Today censorship has become an integral part of free speech.

One US politician.

Nicey.

If money, according to Ogier, "is born with a bloody spot on one cheek," then the newborn capital oozes blood and dirt from all its pores, from head to toe.

K. Marx

Another reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell (through the Trumps, Baidens and Pelosi's.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.

...

The petty-bourgeois democrats, such as our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and also their twin brothers, all the social-chauvinists and opportunists of Western Europe, expect just this “more” from universal suffrage. They themselves share, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage “in the present-day state” is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.

V. Lenin. State and Revolution.

Words —
even the finest —
turn into litter,
wearing threadbare
with use and barter.
Today
I want to infuse
new glitter
into the most glorious of words:
PARTY.
Individual—
what can he mean
in life?
His voice
sounds fainter
than a needle dropping.
Who hears him?
Only, perhaps,
his wife,
and then if she's near
and not out shopping.
A Party's
a raging
single-voiced storm
compressed
out of voices
weak and thin.
The enemy strongholds
burst with its roar
like eardrums
when cannon
begin their din.
One man alone
feels down and out.
One man alone
won't make weather.
Any old bully
can knock him about—
even weaklings
if two together.
But when
we midgets
in a Party stand—
surrender,
enemy,
fade
out of sight!
A Party's
a million-fingered hand
clenched
into one fist
of shattering might.
What's an individual?
No earthly good.
One man,
even the most important of all,
can't raise a ten-yard log of wood,
to say nothing
of a house
ten stories tall.
A Party means millions
of arms,
brains
eyes
linked
and acting together.
In a Party
we'll rear our projects to the skies,
upholding and helping
one another.
The Party's
the compass
that keeps us on course,
the backbone
of the whole working class.
The Party
embodies
the immortality of our cause,
our faith
that will never
fail or pass.
Yesterday an underling,
today
whole empires I'm uncharting.
The brain,
the strength,
the glory of its class,
that's what it is,
our Party.
Lenin
and the Party
are brother-twins.
Who'll say
which means more
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
to History, their mother?
Lenin
and the Party
are the closest kin;
name one
and you can't but imply
the other.

V. Mayakovsky

English version from https://mayday.leftword.com/attachments/Lenin-150-1.pdf

Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s day.

That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.

They say that chronology is the backbone of history. Fine. But we also need to accept that there are four or five fundamental dates that every good person keeps lodged in their brain, which have played bad tricks on history. They too are New Years’. The New Year’s of Roman history, or of the Middle Ages, or of the modern age.

And they have become so invasive and fossilizing that we sometimes catch ourselves thinking that life in Italy began in 752, and that 1490 or 1492 are like mountains that humanity vaulted over, suddenly finding itself in a new world, coming into a new life. So the date becomes an obstacle, a parapet that stops us from seeing that history continues to unfold along the same fundamental unchanging line, without abrupt stops, like when at the cinema the film rips and there is an interval of dazzling light.

That’s why I hate New Year’s. I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. No day set aside for rest. I choose my pauses myself, when I feel drunk with the intensity of life and I want to plunge into animality to draw from it new vigour.

No spiritual time-serving. I would like every hour of my life to be new, though connected to the ones that have passed. No day of celebration with its mandatory collective rhythms, to share with all the strangers I don’t care about. Because our grandfathers’ grandfathers, and so on, celebrated, we too should feel the urge to celebrate. That is nauseating.

I await socialism for this reason too. Because it will hurl into the trash all of these dates which have no resonance in our spirit and, if it creates others, they will at least be our own, and not the ones we have to accept without reservations from our silly ancestors.

Antonio Gramsci

There is a tremendous reluctance among the American people to let go of the notion that we sent men to the Moon. There are a couple of reasons for that, one of them being that there is a romanticized notion that those were great years – years when one was proud to be an American. And in this day and age, people need that kind of romanticized nostalgia to cling to.

But that is not the main reason that people cling so tenaciously, often even angrily, to what is essentially the adult version of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. What primarily motivates them is fear. But it is not the lie itself that scares people; it is what that lie says about the world around us and how it really functions. For if NASA was able to pull off such an outrageous hoax before the entire world, and then keep that lie in place for four decades, what does that say about the control of the information we receive? What does that say about the media, and the scientific community, and the educational community, and all the other institutions we depend on to tell us the truth? What does that say about the very nature of the world we live in?

