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Rubin
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“Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none.”
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“Karl Marx said, “The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.” A variant to keep in mind is that if you want to change the world you’d better try to understand it. That doesn’t mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that’s helpful sometimes. You learn from participating. You learn from others. You learn from the people you’re trying to organize. We all have to gain the understanding and the experience to formulate and implement ideas.”
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“Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”
― Why We Can't Wait
― Why We Can't Wait
“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”
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“No state, however democratic,” Bakunin wrote, “not even the reddest republic—can ever give the people what they really want, i.e., the free self-organization and administration of their own affairs from the bottom upward, without any interference or violence from above, because every state, even the pseudo–People’s State concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only a machine ruling the masses from above, through a privileged minority of conceited intellectuals, who imagine that they know what the people need and want better than do the people themselves. . . .” “But the people will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled ‘the people’s stick”
― On Anarchism
― On Anarchism
Rubin’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Rubin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Biography, Business, Classics, Ebooks, History, Memoir, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, and Self help
Polls voted on by Rubin
Lists liked by Rubin