The Notes (9 page)
N
o method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self govt. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, reaction & decline of all forms of govt. those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory for an enlightened & progressive people. Being irresponsible they become autocratic & being autocratic they resist all development. Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative govt. & overwhelms democracy. It is the one element in our insts. that sets up a pretense of having authority over everybody & being responsible to nobody.
1927, Rev. Rauschenbusch “New Leader,” Official Soc. Paper
T
he Am. people will never knowingly stage a revolution to bring about socialism. So we should promote the idea by increasing govt. control of business & having Socialists get govt. jobs. one man in govt. with his eyes & ears open can do more than a hundred men on the outside. They must work to promote more govt. control of banks, R.R.’s, & other businesses; to start a program of govt. ownership of elec. power & to work for pol. control & management of all key industries. (It didn’t bother the Rev. that people who wouldn’t knowingly vote for Soc. should have it forced on them).
Samuel Gompers Last Speech Before Labor Convention
T
here may be here & there a worker who does not join a union of labor. That is his right no matter how wrong we think he may be. It is his legal right & no one can dare question his legal exercise of that right.
1924—Urged Fundamentals of Human Liberty: No lasting good has ever come from compulsion.
Statue of Liberty
H
er name—Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand glow world wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air bridged harbor that twin cities frame. Keep your ancient lands, your storied pomp; cries she with silent lips—Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Louise E. Weber, “I Love This Land”
I
may inhabit worlds in time to come of finer substance, born of further suns; a greater glory I may one day see, but oh today, dear earth, how I love thee.
Vladimir Lenin
G
o to youth, form fighting squads everywhere. Let groups be organized of 3, 10, 30 persons. Let them arm themselves as best they can with a revolver, knife, rag soaked in kerosene for starting fires. Do not make membership in the party an absolute condition. That would be an absurd demand for an armed uprising. You must proceed with propaganda on a wide scale. Propagandists must supply each group with a brief & simple recipe for making bombs. Squads must begin military training. Some may undertake to kill, to spy or blow up police stations, others to raid the bank to confiscate money for the insurrection.
B
e prepared to resort to every illegal device to conceal the truth—It would not matter if ¾ of the human race perished; the important thing is that the remaining ¼ be communist.
T
he communist party enters into Bourgeois insts. not to do constructive work but in order to direct the masses to destroy from within the whole Bourgeois state machine & the parliament itself.
Joseph Stalin
W
ords must have no relation to actions, otherwise what kind of diplomacy is it? Words are one thing, action another. Good words are a mask for concealment of deeds. Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron.
Nikita Khrushchev
D
espite the difference between the stages of comm. & soc. no wall of any kind exists between them . . . communism grows from soc. & its direct continuation.
Comm. Party U.S.A. Oath, 1930