Vladimir Lenin: Use

Vladimir Lenin was Russian politician, led the October Revolution. Explore interesting quotes on use.
Vladimir Lenin: 672 quotes145 likes

“The nearer we come to the full military suppression of the bourgeoisie, the more dangerous becomes to us the high flood of petty-bourgeois Anarchism. And the struggle against these elements cannot be waged with propaganda and agitation alone. … The struggle must also be waged by applying force and compulsion.”

Vladimir Lenin

The Guillotine At Work : Twenty Years of Terror In Russia (1940) by Grigoriĭ Petrovich Maksimov, p. 38.
Attributions

“Disarmament is the ideal of socialism. There will be no wars in and the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a socialist. Dictatorship is state power based directly on violence. And in the twentieth century — as in the age of civilisation generally — violence means neither a fist nor a club, but troops. To put “disarmament” in the programme is tantamount to making the general declaration: We are opposed to the use of arms. There is as little Marxism in this as there would be if we were to say: We are opposed to violence!”

Vladimir Lenin

&quot;The “Disarmament” Slogan&quot; (October 1916) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/01.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 94-104. <br class="br">1910s

“Let us… take the most concrete example of state capitalism… It is Germany. Here we have the 'last word' in modern, large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organization, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics and [substitute] a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Left Wing' Childishness", Pravda (May 1918).
1910s

“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 (the particularly “subtle” brand of bribery the bourgeoisie practise with regard to writers, N. P. s, lawyers, and others is nowhere to be seen on so wide a scale as in the bourgeois parliament), we Communists are in duty bound to be in this very institution (which is supposed to express the people’s will but actually covers up the deception of the people by the wealthy) to untiringly expose this deception, and expose each and every case of the Renners and Co.’s desertion to the capitalists, against the workers”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 267–69.
Collected Works

“We have invited and continue to invite the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to share power with us.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 304–308.
Collected Works

“To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their side. As long as no violence is used against the people there is no other road to power. We are not Blancists, we do not stand for the seizure of power by a minority.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 38–41.
Collected Works

“All the marvels of science and the gains of culture belong to the nation as a whole, and never again will man’s brain and human genius be used for oppression and exploitation.”

Vladimir Lenin

Third All-Russia Congress Of Soviets Of Workers, Soldiers’ And Peasants : Report On The Activities Of The Council Of People’s Commissars&quot; (January 1918) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jan/10.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 453-82. <br class="br">1910s

“Modern militarism is the result of capitalism. In both its forms it is the “vital expression” of capitalism — as a military force used by the capitalist states in their external conflicts and as a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes for suppressing every kind of movement, economic and political, of the proletariat.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 191–201.
Collected Works

“Use both bribery and threats to exterminate every Cossack to a man if they set fire to the oil in Guriev.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), p. 69.
Attributions

“We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters — then we are for it!”

Vladimir Lenin

"Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars" (24 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
1910s

“When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world.”

Vladimir Lenin

&quot;The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism&quot; (5 November 1921) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/nov/05.htm, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 113. <br class="br">1920s

“Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations — all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.”

Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

“They will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.”

Vladimir Lenin

Reported by I. U. Annenkov in an article entitled, "Remembrances of Lenin", Novyi Zhurnal/New Review (September 1961), p. 147.
Attributions

“It is particularly necessary to arouse in all who participate in practical work, or are preparing to take up that work, discontent with the amateurism prevailing among us and an unshakable determination to rid ourselves of it.”

Vladimir Lenin

What is to be Done? (1902)

“What the Soviet Constitution gives us no other state has been able to give in two hundred years.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 502–15, Third All-Russia Trade Union Congress http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/07.htm <br class="br">Collected Works

“One will readily agree that any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may posses, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.”

Vladimir Lenin book "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

CH 10
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

“The retreat has come to an end; it is now a matter of regrouping our forces. These are the instructions that the Congress must pass so as to put an end to fuss and bustle. Calm down, do not philosophize; if you do, it will be counted as a black mark against you. Show by your practical efforts that you can work no less efficiently than the capitalists. The capitalists create an economic link with the peasants in order to amass wealth; you must create a link with peasant economy in order to strengthen the economic power of our proletarian state. You have the advantage over the capitalists in that political power is i n your hands; you have a number of economic weapons at your command; the only trouble is that you cannot make proper use of them.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“We need a real test. The capitalists are operating alongside us. They are operating like robbers; they make profit; but they know how to do things. But you - you are trying to do it in a new way: you make no profit, your principles are communist, your ideals are splendid; they are written out so beautifully that you seem to be saints, that you should go to heaven while you are still alive. But can you get things done? We need a test, a real test, not the kind the Central Control Commission makes when it censures somebody and the All-Russia Central Executive Committee imposes some penalty. Yes, we want a real test from the view point of the national economy.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“Let us get down to work, to slower, more cautious, more persevering and persistent work!”

Vladimir Lenin

"New Times and Old Mistakes in a New Guise",(August, 1921)
1920s

“A state arises, a special force is created in the form of special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, demonstrates to us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving not the exploiters but the exploited.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)