That is what scares the hell out of people and prevents them from even considering the possibility that they could have been so thoroughly duped. It’s not being lied to about the Moon landings that people have a problem with, it is the realization that comes with that revelation: if they could lie about that, they could lie about anything.

David McGowan

Very interesting how we personally witnessed tremendous mass media power and corruption of science during COVID.

Я не ищу гармонии в природе.
Разумной соразмерности начал
Ни в недрах скал, ни в ясном небосводе
Я до сих пор, увы, не различал.

Как своенравен мир её дремучий!
В ожесточённом пении ветров
Не слышит сердце правильных созвучий,
Душа не чует стройных голосов.

Но в тихий час осеннего заката,
Когда умолкнет ветер вдалеке.
Когда, сияньем немощным объята,
Слепая ночь опустится к реке,

Когда, устав от буйного движенья,
От бесполезно тяжкого труда,
В тревожном полусне изнеможенья
Затихнет потемневшая вода,

Когда огромный мир противоречий
Насытится бесплодною игрой,—
Как бы прообраз боли человечьей
Из бездны вод встаёт передо мной.

И в этот час печальная природа
Лежит вокруг, вздыхая тяжело,
И не мила ей дикая свобода,
Где от добра неотделимо зло.

И снится ей блестящий вал турбины,
И мерный звук разумного труда,
И пенье труб, и зарево плотины,
И налитые током провода.

Так, засыпая на своей кровати,
Безумная, но любящая мать
Таит в себе высокий мир дитяти,
Чтоб вместе с сыном солнце увидать.

N. Zabalotsky 1947

Adopted GT:

I am not looking for harmony in nature.
For reasonable proportions of things
Not in the depths of the rocks, not in the clear sky
I still, alas, did not not find them.

How capricious is this dense world!
And in the fierce singing of the winds
The heart still does not hear the correct accords,
The soul does not feel harmonious voices.

But in the quiet hour of the autumn sunset,
When the wind in the distance dies down
When, enveloped in the weak radiance
The blind night will sink to the river

When, tired of the violent movement,
From useless toil
In an anxious half-sleep of exhaustion
The darkened water will subside

When a vast world of contradictions
Satisfied with the fruitless game, -
As if the prototype of human pain
From the abyss of waters it rises before me.

And at this hour sad nature
Lies around, sighing heavily,
And wild freedom was not dear to her,
Where evil is inseparable from good.

And she dreams of a brilliant turbine shaft,
And the measured sound of reasonable labor,
And the singing of pipes and the glow of the dam,
And trembling electrified wires.

So, falling asleep on her bed,
Mad but loving mother
Contains in itself a high world of a child,
To see the sun with her son.

Kde jsou ty chvíle nádherné,
kdy jsem měl všechny údy ohebné,
jen jeden ne!!!
Ty doby dávno minuly
a všechny údy ztuhnuly,
jen jeden ne!!!

Where are those wonderful moments,
when I had all my limbs flexible,
just one not !!!
That is a long time ago
and all the limbs stiffened,
just one not !!!

Jaroslav Vrchlický

Since the bureaucracy is in its essence 'the state as formalism', it is so in its goal. Thus, the real goal of the state appears to the bureaucracy as an anti-state goal ... The bureaucracy considers itself the ultimate goal of the state. Since the bureaucracy makes its "formal" goals its content, it is everywhere in conflict with the "real" goals. It is therefore compelled to pass off the formal as content, and the content as something formal. State tasks turn into clerical tasks, or clerical tasks into state tasks.

K. Marx

Today the so-called "own opinion" is fetishized, especially when it is not dangerous for political shepherds. Disunited people are much easier to manage, each individually is much easier to squeeze, than a united and organized force.

Every simpleton is taught the value of his personal opinion. At the same time, a palette of judgments beneficial to the ruling class has been created on key issues of economics and politics, and it is considered indecent to go beyond this. Pluralism is complemented by a fashion for liberal or nationalist ideology, thus “valuable personal opinions” are produced in line with the lack of alternatives to the domination of commodity-money relations, the capitalist mode of production and the class division of society. On essential issues, all "individualists" think the same way, as the "shepherds" suggest to them, and on unimportant particulars, chaos of illogical, senseless taste reigns supreme.

Short explanation on why I am mostly sick hearing "independent personal opinions" that are 99% copypasted from the mass media pages.

Well, I just think if you're gonna masturbate, man...treat yourself right. Don't just drag yourself in there again and use yourself. Bring home flowers. How about a movie and a quiet dinner for one? And be coy with yourself, man. "I don't wanna!" "Aw c'mon honey...for me?" "S'all you ever think about!" One thing I never did was accept money from myself, man. I never bought any, boy! One time I caught myself with another hand. Never let your left hand know. Big trouble.

(c) GC

Political Correctness is Fascism Pretending to be Manners

(c) GC

The "identity of public opinion," as Hu Feng insists, means nothing more than prohibiting counterrevolutionaries from coming out with counterrevolutionary opinions. Indeed, our system deprives all counter-revolutionaries of freedom of speech and allows it to be used only within the people. Within the people, we admit non-identity of opinions, in other words, freedom of criticism, freedom of expression of different opinions, freedom of theistic and atheistic (that is, materialistic) propaganda. In any society at any time there are two categories of people, two kinds of views - progressive and backward, which are in contradiction and fight among themselves, moreover, progressive views somehow prevail over the regressive ones, and it is impossible to make "public opinion identical", and do not do it. Only the all-round development of everything that is progressive, advanced and the overcoming regressive things ones move society forward.

And in an era when classes and class struggle still exist outside and inside the country, the working class and the broad masses of the people who have seized state power must suppress the resistance offered to the revolution by all and all counter-revolutionary classes, groups and individuals, suppress their restoration activities, not to give any of the counter-revolutionaries the opportunity to use freedom of speech for counter-revolutionary purposes.

That is why the Khufenites and counterrevolutionaries like them feel uncomfortable with the "identity of public opinion." And the inconvenience for them is exactly what we are trying to achieve, it is just convenient for us. Our public opinion is identical and at the same time not identical. Among the people, progressive and more conservative people are allowed to speak freely on the pages of our newspapers and magazines, from our tribunes, etc. for competition among themselves, so that progressive people, through the democratic method, through the method of persuasion, educate the conservative and regressive part, so that regressive views are overcome and the old order is eliminated.

After overcoming some contradictions, other, new contradictions arise, and competition begins again in the same spirit. In this way, society is continuously moving forward. The presence of a contradiction in itself means non-identity. After overcoming the contradiction, a temporary identity sets in; but soon a new contradiction appears, which means a new non-identity, and again it must be overcome. As for the contradictions between the people and the counter-revolutionaries, the matter here comes down to a dictatorship over the counter-revolutionaries carried out by the people under the leadership of the working class and the Communist Party. Here, not democratic methods are used, but the methods of dictatorship, or dictatorship, in other words, counter-revolutionaries are allowed to behave only quietly and peacefully and are not allowed to go over the boundaries of what is permissible in words and actions.

In this respect, not only public opinion is identical, but also the law. On this occasion, the Khufenites and counterrevolutionaries like them indulged in specious rhetoric, and some simpletons, having heard enough of their counterrevolutionary chatter, feel as if they were not entirely right. Listen, don't "identity of public opinion" or "lack of public opinion" or "suppression of freedom" sound bad? These people do not distinguish between two such different categories, both within the people and outside the people. Within the people, it would be a crime to suppress freedom, to suppress criticism of the mistakes and shortcomings of the Party and the government from the people, to prohibit free discussions among scientific workers — this is our system. In capitalist countries, on the contrary, all this is considered legal. Outside the people, in relation to counter-revolutionaries, it would be a crime to provide freedom to cross the border of what is permissible in words and actions, the dictatorship is legal here - this is our system. In capitalist countries, the situation is exactly the opposite: there is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, under which the revolutionary people are not allowed to go beyond what is permitted in words and actions, they are allowed to behave only quietly and peacefully. The exploiters and counter-revolutionaries are always and everywhere in the minority, and the exploited and the revolutionaries are in the majority, therefore the dictatorship of the latter is quite fair, while the dictatorship of the former is not justified by anything.

Mao Zedong

When the Russian cadets and Kerensky launched a frenzied persecution against the Bolsheviks — especially from April 1917 and even more so in June and July 1917 — they “oversalted”. Millions of copies of bourgeois newspapers, shouting against the Bolsheviks in every way, helped to draw the masses into the assessment of Bolshevism, and in fact, apart from newspapers, the whole public life was saturated with disputes about Bolshevism thanks to the "zeal" of the bourgeoisie.

