Firstly, because men are not free to choose one mode of production or another, because as every new generation enters life it finds productive forces and relations of production already existing as the result of the work of former generations, owing to which it is obliged at first to accept and adapt itself to everything it finds ready-made in the sphere of production in order to be able to produce material values.

Secondly, because, when improving one instrument of production or another, one clement of the productive forces or another, men do not realize, do not understand or stop to reflect what social results these improvements will lead to, but only think of their everyday interests, of lightening their labor and of securing some direct and tangible advantage for themselves.

When, gradually and gropingly, certain members of primitive communal society passed from the use of stone tools to the use of iron tools, they, of course, did not know and did not stop to reflect what social results this innovation would lead to; they did not understand or realize that the change to metal tools meant a revolution in production, that it would in the long run lead to the slave system. They simply wanted to lighten their labor and secure an immediate and tangible advantage; their conscious activity was confined within the narrow bounds of this everyday personal interest.

[...]

Up to a certain period the development of the productive forces and the changes in the realm of the relations of production proceed spontaneously independently of the will of men. But that is so only up to a certain moment, until the new and developing productive forces have reached a proper state of maturity After the new productive forces have matured, the existing relations of production and their upholders – the ruling classes – become that "insuperable" obstacle which can only be removed by the conscious action of the new classes, by the forcible acts of these classes, by revolution. Here there stands out in bold relief the tremendous role of new social ideas, of new political institutions, of a new political power, whose mission it is to abolish by force the old relations of production. Out of the conflict between the new productive forces and the old relations of production, out of the new economic demands of society, there arise new social ideas; the new ideas organize and mobilize the masses; the masses become welded into a new political army, create a new revolutionary power, and make use of it to abolish by force the old system of relations of production, and to firmly establish the new system. The spontaneous process of development yields place to the conscious actions of men, peaceful development to violent upheaval, evolution to revolution.

The second feature of production is that its changes and development always begin with changes and development of the productive forces, and in the first place, with changes and development of the instruments of production. Productive forces are therefore the most mobile and revolutionary element of productions. First the productive forces of society change and develop, and then, depending on these changes and in conformity with them, men's relations of production, their economic relations, change. This, however, does not mean that the relations of production do not influence the development of the productive forces and that the latter are not dependent on the former. While their development is dependent on the development of the productive forces, the relations of production in their turn react upon the development of the productive forces, accelerating or retarding it. In this connection it should be noted that the relations of production cannot for too long a time lag behind and be in a state of contradiction to the growth of the productive forces, inasmuch as the productive forces can develop in full measure only when the relations of production correspond to the character, the state of the productive forces and allow full scope for their development. Therefore, however much the relations of production may lag behind the development of the productive forces, they must, sooner or later, come into correspondence with – and actually do come into correspondence with – the level of development of the productive forces, the character of the productive forces. Otherwise we would have a fundamental violation of the unity of the productive forces and the relations of production within the system of production, a disruption of production as a whole, a crisis of production, a destruction of productive forces.

If historical science is to be a real science, it can no longer reduce the history of social development to the actions of kings and generals, to the actions of "conquerors" and "subjugators" of states, but must above all devote itself to the history of the producers of material values, the history of the laboring masses, the history of peoples.

It is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks. Matter is the subject of all changes.

We must not base our orientation on the strata of society which are no longer developing, even though they at present constitute the predominant force, but on those strata which are developing and have a future before them[.]

