hello live tweeting some quotes from CLR James’ ‘The Invading Socialist Society’ today as I’m re-reading because it’s so good

“The whole debate about nationalization should be mercilessly swept aside ... it is no more than a means, and, with bourgeois and Stalinists, a deliberate means of blinding the masses to the need for their own self-mobilization.”

“At each successive state the degeneration of the proletarian party not only imitates capitalism but must take on to a greater degree the contradictions which are rending capitalism.”

“The proletariat, on a higher plane, has drawn the ultimate conclusion. Its revolt is not against politics and the distribution of the surplus-value. The revolt is against value production itself.“

“The Stalinist leaderships are a further stage of development of Menshevism in 1917. The Mensheviks trembled before the ‘anarchy’ of the revolutionary fervor of the masses and fear of the inevitable intervention.”

“How is it possible in the face of this [world crisis] to tell the workers about the slow but sure preparation of the revolution? They are then slowly but surely to starve and shiver without houses, without clothes, and without fuel.”