V. Lenin

So Brer Fox decided to capture and kill Brer Rabbit if it was the last thing he ever did! He thought and he thought until he came up with a plan. He would make a tar baby! Brer Fox went and got some tar and he mixed it with some turpentine and he sculpted it into the figure of a cute little baby. Then he stuck a hat on the Tar Baby and sat her in the middle of the road.

Brer Fox hid himself in the bushes near the road and he waited and waited for Brer Rabbit to come along. At long last, he heard someone whistling and chuckling to himself, and he knew that Brer Rabbit was coming up over the hill. As he reached the top, Brer Rabbit spotted the cute little Tar Baby. Brer Rabbit was surprised. He stopped and stared at this strange creature. He had never seen anything like it before!

"Good Morning," said Brer Rabbit, doffing his hat. "Nice weather we're having."

The Tar Baby said nothing. Brer Fox laid low and grinned an evil grin.

Brer Rabbit tried again. "And how are you feeling this fine day?"

The Tar Baby, she said nothing. Brer Fox grinned an evil grin and lay low in the bushes.

Brer Rabbit frowned. This strange creature was not very polite. It was beginning to make him mad.

"Ahem!" said Brer Rabbit loudly, wondering if the Tar Baby were deaf. "I said 'HOW ARE YOU THIS MORNING?"

The Tar Baby said nothing. Brer Fox curled up into a ball to hide his laugher. His plan was working perfectly!

"Are you deaf or just rude?" demanded Brer Rabbit, losing his temper. "I can't stand folks that are stuck up! You take off that hat and say 'Howdy-do' or I'm going to give you such a lickin'!"

The Tar Baby just sat in the middle of the road looking as cute as a button and saying nothing at all. Brer Fox rolled over and over under the bushes, fit to bust because he didn't dare laugh out loud.

"I'll learn ya!" Brer Rabbit yelled. He took a swing at the cute little Tar Baby and his paw got stuck in the tar.

"Lemme go or I'll hit you again," shouted Brer Rabbit. The Tar Baby, she said nothing.

"Fine! Be that way," said Brer Rabbit, swinging at the Tar Baby with his free paw. Now both his paws were stuck in the tar, and Brer Fox danced with glee behind the bushes.

"I'm gonna kick the stuffin' out of you," Brer Rabbit said and pounced on the Tar Baby with both feet. They sank deep into the Tar Baby. Brer Rabbit was so furious he head-butted the cute little creature until he was completely covered with tar and unable to move.

Brer Fox leapt out of the bushes and strolled over to Brer Rabbit. "Well, well, what have we here?" he asked, grinning an evil grin.

Brer Rabbit gulped. He was stuck fast. He did some fast thinking while Brer Fox rolled about on the road, laughing himself sick over Brer Rabbit's dilemma.

"I've got you this time, Brer Rabbit," said Brer Fox, jumping up and shaking off the dust. "You've sassed me for the very last time. Now I wonder what I should do with you?"

Brer Rabbit's eyes got very large. "Oh please Brer Fox, whatever you do, please don't throw me into the briar patch."

"Maybe I should roast you over a fire and eat you," mused Brer Fox. "No, that's too much trouble. Maybe I'll hang you instead."

"Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please," said Brer Rabbit. "Only please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch."

"If I'm going to hang you, I'll need some string," said Brer Fox. "And I don't have any string handy. But the stream's not far away, so maybe I'll drown you instead."

"Drown me! Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please," said Brer Rabbit. "Only please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch."

"The briar patch, eh?" said Brer Fox. "What a wonderful idea! You'll be torn into little pieces!"

Grabbing up the tar-covered rabbit, Brer Fox swung him around and around and then flung him head over heels into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit let out such a scream as he fell that all of Brer Fox's fur stood straight up. Brer Rabbit fell into the briar bushes with a crash and a mighty thump. Then there was silence.

Brer Fox cocked one ear toward the briar patch, listening for whimpers of pain. But he heard nothing. Brer Fox cocked the other ear toward the briar patch, listening for Brer Rabbit's death rattle. He heard nothing.

Then Brer Fox heard someone calling his name. He turned around and looked up the hill. Brer Rabbit was sitting on a log combing the tar out of his fur with a wood chip and looking smug.

