Vladimir Lenin on Politics

"If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration?"

"The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government."

"A basic condition for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organisation of comprehensive political exposure."

"Revolution alone can "put an end" to the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only "wither away."

"What we prize most is peace and an opportunity to devote all our efforts to restoring our economy."

"Political institutions are a superstructure on the economic foundation."

"Treat the Jews and urban inhabitants in the Ukraine with an iron rod, transferring them to the front, not letting them into the government agencies ."

"Popular ignorance of foreign policy is incomparably greater than of domestic policy."

"Thus, in one way or another, the whole world is more or less the debtor to and vassal of these forn international banker countries, the four "pillars" of world finance capital."

"Political events are always very confused and complicated. They can be compared with a chain. To hold the whole chain you must grasp the main link. Not a link chosen at random."

"One may become a demagogue out of sheer political innocence."

"Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution"

"Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes!"

"Democracy for the cast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people - this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to Communism."

"We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism; but we have no right to forget that wage-slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic."

"In a democratic republic, Engels continues, "wealth wields its power indirectly, all the more effectively," first, by means of the "direct corruption of the officials ; second, by the means of "the alliance between the government and the Stock Exchange ."

"People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises."

"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."

"The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted — or rather tend to be corrupted — by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people."

"Revolutionary Social-Democracy has always included the struggle for reforms as part of its activities. But it utilises “economic” agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but also the demand that it cease to be an autocratic government."

"Only the most ignorant people can close their eyes to the bourgeois nature of the which is now taking place. Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense."

"As long as the bourgeois parliament remains a means of duping the workers, and phrases about “democracy” are used to cover up financial swindling and every kind of bribery , we Communists are in duty bound to be in this very institution to untiringly expose this deception, and expose each and every case of the Renners and Co.’s desertion to the capitalists, against the workers"

"From the vulgar bourgeois standpoint the terms dictatorship and democracy are mutually exclusive. Failing to understand the theory of class struggle, and accustomed to seeing in the political arena the petty squabbling of the various bourgeois circles and coteries, the bourgeois conceives dictatorship to mean the annulment of all the liberties and guarantees of democracy, tyranny of every kind, and every sort of abuse of power in the personal interests of a dictator."

"The exploiting classes need political rule in order to maintain exploitation, i.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority and against the interests of the vast majority of the people. The exploited classes need political rule in order completely to abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the interests of the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners - the landlords and the capitalists."

"The only platform from which public exposures can be made is an all-Russian newspaper. "Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in modern Europe."In this connection Russia must undoubtedly by included in modern Europe. The press has long ago become a power in our country, otherwise the government would not spend tens of thousands of rubles to bribe it, and to subsidize the Katkovs and Meshcherskys. And it is no novelty in autocratic Russia for the underground press to break through the wall of sponsorship and compel the legal and conservative press to speak openly of it."

"The "Jacobins" of the twentieth century would not guillotine the capitalists - to follow a good example does not mean copying it. It would be enough to arrest fifty to a hundred financial magnates and bigwigs, the chief knights of embezzlement and of robbery by the banks. It would be enough to arrest them for a few weeks to expose their frauds and show all exploited people " who needs the war." Upon exposing the frauds of the banking barons, we could release them, placing the banks, the capitalist syndicates, and all the contractors "working" for the government under workers' control."

"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" – supposedly petty – details of the suffrage , in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly , in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., – we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life ; but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy."