Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 63

Lenin on how to deal with prostitution:

"organise immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like."

- Letter to Fyodorov 1918

....................

“The bourgeois, in the metaphysical sense of the word, is a man who only believes in the world of the visible and tangible, who only aspires to occupy in that world a secure and stable situation […]. The only thing he takes seriously is the economic force […]. The bourgeois lives in what is finite, he is afraid of any prolongations towards the infinite. The only infinite he recognises is the economic development."

- Nicolas Berdiaev

..................

25 May marks Lebanese Resistance and Liberation Day when in 2000, the Israeli army withdrew from southern Lebanon after almost two decades of occupation. Southern Lebanese resistance had finally been able to push the Zionists out of Lebanon.

The victory of the resistance was a humiliating defeat for the Zionists.

“In man - in the history of mankind, this has happened many times, and occupation leaders hang on to the land that they're occupying. People fight to liberate their land. But in the end, the people's will is what achieves victory”

- Hassan Nasrallah

.....................

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

...........................

May 23th 1889 - May 23th 1967 -- Ernst Niekisch

The bourgeois must die if the (German and Russian) people are to live. He is the enemy on the inner front of the class struggle, just as the nobility around 1790 was the enemy on the inner front of the national struggle. At the time the nobility was highly regarded, now it is more the bourgeois. However, he is a "man from the past", as you once had the nobility; he no longer has the right to stay with us. The exclusively social class struggle is a slave revolt that only concerns the poor and the weak; the politically determined class struggle is a struggle for freedom that decides the fate of the people. The driving forces behind the social class struggle are feelings of envy, the dream of prosperity and the desire for earthly bliss. Behind the politically motivated class struggle is the pointing finger of world history. In Soviet Russia, the proletarian is not made happy, but is drilled ready for a world historical mission; it is a military barracks: class adherence is mandatory. As a class comrade, one only has the privilege of starving and dying. This is how they mature into political leadership. Capitalism bewildered man as soon as it took away the job satisfaction. The wage slave must go through bolshevik purgatory, in order to be able to regard his hard life as a meaningful assignment. ”

(Source: Widerstand, Ernst Niekisch)

............................

Wherever possible, we must seek to renovate existing property in order to avoid the breaking up of communities. Unfortunately, in many of Britain's towns and cities, many properties are beyond repair and renovation and are only fit for demolition. Whether or not we decide to build new houses on these sites must be seen in the overall context of a possible policy of de-urbanisation. It may well be that with the introduction of new production techniques, and a totally reorganised economy, we may find it possible to reverse the trend of the last 150 years and encourage people to move from our crowded cities back to the under-populated rural areas.

- Nick Wakeling