James Connolly: Our Rulers as a StudyThe most interesting study for an intelligent worker to take up and make his own is, in our opinion, the study of the natural history of the ruling class. It is not only interesting in itself, but leads to and makes necessary excursions into all sorts of allied fields of study, so that once you have begun to take it up seriously you are led on almost unconsciously to a broadening of your field of vision, and a deepening of your insight into the heart of things. Also, as you grasp more firmly the lines on which the ruling class proceed, and the policy which enables them to retain their place in the saddle, you receive a higher opinion of the worth to the world of the mere toilers and humble ones whose place is among the ruled, whose backs itch with the gall sores of the saddle these gentry bestride Some such thoughts as these must surely be arising in the minds of many Irish workers in Dublin and throughout Ireland to-day. They must see around them continually accumulating evidences of the unscrupulous methods by which the ruling class strive to ensure a continuance of their ruling. They must see how in times of security the ruling class bully, brow-beat and tyrannise over the people, and how in times of insecurity these same rulers come around whining and crawling, and protesting their common interest with those whom but yesterday they denounced as dogs and rabble.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/01/rulers.htmWhat Is To Be Done? by Vladimir Lenin: ConclusionThe history of Russian Social-Democracy can be distinctly divided into three periods:
The first period embraces about ten years, approximately from 1884 to 1894. This was the period of the rise and consolidation of the theory and programme of Social-Democracy. The adherents of the new trend in Russia were very few in number. Social-Democracy existed without a working-class movement, and as a political party it was at the embryonic stage of development. The second period embraces three or four years—1894-98, In this period Social-Democracy appeared on the scene as a social movement, as the upsurge of the masses of the people, as a political party. This is the period of its childhood and adolescence. The intelligentsia was fired with a vast and general zeal for
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