I’ve always attributed that first quote to Machiavelli, but I can’t any source for it either. Am I crazy?
What’s funny about the Stalin one is that it can very easily be read as a condemnation of the fact that when someone who enjoys some sort of elevated status dies it will be on the front page of every newspaper, while if tons of common people die from preventable causes year after year those same newspapers will do their best to just ignore it.
Fake Marx makes a good point though
Yaroslavsky’s “Religion in the USSR” is a very interesting work to me (he was the leader/founder of the Militant Atheist League), also check out the Little Lenin Library compilation titled “Lenin On Religion”. Both are short if people are interested in reading them.
it would do a log to remove the impetus for lots of violence around the world
This is not what Marxists believe. Religion is the opiate of the people, a way to numb suffering in a world full of pain and deprivation. The first requisite to a happy people is improving material conditions. All communist experiments believe this. Religious institutions are a different matter, where states deal with them situationally
If you like your opium, you can keep it
Very good point. Sign me up
What next you’re gonna tell me this quote isnt real? “Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it’s more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff, it’s communism.” - Carl Mark
Yeah these quotes always sounded like they came out of the same G.I. Joe figurine.
“We will wage our revolution by teaching gay in schools and taxing small business owners”
-Ho Chi Minh
I wouldn’t be surprised if Mao really said that, where the quote is taken out of context. https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Oppose_Book_Worship
Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, “Show me where it’s written in the book.” When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from “a higher organ of leadership” but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalist attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.
The method of studying the social sciences exclusively from the book is likewise extremely dangerous and may even lead one onto the road of counter-revolution. Clear proof of this is provided by the fact that whole batches of Chinese Communists who confined themselves to books in their study of the social sciences have turned into counter-revolutionaries. When we say Marxism is correct, it is certainly not because Marx was a “prophet” but because his theory has been proved correct in our practice and in our struggle. We need Marxism in our struggle. In our acceptance of his theory no such formalization of mystical notion as that of “prophecy” ever enters our minds. Many who have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well. Of course we should study Marxist books, but this study must be integrated with our country’s actual conditions. We need books, but we must overcome book worship, which is divorced from the actual situation.
How can we overcome book worship? The only way is to investigate the actual situation.
If only Maoists would take Mao’s own advice…
The lab work v field work divide transcends both politics and history.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
Are we sure the Lenin one’s not real? Lenin’s plan for defeating the bourgeoisie was, famously, to work within the system to increase taxes through incremental reforms.
Idk if it’s a real quote but I got a new plan, listen: “the way to crush the burgeoise is to grind them.”
Finally, a grindset I can get behind.
Is this trolling? I’ve never heard any of these fake quotes.
I’ve definitely heard a few, like the Stalin one, passed around by anti-communists.
I don’t know if the lenin one is real or fake but either way it’s fire
I mean…I’m sure Che said that tho…
nope, one of his most famous quotes (that this is a corruption of) is:
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”
from here
The goal of this to show that they are actually good people? Because… showing a few wrongly attributed quotes doesn’t help their image or the historical context.
The goal is to debunk verifiable lies fed to you by the West. The post makes no mention of how good or evil they were, only that they definitely did not say these very specific evil things. If it happens to cause you to reconsider your conclusion that these people are evil, a conclusion also fed to you by the same Western propaganda, that’s your business.
The afterglow of christian domination over western thought can be seen in the way our first and most important learned behavior is to separate “good people” from “bad people” as if anyone is purely one or the other, as if these are categories that carry any meaning of their own, and as if what makes a person helpful or harmful, kind or malicious, is some kind of innate essence and not a combination of their circumstances, intent, position and effectiveness.
But also look at this picture of Ho Chi Minh
this should be an album kover
I think the point is, don’t trust what anti-communists claim they said; read what they actually said.
Imagine being the hostile to countering lies
