Communism Quotes

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”
― Friedrich von Hayek

“It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.”
― Mike Norton

“[ ] manic sex isn't really intercourse. It's dicourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“State ownership! It leads only to absurd and monstrous conclusions; state ownership means state monopoly, concentrated in the hands of one party and its adherents, and that state brings only ruin and bankruptcy to all.”
― Benito Mussolini

“The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.”
― Hilaire Belloc

“...I take as a point of departure the possibility and desirability of a fundamentally different form of society--call it communism, if you will--in which men and women, freed from the pressures of scarcity and from the insecurity of everyday existence under capitalism, shape their own lives. Collectively they decide who, how, when, and what shall be produced.”
― Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism

“When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?”
― Václav Havel

“Dear Anarcho-Communist,

If you and I ever find ourselves in a stateless society, have no fear. Just mention that you are a communist, and I promise I will never try to "oppress" and "exploit" you by offering to trade with you, or by offering to pay you to do work.

Sincerely,

Larken Rose”
― Larken Rose

“Property taxes' rank right up there with 'income taxes' in terms of immorality and destructiveness. Where 'income taxes' are simply slavery using different words, 'property taxes' are just a Mafia turf racket using different words. For the former, if you earn a living on the gang's turf, they extort you. For the latter, if you own property in their territory, they extort you. The fact that most people still imagine both to be legitimate and acceptable shows just how powerful authoritarian indoctrination is. Meanwhile, even a brief objective examination of the concepts should make anyone see the lunacy of it. 'Wait, so every time I produce anything or trade with anyone, I have to give a cut to the local crime lord??' 'Wait, so I have to keep paying every year, for the privilege of keeping the property I already finished paying for??' And not only do most people not make such obvious observations, but if they hear someone else pointing out such things, the well-trained Stockholm Syndrome slaves usually make arguments condoning their own victimization. Thus is the power of the mind control that comes from repeated exposure to BS political mythology and propaganda.”
― Larken Rose

“The 'Manifesto' being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and the oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.

This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845.”
― Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

“Most of them don't know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Als it is hard for America to fight wars in the name of freedom, if those people themselves choose for nonfreedom. Can America and England save India from communism, if they vote communist themselves.”
― Oswald Mosley, Ich glaube an Europa: Ein Weg aus der Krise, eine Einführung in das europäische Denken

“Dictatorul e de meserie cizmar, diploma scoalara si-a cumparat-o.
Nu stie nici sa scrie nici sa citeasca, spune mama, e mai prost ca noaptea.
Dar noaptea nu ucide, spune tata.”
― Aglaja Veteranyi, De ce fierbe copilul în mămăligă

“Спомням си как през летните следобеди, които прекарвах там, баба ми, привършила домашната работа, сядаше до прозореца на светло и вадеше от своя скришен сандък една огромна Библия с твърди корици, обвита с тогавашния официозен вестник "Работническо дело" по конспиративни причини. Вече знаех, че комунизмът и Библията никак не се обичаха.”
― Георги Господинов, Невидимите кризи

“I could never be a Communist. I could never be regimented. I could never be told what to write.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“...The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been.”
― Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon

“The difference between communism and socialism is that under socialism central planning ends with a gun in your face, whereas under communism central planning begins with a gun in your face.”
― Kevin D. Williamson, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism

“For now, we live in the mall, but I think it's closing soon.”
― Grafton Tanner, Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts

“Why communism failed: it failed because of distrust, because of a fear for the future.
Because deep down no body believed in a system that was continuously unable to provide for its life citizen's basic needs for forty years or more.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.'

I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Democratic Socialism devolves into totalitarian Socialism and eventually into full on Communism as people resist statism.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Cono knew that all three of his tormentors would know the anthem by heart from their childhood years. They had sung it daily to belong to the elite of their country, wearing around their necks the red ties of the Communist Party Youth Brigade, which had formed their beings and all that they would be and would ever believe, even as communism became a ghost and the party a web of corruption.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Vodka goes well with a wintery perspective. Nothing else provokes such presentiments of falling snow except, for some, the communist seizure of the state.”
― Michèle Bernstein, All the King's Horses [Semiotext(e) / Native Agents]

“It's hard to recognize discrimination when you live with it”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount, because its foes resist with greater desperation as they contemplate their final defeat. Thus any problem in the Soviet Union could be defined as an example of enemy action, and enemy action could be defined as evidence of progress.

P. 41”
― Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

“My mother could see that as far as my father's relationship with the Party was concerned, she was an outsider. One day, when she ventured some critical comments about the situation and got no response from him, she said bitterly, "You are a good Communist, but a rotten husband!" My father nodded. He said he knew.”
― Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

“Today none of the old assertions are accepted any longer just because they were written long ago. Instead, people demand proof in practice of what is asserted; they want a scientific analysis of all assertions. Out of this dissatisfaction, revolutionary ideas are born and spread more and more throughout the world, backed by the living examples of how technology can be put at the service of man, as has happened in the socialist countries.”
― Che Guevara

“7:15 Montpelier - excellent dinner. Would have been perfect if only I'd had a handgun for the other guests: 'Of course communism was always bound to fail.”
― Alan Rickman, Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman