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Famous Daniel Guérin Quotes

“Il n'y a pas deux sortes de mouvement révolutionnaire, de nature différente, l'un d'espèce bourgeoise et l'autre d'essence prolétarienne; la Révolution tout court, cette vieille taupe, comme disait Marx, poursuit son bonhomme de chemin, d'abord à travers une même crise révolutionnaire, et ensuite de crise révolutionnaire en crise révolutionnaire. Même quand elle paraît assoupie, elle creuse encore. Une crise révolutionnaire n'est que la continuation directe de la crise précédente. Il n'est pas possible de placer quelque part un poteau frontière et d'y inscrire: REVOLUTION BOURGEOISE ! DEFENSE D'ALLER PLUS LOIN !”

BourgeoisiePolitiqueRévolutionMarxismeProlétariatRevolution Française
Book:La Révolution française et nous (Petite collection Maspero ; 172)
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“In my opinion the basic cause for the relative failure of the two greatest revolutions in history resides not, to borrow again from Voline, in "historic inevitability," or simply in the subjective "errors" of revolutionary actors. The revolution bears within itself a serious contradiction (a contradiction which fortunately—and we will return to the subject —is not irremediable and is attenuated with time): it can only arise, it can only vanquish if it issues from the depths of the popular masses, from their irresistible spontaneous uprising; but although the class instinct drives the popular masses to break their chains, they are yet lacking in education and consciousness. And since, in their formidable but tumultuous and blind drive towards liberty, they run up against privileged, conscious, educated, organized, and tested social classes, they can only vanquish the resistance they meet if they succeed in obtaining in the heat of the struggle, the consciousness, the science, the organization, and the experience they lack. But the very fact of forging the weapons I have just listed summarily, and which alone can ensure their superiority over the enemy, bears an immense peril within it: that of killing the spontaneity that is the very spirit of the revolution; that of compromising freedom through organization; that of allowing the movement to be confiscated by an elite minority of more educated, more conscious, more experienced militants who, to begin with, offer themselves as guides in order, in the end, to impose themselves as chiefs and to subject the masses to new forms of the oppression of man by man.”

RevolutionSocialismCommunismClass Consciousness
Book:For a Libertarian Communism
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“When it (Self-management in revolutionary Spain) was not sabotaged by its enemies or hindered by the war, agricultural self-management was an unquestionable success. The land was united into one holding and cultivated over great expanses according to a general plan and the directives of agronomists. Small landowners integrated their plots with those of the community. Socialization demonstrated its superiority both over large absentee landholdings, which left a part of the land unplanted, and over smallholdings, cultivated with the use of rudimentary techniques, inadequate seeding, and without fertilizer. Production increased by 30—50 percent. The amount of cultivated land increased, working methods were improved, and human, animal, and mechanical energy used more rationally. Farming was diversified, irrigation developed, the countryside partially reforested, nurseries opened, pigsties constructed, rural technical schools created, Pilot farms set up, livestock selected and increased, and auxiliary industries set in motion, etc.”

SocialismCommunismAgricultureAnarchistSelf ManagementRevolutionary Spain
Book:For a Libertarian Communism
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“The form of coercion that the proletarian vanguard finds itself forced to exercise against counter-revolutionaries is of so fundamentally different a nature from the past forms of oppression, and it is compensated for by so advanced a degree of democracy for the formerly oppressed, that the word dictatorship clashes with that of proletariat.”

RevolutionSocialismDictatorship Of The Proletariat
Book:For a Libertarian Communism
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