Lenin was not merely a party man. He raised the party to the level of a political principle. This is the source of all his deviati...ons from the essentially democratic views of Marx. For Marx, a political party was conceived as a kind of cross between an international educational institution for the working class and a pressure group, as something that would come and go and be reconstituted in the forge of historical events. But for Lenin the political party was an army of professional revolutionists. The organization of professional revolutionists was of supreme importance in capturing state power. Iron-clad control of the organization was essential to victory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well, a fine opinion he must have of me, if he thinks I'd go to any man without a proper fortune. And this you may tell your Mr. P...arty of the First Part, that when I wed whatever's my own goes with me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The truth is that every intelligent man, as you well know, dreams of being a gangster and ruling over society through violence alo...ne. Since this is not as easy as the novels would have us believe, people generally resort to politics and join the cruelest party.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your next-door neighbour ... is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a... dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down.... If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... Whenever the Buffs and Blues met together at public meeting ... disputes and high words arose between them... Everything in Ea...tanswill was made a party question. If the Buffs proposed to new skylight the market-place, the Blues got up public meetings, and denounced the proceeding; if the Blues proposed the erection of an additional pump in the High Street, the Buffs rose as one man and stood aghast at the enormity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By the way--about Bolshevism: one has to remember that all that is published in the press is propaganda, that the Bolsheviki are t...he moderate social-revolutionaries, a political party, and the Soviets are a system of government based on the idea of "pure democracy" (Mso called in the textbooks on gov't) that every man shall take direct part in the government of the country--which is arrived at by industrial representation through the heirarchy of soviets, and that much the same system would be in vogue in America--(geographical instead of industrial units) if Hamilton and the rest had taken the New England town-meeting as the unit of government instead of importing Montesquieu's ideas. It's silly to idealize things in Russia, but it is criminal to condemn them unheard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The artist who is to produce a work which is to be admired, not by his friends or his towns-people or his contemporaries, but by a...ll men, and which is to be more beautiful to the eye in proportion to its culture, must disindividualize himself, and be a man of no party and no manner and no age, but one through whom the soul of all men circulates as the common air through his lungs. He must work in the spirit in which we conceive a prophet to speak, or an angel of the Lord to act; that is, he is not to speak his own words, or do his own works, or think his own thoughts, but he is to be an organ through which the universal mind acts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »