"One cannot hide the fact that dictatorship presupposes and implies a "condition", one so disagreeable to renegades [such as Kautsky], of revolutionary violence of one class against another ... the "fundamental feature" of the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat is revolutionary violence"."
--Vladimir I. Lenin ("The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky", 1918)
"Kommunisterne forsmår at skjule deres anskuelser og deres hensigter. De
erklærer åbent, at deres mål kun kan nås ved, at hele den bestående
samfundsordning styrtes med magt.
--Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels ("Det Kommunistiske Manifest", 1848)
"The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by
weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory
also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses." (original: "Die Waffe der Kritik kann
allerdings die Kritik der Waffen nicht ersetzen, die materielle Gewalt
muß gestürzt werden durch materielle Gewalt, allein auch die Theorie
wird zur materiellen Gewalt, sobald sie die Massen ergreift.")
--Karl Marx (Indledningen til "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie", 1844)
"[The] very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."
--Karl Marx (avisartikel, Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 136, november 1848)
"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When
our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror."
--Karl Marx (avisartikel, Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 301, maj 1849)
"[The ] governments are opposed to us: We must answer them with all the means that are at our disposal ... We must declare to the governments: We will proceed against you where it is possible and by force of arms when it may be necessary."
--Karl Marx, London Conference of the International (1871), citeret i D. McLellan: Karl Marx : His Life and Thought (London, 1973: 406).
"Above all, during and immediately after the struggle the workers, as far as it is at all possible, must oppose bourgeois attempts at pacification and force the democrats to carry out their terroristic phrases. They must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses—instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated—the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction."
--Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League", 1850.
“Violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” (original: "Die Gewalt ist der Geburtshelfer jeder alten Gesellschaft, die mit einer neuen schwanger geht.")
--Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (Das Kapital, 1887)
"Det har skadet økonomien at lave en blandings-økonomi. Han burde have lavet en rent socialistisk økonomi. Men det er helt forkert at sige, at han har kørt økonomien i sænk og er ved at afvikle demokratiet. Demokratiet er blevet udvidet under Chavez og Maduro med en masse inddragende basisdemokrati."