"I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox," he called. "Born and bred in the briar patch."

And Brer Rabbit skipped away as merry as a cricket while Brer Fox ground his teeth in rage and went home.

Adaptation of Uncle Remus story.

Next time someone will start loudly talking about 100% green energy, only electric cars, lowering carbon footprint and NEVER EVER any oil, gas and nuclear power (all this while he is stick to enormous debts and problems) - remember this nice old story. As trick that will follow will be the same.

About the middle of December, 1917, a group of Socialist Revolutionary leaders paid a private visit to Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador, and implored him not to mention the fact that they had been there, because they were “considered too far Right.”

“And to think,” said Sir George. “One year ago my Government instructed me not to receive Miliukov, because he was so dangerously Left!”

John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World

The revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don't turn, it falls.

Marjane Satrapi

Just note that reaction is absolutely same - it needs to go further to stay alive.

So as people now pray that present trade war will stop and delay on present phase - it can't be done. Either it'll go into full blown world war or present reactionary politics of ruling class and ruling clas by itself will fall.

About France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood--one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell.

There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break?

What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

Mark Twain

We all know the dictum of Clausewitz, one of the most famous writers on the philosophy and history of war, which says: “War is a continuation of policy by other means.”. This writer, whose basic views are now undoubtedly familiar to every thinking person, nearly eighty years ago challenged the ignorant man-in-the-street conception of war as being a thing apart from the policies of the governments and classes concerned, as being a simple attack that disturbs the peace, and is then followed by restoration of the peace thus disturbed, as much as to say: “They had a fight, then they made up!” This is a grossly ignorant view, one that was repudiated scores of years ago and is repudiated by any more or less careful analysis of any historical epoch of wars.

Methods which Clausewitz wrote about eighty years ago when he ridiculed the very view some people are holding today, namely, that the nations lived in peace and then they started fighting. As if this were true! How can a war be accounted for without considering its bearing on the preceding policy of the given state, of the given system of states, the given classes? I repeat: this is a basic point which is constantly overlooked. Failure to understand it makes nine-tenths of all war discussions mere wrangling, so much verbiage. We say: if you have not studied the policies of both belligerent groups over a period of decades so as to avoid accidental factors and the quoting of random examples if you have not shown what bearing this war has on preceding policies, then you don’t understand what this war is all about.

V. Lenin.

“Long live Lenin!”

Written high up, near the very ceiling
of the half-dark cell,
those words could be hardly distinguished.
But the warders saw them
and sent a painter into the cell,
Armed with a brush and a bucket of whitewash
to blot out the dangerous phrase

But the painter just traced it over with whitewash
And again it appeared on the wall
this time not in pencil, but in chalk:

“Long Live Lenin!”

another painter came in and slapped whitewash all
over the wall.

The inscription, it seemed, had vanished. But then,
the next morning
the moisture dried up, and again it stood out
through the chalk:

“Long Live Lenin!”

Now the warders come in with a stonemason
holding a scraper.
For a whole hour, he scraped off letter after letter,
yet when he had finished, again it shone in the cell,
cut in stone, the unconquerable inscription:

“Long Live Lenin!”
“Now, you can knock down the wall if you like,”
Said the soldier.

Bertolt Brecht

When certain sorts of people do a sizable good deed, we credit them up a thousand-fold more for it than we would in the case of a better man-on account of the strain. You stand far away above your classification-record here, because of certain self-sacrifices of yours which greatly exceed what could have been expected of you. Years ago, when you were worth only $100,000, and sent $2 to your impoverished cousin the widow when she appealed to you for help, there were many in heaven who were not able to believe it, and many more who believed that the money was counterfeit. Your character went up many degrees when it was shown that these suspicions were unfounded. A year or two later, when you sent the poor girl $4 in answer to another appeal, everybody believed it, and you were all the talk here for days together. Two years later you sent $6, upon supplication, when the widow’s youngest child died, and that act made perfect your good fame. Everybody in heaven said, “Have you heard about Andrew?”-for you are now affectionately called Andrew here. Your increasing donation, every two or three years, has kept your name on all lips, and warm in all hearts. All heaven watches you Sundays, as you drive to church in your handsome carriage; and when your hand retires from the contribution plate, the glad shout is heard even to the ruddy walls of remote Sheol, “Another nickel from Andrew!”

