“Individualism, in the form of the individual action of a person alone in a social milieu, must disappear in Cuba. In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity. It is not enough that this idea is understood today, that you all comprehend the things I am saying and are ready to think a little about the present and the past and what the future ought to be. In order to change a way of thinking, it is necessary to undergo profound internal changes and to witness profound external changes, especially in the performance of our duties and obligations to society.”
Read moreNotes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution
“The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny. At that moment Marx puts himself in a position where he becomes the necessary target of all who have a special interest in maintaining the old-similar to Democritus before him, whose work was burned by Plato and his disciples, the ideologues of Athenian slave aristocracy. Beginning with the revolutionary Marx, a political group with concrete ideas establishes itself. Basing itself on the giants, Marx and Engels, and developing through successive steps with personalities like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and the new Soviet and Chinese rulers, it establishes a body of doctrine and, let us say, examples to follow.”
Read moreMessage to the Tricontinental from Che Guevara
“We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism — and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capitals, raw materials, technicians and cheap labor, and to which they export new capitals — instruments of domination — arms and all kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependance. The fundamental element of this strategic end shall be the real liberation of all people, a liberation that will be brought about through armed struggle in most cases and which shall be, in Our America, almost indefectibly, a Socialist Revolution.”
Read moreVictory Speech by Joseph Stalin
“Three years ago Hitler declared for all to hear that his aims included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the wresting from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic lands and other areas. He declared bluntly: “We will destroy Russia so that she will never be able to rise again.” This was three years ago. However, Hitler’s crazy ideas were not fated to come true—the progress of the war scattered them to the winds. In actual fact the direct opposite of the Hitlerites’ ravings has taken place. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is celebrating Victory, although it does not intend either to dismember or to destroy Germany.
Comrades! The Great Patriotic War has ended in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe is over. The period of peaceful development has begun.”
Read moreSpeech at Celebration Meeting - 1944
“If the Red Army was able successfully to fulfil its duty to its country and drive the Germans from the Soviet land, it was because of the unreserved support it received in the rear from our whole country, from all the peoples of our country. “Everything for the Front!” has been the watchword this year in the selfless work of all Soviet people—workers, peasants, intellectuals—as well as in the directing activities of our Government and Party bodies.”
Read moreSpeech at Celebration Meeting - 1943
“The Soviet State was never so stable and unshakable as now, in the third year of the Patriotic War. The lessons of the war show that the Soviet system is not only the best form of organizing the economic and cultural development of the country in the years of peaceful construction, but also the best form of mobilizing all the forces of the people for resistance to the enemy in war time. Soviet power, established 26 years ago, has transformed our country within a short historical period into an impregnable fortress. The Red Army has the most stable and reliable rear of all the armies in the world.”
Read moreSpeech at Celebration Meeting - 1942
“The programme of action of the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition is: the abolition of racial exclusiveness; the equality of nations and the inviolability of their territories; the liberation of the enslaved nations and the restoration of their sovereign rights; the right of every nation to arrange its affairs as it wishes; economic aid to the nations that have suffered and assistance to them in achieving their material welfare; the restoration of democratic liberties; the destruction of the Hitlerite regime.”
Read moreSpeech at Celebration Meeting - 1941
“The German invaders want a war of extermination with the peoples of the U.S.S.R. Well, if the Germans want to have a war of extermination, they will get it. From now on our task, the task of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., the task of the fighters, commanders and the political workers of our Army and our Navy will be to exterminate every single German who has set his invading foot on the territory of our Fatherland. (Loud applause. “Hear, hear!” Cheers.) No mercy for the German invaders!”
Read more"Questions of the Chinese Revolution" by Joseph Stalin
“By waging a resolute struggle against militarism and imperialism, the revolutionary Kuomintang in Wuhan will become in fact the organ of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, while Chiang Kai-shek’s counter-revolutionary group in Nanking, by severing itself from the workers and peasants and drawing closer to imperialism, will in the end share the fate of the militarists.”
