“It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.” - I.V. Dzugashvili, Soviet Georgian philosopher and political activist.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
38 points (100.0% liked)
Ask Lemmygrad
1258 readers
69 users here now
A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Wait, I thought that was a Stalin quote??
Stalin is pseudonym. Like Lenin and Trotsky. His legal name is Iosef Dzugashvili.
That I believe is Stalin's birth surname in russian if I'm correct. It's a brilliant quote in my opinion.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell
🔥
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
Lenin
Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.
Karl Marx
Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
not anti-capitalist but truth nonetheless, might makes right.
You're putting bicycle wheels on a truck, if that metaphor makes sense.
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" is not the same as "might makes right" although they can be seen as similar.
Might makes right is the justification of victory, of opposition or the lack there of. It's the language of colonizers, that if someone was a victim, they should have just been strong enough to resist. That, by virtue of victory, the victor is correct. It's a cyclical argument, the law of the jungle.
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" is less about what makes something right or wrong, and more simply about the facts. Communists aren't right because they defeat capitalism through revolutionary violence, but revolutionary violence is still necessary.
It's not about being right or wrong but that it gives you the right to assert your will, regardless if it's right or wrong.
"The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope." - Unknown.
Mine is:
They got money for war, but can't feed the poor.
Tupac Shakur
"A guilty system recognizes no innocents."
Iain M Banks
The Third World is not poor. You don't go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world... These countries are not underdeveloped, they're overexploited!
- Michael Parenti
“All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.” - Lenin
I really like this one because the first step to de-liberalizing someone is to point out the source of their information and education is owned by people who would kill us all and destroy the world for higher quarterly profits.
‘We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a while. For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.’ — Buenaventura Durruti
The capitalist will sell us the rope we use to hang him with has a lot of meaning.
We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our time comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
capitalism is when no iphone
"In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time" Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 17
It's not the most standout quote of his work. But it's one that really solidified the concept for me.
The soul of Man under Socialism. Oscar Wilde
The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.