But the climax came a few days ago, when the widow wrote and said she could get a school in a far village to teach if she had $50 to get herself and her two surviving children over the long journey; and you counted up last month’s clear profit from your three coal mines-$22,230- and added to it the certain profit for the current month-$45,000 and a possible fifty-and then got down your pen and your check-book and mailed her fifteen whole dollars! Ah, Heaven bless and keep you forever and ever, generous heart! There was not a dry eye in the realms of bliss; and amidst the hand-shakings, and embracings, and praisings, the decree was thundered forth from the shining mount, that this deed should out-honor all the historic self-sacrifices of men and angels, and be recorded by itself upon a page of its own, for that the strain of it upon you had been heavier and bitterer than the strain it costs ten thousand martyrs to yield up their lives at the fiery stake; and all said, “What is the giving up of life, to a noble soul, or to ten thousand noble souls, compared with the giving up of fifteen dollars out of the greedy grip of the meanest white man that ever lived on the face of the earth?”

M. Twain. Report from the Recording Angel.

The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, "doing something"; academics participate in meaningless "debates," etc.; but the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it all. Those in power often prefer even "critical" participation or a critical dialogue to silence, since to engage us in such a "dialogue" ensures that our ominous passivity is broken.

Slavoj Žižek,

Carroll Quigley

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Mark Twain

Engels.

The nations, without any rational foundation and contrary to their consciousness and their advantages, not only sympathize with the governments in their attacks upon other nations, in their seizures of the possessions of others, and in the use of violence in defending what has already been seized, but themselves demand these attacks, seizures, and defenses, and rejoice in them and are proud of them.

This is due to the fact that the ruling classes (meaning by this not merely the governments with their officials, but also all the classes which enjoy an exclusive, advantageous position – the capitalists, journalists, the majority of artists and scholars) are able to retain their exclusive and advantageous position, as compared with the popular masses, only thanks to the political structure which is supported by means of patriotism. By having in their hands all the most powerful means of influencing the masses, they always unswervingly maintain the patriotic feelings in themselves and in others, the more so, since these sentiments, which support the power of the state, are more than any other rewarded by that power.

Every official succeeds in his service in proportion to his patriotism; even so a military man can advance in his career only in a war, which is provoked by patriotism. Patriotism and its consequences, the wars, give a good income to the newspapermen and advantages to the majority of merchants. Every author, teacher, and professor will make his position more secure the more he preaches patriotism. Every emperor and king gains glory in proportion to his devotion to patriotism.

The army, the money, the school, the religion, and the press are in the hands of the ruling classes. In the schools they fan patriotism in the children by means of history, by describing their nation as the best of all the nations and always in the right. In the adults, the same sentiment is roused by means of spectacles, celebrations, monuments, and a patriotic, lying press. But patriotism is chiefly roused in them by committing all kinds of unjust acts and cruelties against other nations and provoking hatred in these nations for their own nation, and then using this hatred for provoking such a hatred in their own nation.

The fanning of this terrible sentiment of patriotism has proceeded in the European nations in a rapidly increasing progression, and in our time has reached a stage beyond which it cannot go.

L. Tolstoy; 1900

Man's dearest possession is life, and it is given to him to live but once. He must live so as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he can say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world – the fight for the Liberation of Mankind. And one must make use of every moment of life, lest some sudden illness or tragic accident cut it short.

Nikolai Ostrovsky. How the Steel Was Tempered.

• https://www.cpa.org.au/resources/cpa-presents/how-the-steel-was-tempered-book-1.pdf
• https://www.cpa.org.au/resources/cpa-presents/how-the-steel-was-tempered-book-2.pdf

There is a Latin tag cui prodest? meaning “who stands to gain?” When it is not immediately apparent which political or social groups, forces or alignments advocate certain proposals, measures, etc., one should always ask: “Who stands to gain?”

It is not important who directly advocates a particular policy, since under the present noble system of capitalism any money-bag can always “hire”, buy or enlist any number of lawyers, writers and even parliamentary deputies, professors, parsons and the like to defend any views. We live in an age of commerce, when the bourgeoisie have no scruples about trading in honour or conscience. There are also simpletons who out of stupidity or by force of habit defend views prevalent in certain bourgeois circles.

Yes, indeed! In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures.

V. I. Lenin

The omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.

V.Lenin . The State and Revolution.

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.

Jeff Hammerbacher