“It is significant that Communist theory treats the proletariat as though it were a unique branch of the human race. The proletariat is assumed to be a special breed which would almost automatically blossom into pleasant, efficient social-economic living if it could just be liberated from oppressive government. The government is presumed to be nothing more than the tool of an oppressive class of capitalists and consequently, if the capitalist class were destroyed, the need for any kind of government would be obliterated. The Communist leaders have always felt confident that when the proletariat takes over it will not want to oppress anyone and therefore the need for government will be nonexistent.”

— W. Cleon Skousen, book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is significant that Communist theory treats the proletariat as though it were a unique branch of the human race. The…" by W. Cleon Skousen?

W. Cleon Skousen68

ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-b… 1913–2006

Related quotes

“When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

" The intellectuals and the workers http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no1/kautsky.html," Die Neue Zeit, vol. 22, no. 4 (1903)

“On the ground of the class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it we are lost, because we are no longer socialists. The strength and power of socialism rests in the fact that we are leading a class struggle; that the laboring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms, which will put an end to class government and class exploitation, are impossible.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“Today, in the highly-developed capitalistic nation of the United States, the only people who could be classed as proletariat under Marx's definition would be those who own no land, have no savings deposits, no social security, no retirement benefits, no life insurance, no corporate securities and no government bonds, for all these represent the ownership of productive wealth or of money, funds over and beyond the immediate needs of consumption. Such a class of propertyless proletariat does exist in the United States just as there has been one in all nations and in all ages, but the significant thing is that the proletariat in the United States is such a small minority that Marx would scarcely want to claim it. Under American capitalism wealth has been more widely distributed among the people than in any large nation in secular history. This has reduced the property-less class which Marx had in mind to little more than a fringe of the population.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”

Friedrich Engels book The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto, footnote (1888 edition)

“The State is a machine in the hands of the governing class for suppressing the resistance of its class antagonists. In this way the dictatorship of the proletariat differs in no way essentially from the dictatorship of any other class.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Voprosi Leninizma, Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo politicheskoy literaturi, (1939)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“Governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

The Irish Worker, 29 August, 1915. Reprinted in P. Beresford Ellis (ed.), James Connolly - Selected Writings, p. 248

“An 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, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia - and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance - represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.
A 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 of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

“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 (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

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

“One thing is clear. Every passing day will deepen the policy of the proletariat in power, and more and more define is class character. Side beside with that, the revolutionary ties between the proletariat and the nation will be broken, the class disintegration of the peasantry will assume political form, and the antagonism between the component sections will grow in proportion as the policy of the workers' government defines itself, ceasing to be a general-democractic and becoming a class policy.”

Leon Trotsky book Results and Prospects

Results and Prospects (1905)

“Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction; from the point of view of the proletariat the difference between the types of reaction is meaningless.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

What Next? (1932)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

W. Cleon Skousen68

Related quotes

Related topics