Lenin: They [Social-Democrats] are just as much traitors to socialism... They represent that top section of workers who have been bribed by the bourgeoisie... for in all the civilised, advanced countries the bourgeoisie rob-either by colonial oppression or by financially extracting 'gain' from formally independent weak countries-they rob a population many times larger than that of 'their own' country. This is the economic factor that enables the imperialist bourgeoisie to obtain superprofits, part of which is used to bribe the top section of the proletariat and convert it into a reformist, opportunist petty bourgeoisie that fears revolution. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Karl Marx: In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
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