I was seeking a soul resembling mine, and I could not find it. I searched throughout the seven seas; my perseverance proved of no use. Yet I could not remain alone. I needed someone who'd approve of my nature; there had to be somebody out there with the same ideas as me. It was morning; the sun rose over the horizon, in all its splendour, and here rises before my eyes a young man as well, whose presence made flowers sprout in his wake. He approached me, and holding out his hand: "I have come to you who seek me. God bless this happy day." But I replied: "Begone! I never summoned you. I don't need your companionship..." It was evening; night was already drawing the darkness of her veil over nature. A beautiful woman, whose form I could barely make out, was also drawing the influence of her enchantment over me. She looked upon me with compassion, however she dared not speak to me. So I said: "Come closer, so I may see your face clearly, for at this distance the starlight is too faint for me to make out its features." Then, modestly, with her eyes lowered, she glided across the lawn's grass, coming to my side. As soon as I saw her: "I see that goodness and justice have found a home in your heart: we could never live together. You are now admiring my beauty, which has overwhelmed many a woman, but sooner or later, you'll regret ever having given your love to me, for you do not know my soul. Not that I would ever be unfaithful to you: to she who bares her heart to me with such abandon and trust, I bare mine back with equal trust and abandon, but get it into your head lest you ever forget it: Wolves and lambs look not on one another with bedroom eyes." So what was I waiting for, I who rejected in such disgust what was most beautiful in humanity! What I was waiting for, I really couldn't tell you. I haven't yet gotten into the habit of keeping a daily record of the phenomena that occur within my psyche, according to the practice recommended by philosophy. I sat on a cliff, by the sea. A ship had just set full sail to escape these waters: a minute speck had just appeared at the horizon, making gradual headway, driven on by gusts, and growing more powerful by the minute. The storm was about to swoop down on us, and already the sky was growing dark, overcast in a black almost as hideous as the human heart. The vessel, which was a great warship, had just cast all her anchors, in fear of being swept against the rocky coast. The wind roared with rage from all four points of the compass, tearing the sails to shreds. Crashes of thunder burst out amid flashes of lightning and could not drown out the sound of wailing to be heard from this house with no foundations, this teetering sepulcher. The rolling of these aqueous masses had not yet managed to shatter the anchor's chains, however their buffeting had opened up a way into the ship's ribs: a gaping breach, for the pumps could no longer bail out the masses of salt water beating down on the bridge like mountains of foam. The ship in distress fires her canons to sound the alarm; but she sinks, slowly... majestically. He who has never watched a ship sinking in the midst of a storm, with intermittent flashes of lightning between the deepest periods of darkness, while those on board are overwhelmed with that despair you know so well, knows nothing of life's ups and downs. Finally, a universal shriek of utter distress bursts from within the bowels of the ship, whilst the sea intensifies her fearsome onslaughts. It is that cry one hears when the limits of human capacity give in: we wrap ourselves up in the cloak of despair and leave our fate in the hands of God. We flock together like cornered sheep. The ship in distress fires her canons to sound the alarm; but she sinks, slowly... majestically. They've had the pumps running all day now. Futile efforts. Night has come, pitch-black and merciless, bringing the delightful show to its climax. Each soul onboard realizes that, once in the water, he won't be able to breathe, for, as far back as he can remember, he knows of no fish in his family tree; nevertheless he struggles to hold his breath for as long as possible, if only to prolong his life for another two or three seconds: that is the vengeful irony he aims at death... The ship in distress fires her canons to sound the alarm; but she sinks, slowly... majestically. He doesn't know that the ship, as it goes under, sets the ocean swells twisting and turning in a powerful circular motion, stirring up the benthonic mires into the turbid waters, and that a force from below, in counterattack to the tempest wreaking havoc above, drives the element to violent, jolting motions. Thus, despite the stores of courage he mustered in advance, the drowned-to-be, on second thought, ought to be delighted if he can prolong his life, swirling in the vortices of the abyss, even by the space of half a normal breath, for good measure. He will fail in his supreme desire to cheat death. The ship in distress fires her canons to sound the alarm; but she sinks, slowly... majestically. No wait, there's been a mistake. She's no longer firing, she's no longer sinking. The cockleshell is now completely engulfed! Good heavens! How could I continue to live, after experiencing such exquisite pleasures! I had just been granted the chance to witness the death agonies of many a fellow man. Minute by minute, I followed the episodes of their anguish. Now, the feature presentation was the bellowing of some old lady, brought to hysterics by fear. Now, the squeals of a suckling infant were drowning out the nautical orders. The ship was too distant for me to clearly perceive the groans brought on by blasts of wind, but through sheer willpower I zoomed in on it, and the optical illusion was complete. Every quarter of an hour, when a particularly stronger gust of wind, sounding its gloomy tones amid the cries of the terrified storm petrels, would break open the ship in another lengthwise crack, increasing the laments of those about to be offered as sacrifices to death, I would dig a sharp metal point deeper into my cheek and secretly think: "They are suffering still more!" At least this gave me grounds for comparison. From the shore, I shouted at them, hurling violent curses and threats. I felt that they could hear me! I could feel that my hatred and raving, soaring over the distances, were breaking the physical laws of sound and falling loud and clear onto their ears, deafened by the wrathful ocean's roars! I felt they ought to be thinking of me, unleashing their vengeance in impotent rage! Every now and then I would cast a glance up at the cities, sounds asleep on dry land, and seeing that nobody suspected a ship to be sinking a few miles from the shore, with birds of prey for a crown and empty-bellied creatures of the deep for a pedestal, I took courage, and regained hope: I could now be sure of their demise! There was no escape! Through an excess of precaution, I had gone fetch my double-barrelled shotgun, so that, should some survivor be tempted to swim up to the rocks to escape impending death, a bullet in the shoulder would shatter his arm, thus thwarting his plan. Just when the tempest was at its fiercest, I saw, at the surface, desperately struggling to keep afloat, a frenetic