Vladimir Lenin on Karl Marx

“The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.”

“It is impossible to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without first having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later, none of the Marxists has understood Marx!”

“The measures adopted by the Commune and emphasized by Marx are particularly noteworthy, viz., the abolition of all representation allowances, and of all monetary privileges in the case of officials, the reduction of the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of "workmen's wages." This shows more clearly than anything else the turn from bourgeois democracy, from the democracy of the oppressors to the democracy of the oppressed classes, from the state as a "special force" for the suppression of a given class to the suppression of the oppressors by the general force of the majority of the people—the workers, and the peasants. And it is precisely on this most striking point, perhaps the most important as far as the problem of the state is concerned, that the teachings of Marx have been most completely forgotten.”