“Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution.”

— Joseph Stalin

Anarchism or Socialism (1906)

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Joseph Stalin 95

General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1879–1953

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“he Party is the highest form of organisation of the proletariat. The Party is the principle guiding force within the class of the proletarians and among the organisations of that class. But it does not by any means follow from this that the Party can be regarded as an end in itself, as a self-sufficient force. The Party is not only the highest form of class association of the proletarians; it is at the same time an instrument in the hands of the proletariatfor achieving the dictatorship, when that has not yet been achieved and for consolidating and expanding the dictatorship when it has already been achieved. The Party could not have risen so high in importance and could not have exerted its influence over all other forms of organisations of the proletariat, if the latter had not been confronted with the question of power, if the conditions of imperialism, the inevitability of wars, and the existence of a crisis had not yet demanded the concentration of all the forces of the proletariat at one point, the gathering of all the threads of the revolutionary movement in one spot in order to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat needs the Party first of all as its General Staff, which it must have for the successful seizure of power. It scarcely needs proof that without a party capable of rallying around itself the mass organisations of the proletariat, and of centralising the leadership of the entire movement during the progress of the struggle, the proletariat in Russia could not have established its revolutionary dictatorship.”

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

Source: The Problems of Leninism, Ch.8

“The socialist revolution was a pure and simple question of ‘force.’… Between the [bourgeoisie and the proletariat] no accord is possible. One must disappear. The weaker will be ‘eliminated.’ The class struggle is therefore a question of ‘force.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, A. James Gregor, New York and London, The Free Press (1969) p. 106
Undated

“In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity. What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

“The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

“The proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.”

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

"Lessons of the Commune" http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm, Collected Works, Vol. 13.
Collected Works

“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 anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Letter to Philipp Van Patten http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/letters/83_04_18.htm (18 April 1883)

“Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence… The class struggle did not accidentally assume its latest form, the form in which the exploited class takes all the means of power in its own hands in order to completely destroy its class enemy, the bourgeoisie…”

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

As quoted in Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pages 459-61.
Attributions

“As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolizes all new inventions, every new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and happiness of all, causes, on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of wages for others and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

“Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

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Joseph Stalin 95

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