History moves in contradictions...

Nikolai Bukharin (9 October 1888 {27 September O.S.} – 15 March 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and theorist.

Quotes

  • History moves in contradictions. The skeleton of historic existence, the economic structure of society, also develops in contradictions. Forms eternally follow forms. Everything has only a passing being. The dynamic force of life creates the new over and over again — such is the law inherent in reality.
  • We see now that infringement of freedom is necessary with regard to the opponents of the revolution. At a time of revolution we cannot allow freedom for the enemies of the people and of the revolution. That is a surely clear, irrefutable conclusion.
  • But to everything in this world there comes an end; there even comes an end to the torments suffered in those intermediate states of transition when the last secret tear of one's soul is bitterly swallowed, and the crisis passes, resolving itself into some new sort of phase, which even as it comes into existence is fated in turn to pass away, to disappear in the eternal changing of the times and seasons.
    • How It All Began : The Prison Novel, one of Bukharin's final works while in prison, as translated by George Shriver, (1998), Ch.8
  • Fascist ‘order’ is the ‘order’ of military, political and economic barracks; it is the military capitalist system of a state of ‘emergency’. This expresses itself in a number of most important facts: in the tendency towards state capitalism; in the ‘common national’, ‘corporate’, etc, dictatorship, with the suppression of a number of internal contradictions; in the establishment of various ‘mono’ systems – ‘mono-nation’, ‘mono-party’, ‘mono-state’ (’totalitarian state’), etc; in the organisation of mass human reserves – petty-bourgeois and, in part, working class; in a whole ‘incorporated’ ideology, attuned to the basic interests of finance capital; and, finally, in the creation of a material and ideological war base.The so-called Fascist ‘national revolutions’, with their anti-capitalist slogans, are really in essence but a speedy reorganisation of the bourgeois ranks, eliminating parliamentary changes and the system of competing parties, introducing uniform military discipline all along the line, and organising mass reserves.
    • "Crisis of Capitalist Culture", (1934)

ABC's of Communism

  • One of the worrst forms of national enmity is antisemitism, that is to say, racial hostility towads the Jews, who elong to Semimtic stock (of which the Arabs forms another great branch). The Tsarist autocracy raised the hunt against the Jews in the hope of averting the worers' and peasants' revolution.
  • The Russian bourgeoisie raised the hunt against the Jews, not only in the hope of diverting the anger of the exploited workers, but also in the hope of freeing themselves from competitors in commerce and industry.
    • pp.253
  • The proletarian army must be exclusively composed of persons belonging to the working class, of persons who do not expoloit labour and who are directly interested in the victory of the workers' revolution.
    • 62. The Need For The Red Army; It's Class Composition
  • In the Russian Soviet Republic, in which all workers can express their will through the soviets, the workers and peasants have for the last two years been electing communists to the various executive organs.
    • 65.
  • In our system of universal military training, barrack life must be reduced to a minimum, so that ultimately the Red barracks may completely disappear.
    • 66. Structure of the Red Army
  • The political commissars are the representatives of the class will of the proletariat in the army; they are mandated by the party and the military centres.
    • 66.
  • In all grades of army life, the proletariat is in control through the instrumentality of the communist commissars, who both at the front and at the rear are mainly drawn from among the workers.
  • During this era when the old society is being destroyed and the new society is being upbuilded, the popular courts have a gigantic task to perform. The process of change has been so rapid that soviet legislation has not been able to keep pace with it. The laws of the bourgeois landlord system have been annulled; but the laws of the proletarian State have as yet merely been outlined, and will never be committed to paper in their entirety.
    • 72. Unified Popular Law-Courts
  • In the old law-courts, the class minority of exploiters passed judgement upon the working majority. The law-courts of the proletarian dictatorship are places where the working majority passes judgement upon the exploiting minority.
    • 71. The Election of the Judiciary by The Workers
  • In the sanguinary struggle with capitalism, the working class cannot refrain from inflicting the last extremity of punishment upon its declared enemies. While the civil war continues, the abolition of the death penalty is impossible.
    • 74
  • The great majority of crimes committed in bourgeois society are either direct infringements of property rights or are indirectly connected with property.
    • 74
  • Our ultimate aim is to bring about the existence of a state of society in which all persons who for one reason or another have lost the capacity for work, all those who are unable to work, shall have assured support. We must ensure that old people shall enjoy a peaceful old age in which they will be provided with all the comforts of life; that children shall have everything suitable to their requirements; that invalids and cripples shall be able to live in the circumstances most appropriate to their condition; that those who are wearied and overworked shall be placed in curative surroundings, where they will receive all the care that used to be given to the wealthy bourgeois who were ailing; that no one shall any longer be perpetually harassed with anticipation of hard times.
    • 131
  • In the mater of education as in all other matters the Communist Party is not merely faced by constructive tasks. In the educational system bequeathed to it by capitalist society, it must hasten to destroy everything which has made of the school an instrument of capitalist rule.
    • Ch.X, p. 282
  • The Red Army has been created by the workers for the struggle with the White Army of capital. The Red Army issued out the civil war; it will disappear when a complete victory has been gained in the war, when class has been abolished when the dictatorship of the proletariat has lapsed.
    • Ch.8, pp. 268
  • It is true that these courts will gradually change in character. As the state dies out, they will tend to become simply organs for the expression of public opinion. They will assume the character of courts of arbitration. Their decisions will no longer be enforced by physical means and will have a purely moral significance.
    • Ch.9, pp.277
  • The foundation of a Communist society are laid by the organization of industry, and first of alll by purposeful unification of industry under state control.
    • pp. 319

Quotes about Nikolai Bukharin

  • Speaking of the young C.C. members, I wish to say a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the youngest ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of the dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it).
  • At the Twelfth Party Congress in Moscow in 1923, Nikolia Bukharin stressed that the Nazi Party had ‘inherited Bolshevik political culture exactly as Italian Fascism had done.’ On June 20, 1923, Karl Radek gave a speech before the Comintern Executive Committee proposing a common front with the Nazis in Germany.
    • Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914—1945. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. p. 126
This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.