head, with hair standing on end. He was swallowing gallons of water and was tossed back into the briny deep, bobbing like a piece of cork. But in no time he surfaced again, mane dripping wet, and, eyes focused on the shore, he seemed to defy death. What admirable composure! On his brave and noble face, he bore a deep and gory wound, gashed open by the jagged point of some hidden reef. He must have been sixteen at the oldest, for you could just barely see, by the lightning flashes that lit up the night, the peach fuzz on his lip. And now he was no more than two hundred yards from the cliff, and I was getting a clear view of him. What courage! What indomitable spirit! How his steady head seemed to flout at fate, as he vigorously cleaved through the waves, prying open the grooves before him with effort!... I had made up my mind beforehand. I owed it to myself to keep my promise: the final hour had tolled for all; there could be no exceptions. That was my resolution, and nothing could change it... A sharp blast echoed, and the head sank right under, never to be seen again. From this murder I did not take as much pleasure as you might imagine, and precisely because I had already done more than my share of killing in life, I was doing it now only from sheer habit, so hard to break, and providing only mild enjoyment. Conscience becomes dulled, calloused. What pleasure could I feel at the death of this human being, when more than a hundred were about to present me with the spectacle of their final struggles against the waves, once the ship had been submerged? With this death, not even the thrill of danger aroused me, for human justice, cradled by the night's ghastly storm, was slumbering in the cottages a few steps from me. Now that the years hang heavy on my shoulders, I can speak this supreme and solemn truth with sincerity: I was never as cruel as it was later said among men, however sometimes their persistent spitefulness went on devastating for years on end. There was then no limits to my fury; I was possessed by fits of cruelty: my wild eyes would strike terror in anyone who dared come close enough to see them, provided they be of my race. If it was a horse or a dog, I would let it go by: did you head what I just said? Unfortunately, on the night of the storm, I was seized by one of my fits of wrath, my reason having abandoned me (for normally I would be just as cruel, only more discreet), and everything falling into my hands on that night had to perish. I am not saying this justifies my misdeeds. My fellow men are not the only ones to blame. I am merely making a statement of fact, as I await the last judgment, which makes me feel my throat constrict in anticipation... What do I care about the last judgment? My reason never abandons me, as I had claimed just to mislead you. And when I commit a murder, I know full well what I am doing: what else would I be wanting to do? Standing on the cliff, as the tempest flailed at my hair and trench coat, I ecstatically watched the full might of the thunderstorm relentlessly hammering at the ship under a starless sky. In a triumphant pose, I followed all the twists and turns of this drama, from the instant the vessel threw her anchors, until the moment she was swallowed up within that final shroud, that cloak which dragged everybody wrapped in it down into the bowels of the sea. But the cue for me to make my entrance in these scenes of nature in tumult was approaching. When the place where the ship had been struggling clearly showed that she had gone spend the rest of her days on the oceanic floor, then, some of those who had been carried off by the waves reappeared on the surface. They seized and grappled each other around the waist, in twos, in threes; this was the way not to save their lives, for their movements became hampered, and they went down like dumbbells... What is this horde of sea monsters ploughing through the waves at top speed? There are six of them, with sturdy fins that cut a passage through the heaving seas. Exercising the privileges of their higher rank on the food chain, the sharks soon make a great eggless omelette of all these wiggling human arms and legs on this far from dry continent. Blood mingles with the waters, and the waters mingle with blood. Their fierce eyes light up the bloodbath... But what is that other tumult of the waves, yonder, on the horizon? It looks like a waterspout coming this way! What strokes! Now I see what it is. An enormous female shark has come to partake of duck liver pâté and to eat cold stew meat. She is furious, for she arrives ravenous. A battle ensues between her and the sharks, to fight over the few palpitating limbs still dumbly floating here and there on the surface of the crimson cream. Left and right she snaps her jaws, delivering many a fatal wound. But three surviving sharks surround her, and she is forced to twist and turn in all directions to outmanoeuvre them. With an increasing emotion unbeknownst until now, the one-man audience follows this new kind of naval battle from his seat at the shore. His gaze is fastened on this courageous female shark, with jaws so mighty. He grits his teeth, raises his rifle, and, skilful as ever, he lodges his second bullet in the gill slit of one of the sharks, just as it rears its head above a wave. Two sharks remain, both showing even greater ferocity. From the top of the rock, the man with the briny saliva flings himself into the sea and swims towards the pleasantly coloured carpet, gripping his trusty steel knife. From now on the sharks each have one enemy to deal with. He closes in on his weary adversary, and, taking his time, buries his sharp blade in its belly. Meanwhile, the nimble-finned citadel easily disposes of the last opponent... Now the swimmer and the female shark saved by him confront each other. For minutes they stare fixedly into each other's eyes. They swim circling, keeping each other in sight, and each thinking: "I was wrong all along. Here is one more evil than I." Then in unison they glided underwater towards each other, in mutual admiration, the female shark slitting open the waves with her fins, Maldoror's arms thrashing the water; and they held their breaths, in deepest reverence, each one anxious to gaze for the first time upon his living image. Effortlessly, at only three yards apart, they suddenly fell upon one another like two magnets, in an embrace of dignity and gratitude, clasping each other tenderly as brother and sister. Carnal desire soon followed this display of affection. Like two leeches, a pair of nervous thighs gripped tightly against the monster's viscous flesh, and arms and fins wrapped around the objects of their desire, surrounding their bodies with love, while their breasts and bellies soon fused into one bluish-green mass reeking of sea-wrack, in the midst of the tempest still raging by the light of lightning; with the foamy waves for a wedding bed, borne on an undersea current as if in a cradle, rolling and rolling down into the bottomless ocean depths, they came together in a long, chaste, and hideous mating!... At last I had found somebody who was like me!... From now on I was no longer alone in life!... Her ideas were the same as mine!... I was face to face with my first love!

Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers in the process of their movement the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for humanity has not created a “third” ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonism there can never be a non-class or above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle socialst ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology

A class must be formed that has radical chains, a class in civil society which is not of civil society, a class which is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society which has a universal character because its sufferings are universal…, which is, in short, a total loss of humanity and which can only redeem itself by a total redemption of humanity. This dissolution of society, as a particular class, is the proletariat

In a proper revolutionary breakthrough, the utopian future is neither simply fully realized, present, nor simply evoked as a distant promise which justified present violence — it is rather as if, in a unique suspension of temporality, in the short-circuit between the present and the future, we are — as if by Grace — for a brief time allowed to act AS IF the utopian future is (not yet fully here, but) already at hand, just there to be grabbed. Revolution is not experienced as a present hardship we have to endure for the happiness and freedom of the future generations, but as the present hardship over which this future happiness and freedom already cast their shadow — in it, we ALREADY ARE FREE WHILE FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, we ALREADY ARE HAPPY WHILE FIGHTING FOR HAPPINESS, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Revolution is not a Merleau-Pontyan wager, an act suspended in the futur anterieur, to be legitimized or delegitimized by the long term outcome of the present acts; it is as it were ITS OWN ONTOLOGICAL PROOF, an immediate index of its own truth.

The ultimate answer to the reproach that the radical Left proposals are utopian should thus be that, today, the true utopia is the belief that the present liberal-democratic capitalist consensus could go on indefinitely, without radical changes. We are thus back at the old ‘68 motto “Soyons realistes, demandons l'impossible!": in order to be truly a “realist,” one must consider breaking out of the constraints of what appears “possible” (or, as we usually out it, “feasible”).

Capitalism is not just a historical epoch among others — in a way, the once fashionable and today forgotten Francis Fukuyama WAS right, global capitalism IS “the end of history.” A certain excess which was as it were kept under check in previous history, perceived as a localizable perversion, as an excess, a deviation, is in capitalism elevated into the very principle of social life, in the speculative movement of money begetting more money, of a system which can survive only by constantly revolutionizing its own conditions, that is to say, in which the thing can only survive as its own excess, constantly exceeding its own “normal” constraints.

