“For two decades the supporters of Bolshevism have been hammering it into the masses that dictatorship is a vital necessity for the defense of the so-called proletarian interests”
The Tragedy of Spain (1937)
Context: For two decades the supporters of Bolshevism have been hammering it into the masses that dictatorship is a vital necessity for the defense of the so-called proletarian interests against the assaults of counter-revolution and for paving the way for Socialism. They have not advanced the cause of Socialism by this propaganda, but have merely smoothed the way for Fascism in Italy, Germany and Austria by causing millions of people to forget that dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation. In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people. …
What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants.
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Rudolf Rocker 39
anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist 1873–1958Related quotes

(1847)
Trumpism is here to stay: America’s neo-fascist fever dream has only just begun (2016)

Nam June Paik (1965), as cited in: David Dunn, " A History of Electronic Music Pioneers http://vasulka.org/Kitchen/PDF_Eigenwelt/pdf/021-062.pdf." ders.(Hrsg.), Eigenwelt der Apparate-Welt.(Katalog), Linz (1992): 21-62.
1960s

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
Context: Now, please don't misunderstand me. When I point out that all our wars for a thousand years have been fought in other people's countries, I do not mean that any of these wars was necessarily aggressive. They may well have been, everyone of them, defensive. But plainly they were not defensive of soil, territory. Of what then were they defensive? They were defensive of the nation's interests, rights; interests which may well collide with the interests of other nations in any part of the world... Nations do so differ as to what their respective rights are and differ sincerely. And often the question, which of the two is right, is extremely difficult, as anyone who has attempted to disentangle rival territorial claims in the Balkans or elsewhere knows only too well.

Source: The Problems of Leninism, Ch.8

“Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media.”
On the current state of satire, in Rhino Records online chat (17 June 1997)
Context: Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now — to quote myself at my most pretentious — is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste. For example, the freedom (hooray!) to say almost anything you want on television about society's problems has been co-opted (alas!) by the freedom to talk instead about flatulence, orgasms, genitalia, masturbation, etc., etc., and to replace real comment with pop-culture references and so-called "adult" language. Irreverence is easy — what's hard is wit.

Source: Sahle-Work Zewde (2021) cited in: " Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde and African Development Bank chief Akinwumi Adesina discuss Ethiopia’s development priorities https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/press-releases/ethiopian-president-sahle-work-zewde-and-african-development-bank-chief-akinwumi-adesina-discuss-ethiopias-development-priorities-48018" in African Development Bank Group, 16 December 2021.

p, 125
"The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity" (1933)