A life choice for freedom«...these replies are intended for practical use (...) to be torn from the “narrow walls of intellectuals’ studies” and to address those (...) for whom “ideals” are necessary, because without ideals they cannot live well».— Lenin, 1894Marxism: a guide for action“Nature is grand, but history seems grander to me than nature. Nature has taken millions of years to generate conscious beings, and these conscious beings now need thousands of years to act consciously together — that is, with the consciousness not only of their actions as individuals, but also of their actions as a mass — cooperating and pursuing a common goal that was chosen in advance. We have almost reached this situation. Observing this process, the approaching of something that has never existed before in our Earth’s history, I see a show worth watching. Throughout my entire life I have never been able to take my eyes off it.”— Friedrich Engels, 1893 (Letter to George William Lamplugh)The Age of Imperialism«The first epoch, from the Great French Revolution to the Franco-Prussian War, is one of the rise of the bourgeoisie, of its triumph, of the bourgeoisie on the upgrade, an epoch of bourgeois-democratic movements in general, and of bourgeois-national movements in particular: an epoch of the rapid breakdown of the obsolete feudal-absolutist institutions. The second epoch is that of the full domination and decline of the bourgeoisie, one of transition from its progressive character towards reactionary and even ultra-reactionary finance capital. This is an epoch in which a new class — present-day democracy — is preparing and slowly mustering its forces. The third epoch, which has just set in, places the bourgeoisie in the same “position” as that in which the feudal lords found themselves during the first epoch. This is the epoch of imperialism and imperialist upheavals, as well as of upheavals stemming from the nature of imperialism».— Lenin, “Under A False Flag” 1915The New Strategic Phase«Dialectics calls for a many-sided investigation into a given social phenomenon in its development, and for the external and the seeming to be reduced to the fundamental motive forces, to the development of the productive forces, and to the class struggle».— Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International, Chap.III (Written in May/June 1915)The Communist Choice«One cannot give the order to advance without having studied in detail every form that the struggle can take, without following its every stage while it moves from one form to another, so that one is able to define the situation from one moment to the next, without losing sight of the overall nature of the struggle and its ultimate aim: the complete and definitive abolition of all exploitation and all oppression».— Lenin, 1894