V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 03/10/2026We live in an age of commerce, when the bourgeoisie have no scruples about trading in honour or conscience. There are also simpletons who out of stupidity or by force of habit defend views prevalent in certain bourgeois circles. 08327
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026In all workers’ parties there inevitably emerges a more or less clearly delineated Right wing which, in its views, tactics, and organisational “line”, reflects the opportunist tendencies of the petty bourgeoisie. 115439
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026The struggle is a hard one, but the workers’ success is assured. Let the weak and the frightened waver on account of the “extremes” of the struggle—tomorrow they will see for themselves that not a step further could have been taken without going through this struggle. 06419
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Imperialist ideology also penetrates the working class. No Chinese Wall separates it from the other classes. The leaders of the present-day, so-called, “Social-Democratic” Party of Germany are justly called “social-imperialists,” that is, socialists in words and imperialists in deeds; 015641
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026The workers’ resistance springs from their very conditions of life—the sale of labour-power. Only as a result of this resistance, despite the tremendous sacrifices the workers have to make in the struggle, are they able to maintain anything like a tolerable standard of living. 05018
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026But true democracy, headed by the working class, holds aloft the banner of complete equality of nations and of unity of the workers of all nations in their class struggle. 06119
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026The crux of the matter is that this bourgeoisie is more afraid of the people than of reaction. The crux of the matter is that this rightward swing has not been accidental, but has been caused by the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. 06322
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026No matter how our revolution may develop… this hatred and this contempt will help [the proletariat] close its ranks and rid itself of worthless offshoots of alien classes; it will increase its forces and steel it for dealing the blows with which it will overwhelm the whole of bourgeois society. 0477
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026The professors who defend capitalism chatter about the increase in the number of property-owners when they see a growth in the number of small shareholders. What actually happens is that the power (and the income) of the millionaire magnates over the capital of the “small fry” is increased. 09522
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026If anybody goes to work for an employer, it is clear that he loses his freedom; he must obey his employer, and the employer may punish him. 311932
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026The abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land 113337
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Naturally, the only thing that people who dread the facts can do is to keep on uttering phrases. 012535
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026There are evidently profound reasons which rouse among the petty-bourgeois intellectuals “a passion akin to sickness”, a passion for coming under the wing of the liberal bourgeoisie. 0376
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026“American ethics,” which the European professors and well-meaning bourgeois so hypocritically deplore, have, in the age of finance capital, become the ethics of literally every large city in any country. 08725
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026the socialist doctrine is successful precisely when it stops arguing about social conditions that conform to human nature and sets about making a materialist analysis of contemporary social relations and explaining the necessity for the present regime of exploitation 07019
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 17/09/2026The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. 05916
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Hence, we are living in a peculiar epoch of world colonial policy, which is most closely connected with the “latest stage in the development of capitalism,” with finance capital. 0569
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Where, except in the imagination of sentimental reformists, are there any trusts capable of concerning themselves with the condition of the masses instead of the conquest of colonies? 0336
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026In words, bourgeois and bourgeois-democratic nationalists recognise the equality of nations, but in deeds they (often covertly…) stand for certain privileges for one of the nations, and always try to secure greater advantages for “their own” nation (i.e., for the bourgeoisie of their own nation); 08522
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026This is the reasoning of a liberal scholar who repeats the incredibly trite and threadbare argument that experience and reason clearly prove that men are not equal, yet socialism bases its ideal on equality. Hence, socialism…is an absurdity which is contrary to experience and reason, and so forth! 1356
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 11/09/2026In all countries…we see two types of bourgeois politicians. One type openly leans towards religion…towards a forthright struggle against democracy... The other type specialises in covering up this very same tendency by flirting with democracy. 07728
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out…save through the class struggle. 08928
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Can people obviously incapable of taking serious problems seriously, themselves be taken seriously? It is difficult to do so, comrades, very difficult! 016655
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Such simple-mindedness on the part of the bourgeois economists is not surprising; moreover, it is in their interest to pretend to be so naive and to talk “seriously” about peace under imperialism. 09219
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026The worn-out trick of the bourgeois hack-writer—not everybody reads a newspaper through to the end, but everybody sees the first striking words of an article.... 014636
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Without an alliance with non-Communists in the most diverse spheres of activity there can be no question of any successful communist construction. 17119
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 05/09/2026Though there were no few honest and conscientious Social-Democrats in these groups, they proved adventurist in the sense that they had no stable or serious principles, programme, tactics, organisation, and no roots among the masses. 07716
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026If that is so, it means that the people at the top are beginning to anticipate something: and if that is so, it means that after the beginning will come the continuation, after the fussing of the intellectuals will come the proletarian struggle. 03810
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 03/09/2026[Marxism] says: We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. 07313
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 03/09/2026Discussing the problem, expressing and hearing different opinions, ascertaining the views of the majority of the organised Marxists, expressing these views in the form of decisions adopted by delegates and carrying them out conscientiously—this is what reasonable people all over the world call unity 06210
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 02/09/2026A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount…to renunciation of all thought of revolution. 013140
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Those with the slightest revolutionary flair… who judge parties by their class character will not be surprised to find that the party of bourgeois intellectuals is fit only to perform flunkey services for the party of the big bourgeois. 08422
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 29/08/2026The workers want unity in their actions. The workers are right. Without unity of action there is no salvation for the workers. When you think of it—how can there be unity without the submission of the minority to the majority? Everyone realises that without it unity is impossible. 05412
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 28/08/2026I don’t understand you. Whoever heard of a struggle anywhere that did not become grave if it was over something really serious? It is because the struggle is over a serious problem that it cannot stop at “a slight quarrel”. 010824
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026The elaboration of a common programme for the Party should not… put an end to all polemics; it will firmly establish those basic views on the character, aims, and tasks of our movement… as the banner of a fighting party, consolidated and united despite partial differences of opinion. 05714
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappears to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibility arises of deliberately [slowing] technical progress. 0619
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 26/08/2026We are therefore certain that the reader will not complain if we set about a detailed examination of this very striking project 0315
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026The socialist activities… consist in spreading among the workers an understanding of the present social and economic system… of the role of the working class in this struggle. 06820
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 24/08/2026“History will,” of course, “show how the padlocks will be opened”; that is an incontestable and fruitless truism. It is an excuse deriving from senile decay. A politician must be able to say which class owns the padlocks and which classes must open them and by what means 012135
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026The peasant serfs worked for landlords, and the landlords punished them. The workers work for capitalists, and the capitalists punish them. The only difference is that formerly it was a man’s back that suffered, whereas now it is his purse. 19829
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 21/08/2026But owing to the capitalist social system we see in most of the big cities of America—and in the rural districts too for that matter—…a wanton waste of human labour side by side with the unprecedented luxury of the multimillionaires, of the rich, whose fortunes run into thousands of millions. 010629
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 20/08/2026General” enthusiasm over the prospects of imperialism, furious defence of it and painting it in the brightest colours—such are the signs of the times. 09611
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 20/08/2026There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive significance of this modern migration of nations. 117137
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 19/08/2026What’s that? You don’t remember, my dear Radical? But we remember it very well. 1445
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 18/08/2026This is a sad spectacle, but one that is inevitable in a petty-bourgeois country in the epoch of bourgeois-democratic transformations. 014235
V. I. Lenin @livinglenin.bsky.social · 17/08/2026Of course, this is all by way of example, only to illustrate the fact that at the present moment it is impossible to remain loyal to Marxism, to remain loyal to the revolution unless insurrection is treated as an art. 0294