[It] is a purely didactic difference between form and content to see the material powers as content and the ideology as form...[because] the material force cannot be understood historically without form and the ideologies would, without the material force, remain the whims of individuals.

The aim of theory is not to raise our intellectual or academic reputation, but to open possibilities to understand the historical world and its processes, to gain directions for our praxis, and to change it if necessary.

One of the hardest lessons we had to learn was that revolutionary struggle is more scientific than emotional. I don't say we shouldn't feel anything, but decisions cannot be based upon love or hate. They have to be based upon objective circumstances and aim at what is rationally and unemotionally necessary.

You too can be rich. You too can be Michael Jordan. You too can be any of the wealthy black people running around not doing shit.

this first moment of world-reduction, of the destruction of the idols and the sweeping away of an old world in violence and pain, is itself the precondition for the reconstruction of something else. A first moment of absolute immanence is necessary, the blank slate of absolute peasant immanence or ignorance, before new and undreamed-of-sensations and feelings can come into being.

I don't know how radical you are or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself.

The task of Communists is to expose the fallacies of the reactionaries and metaphysicians, to propagate the dialectics inherent in things, and so accelerate the transformation of things and achieve the goal of revolution.

Well, Zizek said, populism is inherently reformist, if not to say reactionary. Its fundamental fantasy is of an Intruder, or more usually a group of intruders, who have corrupted the system. Hence the problem is never the system, capitalism, but the oligarchy, this particular, lazy, exploitative bunch who happen to have control now. Once They are removed, everything will be alright... Hence populism always frame its project in terms of a series of demands addressed to the ruling elite. Antagonism is defused into a craving for recognition.

[...]

The error here is not simply the illusion that 'this particular leadership' are the problem, it is the idea that capitalism has any sort of leadership at all. The administrators' washing of hands which they claim are always tied is not merely an act of self-exculpation; it really is the case that they are the slaves of the remorseless machine of Capital. No-one driving.

An IRA man in a balaclava is at the gates of heaven when St Peter comes to him and says, 'I'm afraid I can't let you in'. 'Who wants to get in?' the IRA man retorts. 'You've got twenty minutes to get the fuck out.'

Myth: Amerikan consumer debt is piling up.

Under capitalism, debt is actually a sign of the ability to pay as recognized by banks. Wealthier people have more debts. What is important is the net worth and physical standard of living. Even if credit card companies do make more money than ever, it does not prove anything unless the physical living standard, consumption of actual commodities declines and there is no proof of that.

Anxieties concerning debt are real, but most such concerns are bourgeois anxieties, the same ones Donald Trump has to have. Third World debts are smaller relatively speaking, but have a real effect on real proletarians.

In the Nazi worldview the superior being was a predator. This supposed recognition of "Nature's laws" is just capitalist culture with a biological wrapper. In life it isn't true. The lofty eagle isn't any more successful than mom sparrow. If anything, less so. If survival and dominance were everything, cockroaches might get olympic gold. Ecology is endless diversity, unending change, and development and interdependency of life forms that is complex beyond Man the Manager.

Political liberalism is pressed into service when a contradiction between oppressor and oppressed starts to percolate. If the contradiction itself is not too fundamental and the percolation has only just begun, then liberalism can maybe handle it. “Handling” here means doing just enough to simmer the percolation so the lid stays put while fending off those who might turn up the heat, and in the end doing nothing much of anything at all to change the oppressor-oppressed relationship. To this end, for instance, liberalism is equipped to, say, talk a good game while doing nothing. It’s that kind of oppressor’s tool.

I can think of no street in America, or of people inhabiting such a street, capable of leading one on towards the discovery of the self. I have walked the streets in many countris of the world but nowhere have I felt so degraded and humiliated as in America. I think of all the streets in American combined as forming a huge cesspool, a cesspool of the spirit in which everything is sucked down and drained away to everlasting shit. Over this cesspool the spirit of work weave a magic wand; palaces and factories spring up side by side, and munition plants and chemical works and steel mills and sanatoriums and prisons and insane asylums. The whole continent is a nightmare producing the greatest misery of the greatest number. I was one, a single entity in the midst of the greatest jamboree of wealth and happiness (statistical wealth, statistical happiness) but I never met a man who was truly wealthy or truly happy. [...] I am the evil product of an evil soil.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid systems appears.

