Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves. Karl Marx
A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. ibid.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. ibid.
A class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increase capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. ibid.
What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. ibid.
The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. ibid.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation. ibid.
They [communists] openly declare that their ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. ibid.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! ibid.
The unity is brought about by force. Karl Marx
The circulation of capital realizes value, while living labour creates value. Karl Marx
For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools. Karl Marx
For Marx was, before all else, a revolutionary. His real mission in life was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present day proletariat. Friedrich Engels
What is Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. What is the proletariat? The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labour and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labour – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism, 1847
Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source – next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself. Friedrich Engels
The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now colonies under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real conscious Lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production. It goes without saying that society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed. The old mode of production must therefore be revolutionised from top to bottom, and in particular the former division of labour must disappear. Its place must be taken by an organisation of production in which, on the one hand, no individual can throw on the shoulders of others his share in productive labour, this natural condition of human existence; and in which, on the other hand, productive labour, instead of being a means of subjugating men, will become a means of their emancipation, by offering each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full – in which, therefore, productive labour will become a pleasure instead of being a burden. Friedrich Engels
Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself who has declared war against Almighty God. Billy Graham
Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff. Frank Zappa
Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements. Nelson Mandela
Let’s not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky. Boris Yeltsin
The crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the spectre of Communism. A J P Taylor
I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department. Joseph McCarthy
I ain’t a Communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life. Woody Guthrie
I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist. George Bernard Shaw
I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party. It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Allen West
Over the years, there have been a series of concepts developed to justify the use of force in international affairs for a long period. It was possible to justify it on the pretext, which usually turned out to have very little substance, that the US was defending itself against the communist menace. By the 1980s, that was wearing pretty thin. Noam Chomsky
The Communist Party was labelled ‘extremist’ and ‘undemocratic’ by US propaganda ... The Vatican announced that anyone who voted for the Communists in the 1948 election would be denied sacraments, and backed the conservative Christian Democrats under the slogan ‘O con Cristo o contro Cristo’ (Either with Christ or against Christ). A year later, Pope Pius excommunicated all Italian Communists.
A combination of violence, manipulation of aid and other threats, and a huge propaganda campaign sufficed to determine the outcome of the critical 1948 election, essentially bought by US intervention and pressures. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
The US planned military intervention in the event of a legal Communist political victory in 1948 ... Washington's intention to resort to violence if free elections came out the wrong way is not very easy to deal with, so it has been generally suppressed, even in the scholarly literature. ibid.
In earlier years, when he was better behaved, Figueres recognized that the Costa Rican Communist Party, particularly strong among plantation workers, was posing an unacceptable challenge. He therefore arrested its leaders, declared the Party illegal, and suppressed its members. The policy was maintained through the 1960s, while efforts to establish any working-class party were banned by the state authorities. ibid.
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. Hélder Câmara
And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and ‘security’ departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labour camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It’s easy to say, with Albert Camus, ‘neither victims nor executioners.’ But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir