Oppression and Liberty

the fundamental impotence of a spontaneous movement when it comes to fighting against organized forces of repression. August 1914 marked the bankruptcy of proletarian mass organizations, both on the political and the trade-union planes, within the framework of the system.

Marx wrote in his youth, that “the universal soul of bureaucracy is secrecy, mystery, inwardly through its hierarchical system, outwardly through its character of closed corporation”.

enchanting picture of a society in which, with the abolition of the market, technicians would find themselves all-powerful, and would use their power in such a way as to give to all the maximum leisure and comfort possible.

seeing that a defeat would run the risk of destroying, for an indefinite period, everything which lends value to human life in our eyes, it is obvious that we must struggle by every means which seems to us to have some chance of proving effective.

over one-sixth of the globe, there has reigned a State as oppressive as any other which is neither a capitalist nor a workers’ State. Certainly, Marx never foresaw anything of this kind.

rise of the bureaucratic element in industry

instead of elected officials, permanently subject to control and dismissal, who were to ensure the functioning of government until such time as “every cook would learn how to rule the State”, there is a professional bureaucracy, freed from responsibility,

Militants cannot take the place of the working class. The emancipation of the workers will be carried out by the workers themselves, or it will not take place at all.

In the subordination of society to the individual lies the definition of true democracy and that of socialism as well.