"The Greatest Failure in All History": A Critical Examination of the Actual Workings of Bolshevism in Russia

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Harper & brothers, 1920 - Communism - 486 pages

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Page 355 - All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.
Page 10 - The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of society as a whole — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is at the same time its last independent act as a state.
Page 355 - Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Page 10 - The society that will organize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe...
Page 152 - The verdicts of the Revolutionary Tribunal are final. In case of violation of the form of procedure established by these instructions, or the discovery of indications of obvious injustice in the verdict, the People's Commissary of Justice has the right to address to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies a request to order a second and last trial of the case.
Page 9 - The modern State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.
Page 10 - State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished.
Page 313 - Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
Page 56 - ... Commissariats are entirely responsible to the Council of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. 48. The title of People's Commissar belongs only to the members of the Council of People's Commissars, which is in charge of general affairs of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, and it cannot be used by any other representative of the Soviet power, either central or local.
Page 55 - 41. All orders and resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars of great political significance are referred for consideration and final approval to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. " Note.— Measures requiring immediate execution may be enacted directly by the Council of People's Commissars. "42. The members of the Council of People's Commissars stand at the head of the various People's Commissariats. "43. There are seventeen People's Commissars: (a) Foreign Affairs; (b) Army,...

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