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Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky Quotes

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Famous Leon Trotsky Quotes

“Elements of experience, criticism, initiative, self-sacrifice, seeped down through the mass and created, invisibly to a superficial glance but no less decisively, an inner mechanic of the revolutionary movement as a conscious process”

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Book:The History of the Russian Revolution By Leon Trotsky - Volume Two
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“With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.”

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Book:The defence of terrorism: terrorism and communism; a reply to Karl Kautsky
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“Terror, as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the political will of the intelligentsia, pacify the professional man of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the field of their specialties.”

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Author:Leon Trotsky
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“In Russia itself the proletariat conquered in spite of the fact that there was no Soviet State in existence at the time elsewhere. For the victory are necessary, not only certain objective conditions, internal as well as external, but also certain subjective factors - the Party, the leadership, the strategy.”

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Author:Leon Trotsky
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“Only the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process.”

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Author:Leon Trotsky
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“The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.”

PhilosophyPurposeMistakeConsciousnessMoralClassElementsMassAppealsDeceptionAbstractConcreteNormAbstractionMechanicConcealedBourgeoisImposingProletariatBourgeoisieCompletenessDisinterestedPhilosophicMoral PhilosophyCatechismClass Consciousness
Author:Leon Trotsky
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“Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it.[...] This superintendent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment.”

ProcessLeaderClassAchieveRevolutionApproachLaborRelationHistoricalMereWorkersSoldierVariousFulfillmentCharacteristicsDistinctionCriticizeDivisionInstructionSpeakersProletariatBourgeoisieTranscendingDivision Of LaborClass DistinctionSuperintendents
Book:History of the Russian Revolution
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“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”

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Book:Literature and Revolution
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