Eric Hoffer Quotes

Communism has had its success in this century as a reaction against a certain type of unbridaled capitalism.

I was the true future. I understood Communism better than they did.

Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Well socialism is exactly the reverse.

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.

It is the basic principle of Marxism that any attempt to reconcile capital and labor so that they both co-operate in peace and prosperity is a betrayal of communism.

As the egalitarianism of Marxism is attractive to many, socialism could have attracted many followers in America, anyway. But there is no doubt that it could not possibly have affected us so widely and so deeply as it has, had it not been heavily financed.

Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals.

I am against the use of capitalist mechanisms to build socialism.

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.

I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.

I can't understand Karl Marx, so how can I be a Communist?

Marxism is what has seduced American liberals - well, liberals worldwide, communists, all leftists.

The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.

A socialist is someone who has read Lenin and Marx. An anti-socialist is someone who understands Lenin and Marx.

To overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and to establish the power of the proletariat in one country still does not signify the full victory of Socialism.

Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ -- who I think was the first socialist -- only socialism can really create a genuine society.

It's not my fault if reality is Marxist

The most eloquent eulogy of capitalism was made by its greatest enemy. Marx is only anti-capitalist in so far as capitalism is out of date.

The word "Capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.

Just as feudalism was an advance over slavery, and capitalism was the next step after feudalism, socialism is the next step after capitalism...........Socialism in America will come through the ballot box.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism.