской истории, когда искусство, с большей обнаженностью, чем когда-либо, обнаружило свою духовную, бытовую и материальную зависимость от определенных общественных классов, подклассов и групп!”
https://streamer.radio.co/s2c3cc784b/listen
“All science, in greater or lesser degree, unquestionably reflects the tendencies of the ruling class. The more closely science attaches itself to the practical tasks of conquering nature (physics, chemistry, natural science in general), the greater is its non-class and human contribution. The more deeply science is connected with the social mechanism of exploitation (political economy), or the more abstractly it generalises the entire experience of mankind (psychology, not in its experimental, physiological sense but in its so-called philosophic sense), the more does it obey the class egotism of the bourgeoisie and the less significant is its contribution to the general sum of human knowledge. In the domain of the experimental sciences, there exist different degrees of scientific integrity and objectivity, depending upon the scope of the generalisations made. As a general rule, the bourgeois tendencies have found a much freer place for themselves in the higher spheres of methodological philosophy, of Weltanschauung. It is therefore necessary to clear the structure of science from the bottom to the top, or, more correctly, from the top to the bottom, because one has to begin from the upper stories.”
“Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov “fortify” it.[…] This superintendent’s approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment.”