Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 38

"Until now, the ties of nationality have been based upon coercion from above. The new system will organize the nations from below. And it is precisely due to this fact that the new system will obtain the security which will allow it to prevail over the old, which no foreign forces will be able to prevent or oppress, and which will bring in its wake, in all regions and throughout the world, with the guarantee of domestic invincibility, the possibility of the unlimited expansion of the world socialist order."
- Heinrich Laufenberg

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"On the basis of this knowledge, after thousands of man-hours spent with warrior people, a firm conviction had developed in me, that war is not the sin of human kind, not a vestige of the past, not a shameful instinct, but a legitimate powerful instinct of aggression, the instinct of heroism."
- Eduard Liminov

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“Workers don’t have a country”, said The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels. On the contrary, workers have a country more than the bourgeois, who we could consider as the real “fatherlandless”; as the rich man finds himself at ease everywhere in the world, wherever he finds himself, precisely because of his wealth; while the man of the people, the poor man, stripped of his country, uprooted, transplanted, delivered to capitalist and foreign double domination, is doubly enslaved and wretched. In fact, most often in history, it has been the rich who have sold their country at premium price for an ignoble class interest, [...] while the popular classes defended it with the most magnificent tenacity.

J. Darville, pseudonym of Edouard BERTH, Satellites de la ploutocratie in Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon, volume V-VI, Paris, 1912.

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"Something that nationalists need to learn once and for all:

Class struggle is not ideology. Class struggle is a description of reality. The class struggle exists. There is no controversy about that. What can be discussed is whether or not it is the engine of history and whether or not it is the main political contradiction.

Whether it exists or is not an indisputable, undeniable, ever-present fact.

There is a class that is at war against the workers. No conciliation is possible with that class.

*All historical attempts to achieve conciliation with this class have failed.*

There's a class that's at war with us. Close your eyes to it, ignore it, pretend that this is not happening - this will not change a basic, obvious, given aspect of reality.

Class struggle exists. There is a war being fought. And we're the target.

And what happens in a war when only one side is aware that there is a war being fought?"

- Raphael Machado - New Resistance, Brazil

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From an interview with Alain de Benoist on the Gilets jaunes protest movement in France:

What strikes you the most, in this movement?

Two things. The first, the most important, is the spontaneous character of the movement, as it's what frightens the public powers the most, which finds itself without spokesmen, but also the parties and the unions, who discover with stupor that nearly a million men and women can mobilize and spark a movement of solidarity we've rarely seen (70 to 80% support in opinion polls) without even thinking to appeal to them. The yellow vests, a consummate example of popular self-organization. No leaders big or small, nor Caesars nor tribunes, solely the people. Populism in the pure state. Not the populism of parties or movements that claim this label, but what Vincent Coussedière called the “populism of the people.” Frondeurs3, sans-culottes, communards, whatever label they want to place on them doesn't matter. The people of the yellow vests didn't entrust anyone the duty to speak in its place, it has imposed itself as a historical subject, and for that too, it must be endorsed and supported.

The other point that strikes me is the incredible discourse of hate directed against the yellow vests by the carriers of the dominant ideology, the sad alliance of little marquises in power, ridiculous pretentious people, and financial markets. “Beaufs4”, “morons”, “old fashioned” are the words that recur the most often (to say nothing of “brown shirts!”). Read the letters to the editor in Le Monde, listen to the moral left – the kerosene left – and the well bred right. Until now, they've held the reins, but not anymore. They lash out in the most obscene manner to express their haughtiness and class contempt, but also their panicked fear of seeing themselves dismissed by beggars soon. Since the tremendous demonstration in Paris, they no longer have the heart to reply to those who complain about the price of gas because they haven't bought an electric car (the modern version of “let them eat cake!”). When the people spills into the streets of the capital, they raise the drawbridges! If they openly express their hate of this popular France – the France of Johnny5, the France that “smokes cigarettes and drives diesels”, - of this France that is not mixed enough, and too French anyhow, of the people that Macron has described in turn as illiterates and slackers who want “to make trouble”, in short, as insignificant people, they know that their days are numbered.

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"Dress suitably in short skirts and sitting boots, leave your jewels and gold in the bank, and buy a revolver.”

- Constance Markievicz, Irish Revolutionary Nationalist and Socialist, founding member of Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan, and the Irish Citizen Army, 1916.

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