Read moreOn 5th Anniversary of First Women Workers' and Peasants' Congress
“Women workers and peasants are mothers who bring up our youth--the future of our country. They can cripple the spirit of a child or give us youth with a healthy spirit, capable of taking our country forward. All this depends on whether the woman and mother has sympathy for the Soviet system or whether she trails in the wake of the priest, the kulak or the bourgeois. That is why the political education of women workers and peasants is a task of primary importance, a most important task for real victory over the bourgeoisie today, when the workers and peasants have set about the building of a new life. That is why the importance of the first women workers' and peasants' congress, which laid the foundations for the task of politically educating working women, is really quite inestimable.”
Read moreLeninism or Trotskyism
“Comrade Trotsky is absolutely in the wrong when he maintains that Lenin under-estimated the legality of the Soviet, that Lenin had not understood the serious significance of the seizure of power by the All-Russian Soviet Congress on October 25th, that just for this reason Lenin had insisted on the seizure of power before October 25th. This is untrue. Lenin proposed the seizure of power before October 25th for two reasons. Firstly because it was to be feared that the counter revolutionaries might at any moment hand over Petrograd to the Germans, which would have cost the rising insurrection blood, and that, therefore, every day was precious. Secondly because of the mistake of the Petrograd Soviet in fixing and publicly announcing the day for the insurrection (October 25th), which could only be made good by the insurrection actually taking place before the day legally fixed.”
Read moreConcerning Questions of Agrarian Policy
“There is the capitalist way, which is to make agriculture large-scale by implanting capitalism in agriculture—a way which leads to the impoverishment of the peasantry and to the development of capitalist enterprises in agriculture. We reject this way as incompatible with Soviet economy.
There is another way: the socialist way, which is to introduce collective farms and state farms into agriculture, the way which leads to uniting the small peasant farms into large collective farms, employing machinery and scientific methods of farming, and capable of developing further, for such farms can achieve expanded reproduction.
And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way.”
Read more"Combat Liberalism" by Mao Zedong
“Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.”
Read more"On Practice" by Mao Zedong
“This dialectical-materialist theory of the process of development of knowledge, basing itself on practice and proceeding from the shallower to the deeper, was never worked out by anybody before the rise of Marxism. Marxist materialism solved this problem correctly for the first time, pointing out both materialistically and dialectically the deepening movement of cognition, the movement by which man in society progresses from perceptual knowledge to logical knowledge in his complex, constantly recurring practice of production and class struggle.”
Read more"On Contradiction" by Mao Zedong
“There are many forms of motion in nature, mechanical motion, sound, light, heat, electricity, dissociation, combination, and so on. All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.”
Read moreThe Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party
“To complete China's bourgeois-democratic revolution (the new-democratic revolution) and to transform it into a socialist revolution when all the necessary conditions are ripe--such is the sum total of the great and glorious revolutionary task of the Chinese Communist Party. Every Party member must strive for its accomplishment and must under no circumstances give up halfway. Some immature Communists think that our task is confined to the present democratic revolution and does not include the future socialist revolution, or that the present revolution or the Agrarian Revolution is actually a socialist revolution. It must be emphatically pointed out that these views are wrong.”
Read more"What is a Real Democracy" by Fidel Castro
“We would not be strong in attacking other people because our strength lies in the justice of our cause and it is not just to attack any other either politically or economically. When I say that our revolution is strong I mean to say that it is strong to defend itself. For this reason I say that no force in the world is capable of beating our revolution. When I say that our revolution is strong, I mean to say that we know what we want--we know what we are doing.”
Read moreEstablishing Revolutionary Vigilance in Cuba
“There is nothing more fierce than the hatred of the master for the rebellious slave. And to that must be added the fact that they see their interests endangered — not only here but throughout the world. We brought our case to the United Nations, but our case was the case of all underdeveloped countries — the case of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, the case of the Asian countries. Our case was one that could be applied to the rest of the world. The rest of the underdeveloped world is also being exploited by the monopolies.”
Read more"Cuba is a Socialist Nation" by Fidel Castro
“What were the political parties? Just an expression of class interests. Here there is just one class, the humble; that class is in power, and so it is not interested in the ambition of an exploiting minority to get back in power. Those people would have no chance at all in an election. The revolution has no time to waste in such foolishness. There is no chance for the exploiting class to regain power.”
Read moreThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
“I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”
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