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Quote by Robert Barltrop

“...the Party member's books represented ammunition in the class struggle rather than any desire for knowledge for its own sake.”

Quote by Robert Barltrop

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Robert Barltrop

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“What distinguished these revolutionary socialists from other 'characters' was the seriousness with which they practised unconventionality and assailed the world around them. Rebels and bohemians were confused emotionalists; only scientific socialism showed morality, respectability and conventional learning as despicable props of the capitalist system.”

Spgb Scientific Socialism

Author:Robert Barltrop

“The pressures and penalties of existence in the modern capitalist system are intense; and they are penalties not for what is consciously chosen, but for ways of life which are forced like strait-jackets on people. At its superficial level, there is a common feeling of being conned by mass communications, extorted by commerce, lied to by politicians and treated like dirt by bureaucrats.”

Capitalism Spgb

Author:Robert Barltrop

“Everyone outside the Party was a fool or a knave. They wrote up Professor Joad in the Standard, and a gentle reader complained of the epithets - 'ignoramous', 'fathead', etc; the EC informed him that they thought the words precise and correct.”

Spgb Professor Joad

Author:Robert Barltrop

“The end of the war was not celebrated in the Socialist Standard...The four year's madness had shown the so-called socialists of the world in their true colours: Kautsky, Jack London, the advocates of international brotherhood everywhere had chosen nationalism and militarism in the hour of trial.The ILP in Britain had rejected the war, but its association with the Labour Party deprived it of all credit in the eyes of the SPGB.The members who had come through the war were confirmed as never before in the belief that they,and no one else, held the truth and menaced the system.”

Labour Party Spgb The Great War Ilp

Author:Robert Barltrop

“The fundamental issue was the class struggle...its prosecution remained the vital principle...and even the scurviest expedient was seen in terms of possible gain by the working class from the masters.”

Class Struggle Spgb

Author:Robert Barltrop

“A severe-looking man who always wore a stiff collar and dark clothes, he was a passionate revolutionary to whom work meant self-abasement before the capitalist class.”

Spgb Capitalist Class

Author:Robert Barltrop

“...he composed his own quotations from Marx and Engels to confound the most learned communist, and recommended others to do the same. 'Twist the book', he would yell: 'Twist the book, so the Party always wins!”

Author:Robert Barltrop

“The road to the new society had lengthened and become overgrown sadly since 1904. The working class in many thousands had been shown its errors in thinking, but persisted in them. Very well: the working class must have the rigours of capitalism, and if the rigours were harsh - it serves them right for not accepting socialism.”

Capitalism Stupidity Working Class Spgb

Author:Robert Barltrop

“What is most remarkable and disquieting about this dangerous organisation (SPGB) is that the members are unquestionably higher-grade working-men of great intelligence, respectability and energy. They are, as a whole, the best informed socialists in the country, and would make incomparable soldiers, or desperate barricadists. As revolutionaries they deserve no mercy; as men, they command respect.”

Revolutionaries Spgb

Author:Robert Barltrop

“If the proletariat came to power, it could draw from Bernstein's theory the following 'practical' conclusion: to go to sleep.”

Socialism Labour Rosa Luxemburg German Social Democracy Reform Or Revolution

Book:Reform or Revolution

Source: Reform or Revolution