Belgian - Author | April 5, 1923 - July 20, 1995
Factions are a sign of illness in a party.
Ernest Mandel
PartyIllnessSignFactions
You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying.
RevolutionTryingYouWithoutCannot
And you cannot have a socialist revolution commandeered from the top, ordered around by some omniscient leader or group of leaders.
LeaderRevolutionYouGroupTop
The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class.
LifeYouClassRealMovementTrade
Periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions.
SocietyWorkersAgainstFiveRevolt
There has been hardly a single year since 1917, and in a certain sense since 1905, without a revolution somewhere in the world in which the workers participated in a rather important way.
WorldRevolutionYearImportantWay
The conclusion you can draw from these characteristics is that you have an uneven development of class activity and an uneven development of class consciousness in the working class.
YouClassDevelopmentConsciousness
Workers do not strike every day, they cannot do that the way they function in the capitalist economy. The way they have to live by selling their labor power makes that impossible.
LivePowerDayImpossibleEvery Day
You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected.
YouClassHighConsciousnessLevel
You need a vanguard organization in order to overcome the dangerous potential brought about by the uneven development of class militancy and class consciousness.
OrganizationPotentialYouDangerous
I do not believe in self-proclaimed parties.
BelieveParties
There is a process of social and of political differentiation going on in the real working class all the time.
TimeProcessPoliticalClassReal
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