Grassy seat. – The relationship to parents is undergoing a sad, shadowy change. They have lost their awe through their economic powerlessness. Once we rebelled against their insistence on the reality principle, the sobriety which was always ready to recoil into the rage against those who do not renounce. Today however we find ourselves facing a presumably younger generation, which is in every one of its impulses unbearably more grown up than the parents ever were; which has renounced, before things ever came to a conflict, and which derives their authority from that, implacably authoritarian and unshakeable. Perhaps one always experienced the parental generation as harmless and disempowered, once the latter’s physical energy subsided, while one’s own generation seemed to be threatened by youth: in the antagonistic society, the relationship of the generations is also one of competition, behind which stands naked violence. Today however things are regressing to a condition which does not know the Oedipus complex, but only the slaying of the father. One of the most telling symbolic atrocities of the Nazis was the killing of the extremely old. Such a climate produces a belated and rueful understanding with one’s parents, similar to the one between condemned prisoners, disturbed only by the fear that we, ourselves powerless, may not be able to care for them some day as they cared for us, when they owned something. The violence which is inflicted on them makes us forget the violence they committed. Even their rationalizations, the once-hated lies with which they sought to justify their particular interest as the general one, show an inkling of the truth, the urge towards the reconciliation of conflicts, which the upbeat successor generation happily denies. Even the faded, inconsequential and self-doubting Spirit [Geist] of the elders is more approachable than the quick-witted stupidity of junior. Even the neurotic peculiarities and malformations of the older adults represent character, that which is humanly achieved, compared with pathic health, infantilism raised to a norm. One realizes in horror that when one previously clashed with one’s parents, because they represented the world, one was secretly the mouthpiece of a still worse world against the merely bad. Unpolitical attempts to break out of the bourgeois family usually only lead to deeper entanglement in such, and sometimes it seems as if the disastrous germ-cell of society, the family, is simultaneously the nourishing germ-cell of the uncompromising will for a different one. What disintegrates, along with the family – so long as the system continues – is not just the most effective agency of the bourgeoisie, but also the resistance which indeed oppressed the individual, but also strengthened the latter, if not indeed producing such. The end of the family cripples the counter-forces. The dawning collectivistic social order [Ordnung] is the mockery of one without class: it liquidates, along with the bourgeois, at the same time the utopia, which at one time drew nourishment from the mother’s love.

The Communist Party must be the primary incarnation of the realm of freedom; above all, the spirit of comradeliness, of true solidarity, and of self-sacrifice must govern everything it does. If it cannot achieve this, or if it does not at least exert itself seriously to put such ideals into practice, the Communist Party will no longer be distinguishable from the other parties, except by virtue of its programme. There is even the danger that this unbridgeable gulf which separates it programmatically from the opportunists and the waverers will gradually become obscured, with the result that it could soon be nothing more than the ‘extreme left wing’ of the ‘workers’ parties’. That in turn would present a further, more immediate danger (already posed in accentuated form by the rhetorical recognition of the Third International by the parties of the centre): namely, that the qualitative distinction between the communists and the other parties would degenerate into a merely quantitative one and in time even disappear altogether. The less a Communist Party puts its ideals into practice both organizationally and spiritually, the less able it will be, not only to counter effectively this widespread inclination to compromise, but also to educate the unconscious but really revolutionary elements (syndicalists, anarchists) to become true communists.

Lack of raw materials, internal struggles and organizational difficulties count as excuses in their view only for capitalist states; their line is that a proletarian social order ought to mean the internal external transformation of all conditions, an all-round improvement in the situation, from the very first moment that that order is born. Genuine revolutionaries, and above all Lenin, distinguish themselves from such petty-bourgeois utopianism by their lack of illusions. They know what can be expected, not only of an economy ruined in the World War, but also – and above all – of human beings who, under capitalism, h been spiritually corrupted and depraved and indoctrinated with egoism. However, freedom from illusions never leads the true revolutionary to lose heart or to despair; his understanding of the situation as it really is serves rather to strengthen his faith in the world-historical mission of the proletariat. This faith can never be shaken, no matter how long it takes to realize it, no matter how often it is beset by adverse circumstances. It accepts all these disruptions and obstructions, but never allows them to distract him from his goal and the indications of its imminence.