COMMUNISM AS HUMANISM The Collective Oneness of Humanity, Shared Stewardship of the Earth, and the Abolition of Sectarian Division A Documentary Argument in Primary Sources
Preface: A Note on Method and
Attribution
This document makes an argument through primary sources. The thesis: Communism, properly understood, is not merely an economic program. It is a philosophical-ideological and ethical declaration that humanity is one species, one collective body, with shared obligations to one another and to the Earth that sustains all life. It is the political expression of radical humanism.
The argument proceeds in ten movements, drawing on direct quotations from Marxist-Leninist theorists, communist leaders across multiple traditions, including those whose practices were brutal and whose legacies are contested, and indigenous thinkers whose worldviews predate, parallel, and in many cases anticipate the core moral architecture of communist thought.
On attribution: All quotes are cited as precisely as available sources allow. Where a quote is a paraphrase, summary, or reported speech rather than verbatim text, this is noted. Where a quote is widely attributed to a figure but its exact provenance is debated by historians, it is included in the final section with a dispute note. The argument is not weakened by these complications. They are part of honest intellectual work.
On contested figures: Stalin, Mao, and Xi Jinping are included. Their crimes are not erased by inclusion here, nor is inclusion here an endorsement of those crimes. But their theoretical statements belong to the tradition under examination. A tradition is not defined only by its best practitioners. It is defined by what it says, and what it says, even in the mouths of those who betrayed it, is the subject of this document.
The foundational claim: The foundational claim: communism is the political form that allows human nature, inherently social and inherently collective, to finally express itself without the distortions of class, property, and alienation.
Marx's earliest philosophical work articulated humanity as a 'species-being' (Gattungswesen), an entity whose essence is realized not in isolation but in relationship, not in competition but in cooperation. Communism is not the denial of the individual; it is the condition under which the individual becomes fully human.
"This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man, the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
"Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being, a return become conscious, and accomplished within the entire wealth of previous development." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
"Communism is not a society of privileges, but one where each works and shares equally in the common good." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, paraphrased as a summary of the communist program; the exact phrasing derives from later interpretations of their work
⚠️ This is summarized
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 1845
"The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations." — Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845
"The socialist system will abolish the division of mankind into classes... it will close the era of the history of human society which consists of struggles between classes, and inaugurate a new era in the history of human society, the era of the flourishing of the human race." — Mao Zedong, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, 1957
"The means of production are not the property of individuals, but the property of the state, that is, of the whole people." — Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, 1952
"Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
II. The Abolition of Sectarian Identity
Class, religion, nationality, gender, and the traditional family are bourgeois constructs that divide the species against itself. Communism demands their supersession. Anything that divides humanity must be abolished or heavily regulated if abolishing isn't possible.
A. Anti-Nationalism: Toward the Fusion of All Peoples
For Marx and Engels, the nation-state is a container for a ruling class's interests, not an expression of human solidarity. The communist program calls not merely for equality among nations but for their eventual fusion into a single human community.
"The aim of socialism is not only to end the division of mankind into tiny states and the isolation of nations in any form, it is not only to bring the nations closer together but to effect their fusion." — Vladimir Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1916
"Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the 'most just', 'purest', most refined and civilised brand. In place of all forms of nationalism, Marxism advances internationalism, the amalgamation of all nations in the higher unity." — Vladimir Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question, 1913
"The slogan of national culture is a bourgeois (and often also a Black-Hundred and clerical) fraud. Our slogan is the international culture of a world-wide working-class movement." — Vladimir Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question, 1913
"The proletariat cannot support any consecration of nationalism; on the contrary, it supports everything that helps to obliterate national distinctions and remove national barriers; it supports everything that makes the ties between nationalities closer and closer." — Vladimir Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question, 1913
"The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"The proletarians in all countries have one and the same interest, one and the same enemy, and one and the same struggle; the great mass of proletarians are, by their very nature, free from national prejudices and their whole disposition and movement is essentially humanitarian, anti-national." — Friedrich Engels, The Festival of Nations in London, 1845
"The interest of the proletariat and the necessity of real solidarity of the workers of all nations demand that this struggle be subordinated to the interests of the class struggle on a world scale." — Vladimir Lenin, The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up, 1916
"There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes. In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines." — Mao Zedong, Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art, 1942
"The elements of democratic and socialist culture are present, if only in rudimentary form, in every national culture. But every nation also possesses a bourgeois culture, which is the dominant culture." — Vladimir Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question, 1913
B. Anti-Religion: The Critique of Heaven as the Critique of Earth
For Marx, the critique of religion is the premise of all other criticism. Religion is the ideological form in which human suffering mystifies itself, the halo that makes earthly chains bearable. To abolish the conditions that require religion is the practical task; the abolition of religion as a worldview is the theoretical one.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." — Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843–44
"Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again." — Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions." — Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1844
"The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man, hence with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence." — Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843
"The criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics." — Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843
"Communism begins from the outset with atheism; but atheism is at first far from being communism; indeed, that atheism is still mostly an abstraction. The philanthropy of atheism is therefore at first only philosophical, abstract philanthropy; that of communism is at once real and directly bent on action." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
"Atheism is humanism mediated with itself through the supersession of religion; communism is humanism mediated with itself through the supersession of private property." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
"All religion is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces." — Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1878
"Mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc." — Friedrich Engels, Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx, 1883
"Religion will disappear to the extent that socialism develops. Its disappearance must be brought about through social development, in which education will play a role." — Friedrich Engels, Letter to August Bebel, 1873
"Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people. Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class." — Vladimir Lenin, The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion, 1909
"Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man." — Vladimir Lenin, Socialism and Religion, 1905
"Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism." — Vladimir Lenin, The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion, 1909
"The social principles of Christianity preach the necessity of a ruling and an oppressed class, and all they have for the latter is the pious wish the former will be charitable. The social principles of Christianity justified the slavery of Antiquity, glorified the serfdom of the Middle Ages and equally know, when necessary, how to defend the oppression of the proletariat." — Karl Marx, Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter, 1847
"Religion teaches people to bear meekly the yoke of slavery and exploitation. The deepest root of religion today is the socially downtrodden condition of the working masses and their apparently complete helplessness in the face of the blind forces of capitalism." — Vladimir Lenin, The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion, 1909
"Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people." — Nikolai Bukharin & Evgenii Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, 1919
"Communism and religion are incompatible both in theory and practice. It is the task of the Party to mobilize the broad masses for a struggle against religious superstitions, and to organize the widest possible scientific-educational propaganda." — Nikolai Bukharin & Evgenii Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, 1919
"The party cannot remain neutral in the struggle between science and religion, between materialism and idealism. It must conduct an uncompromising struggle against religious ideology." — Joseph Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, 1924
"We want to eliminate God from the hearts of men because in this way they will understand better that everything depends on them. Albania will be the first atheist state in the world. We have closed all churches and mosques. Religion is abolished. There is no room in our socialist society for religion." — Enver Hoxha, Speech declaring Albania officially atheist, 1967
C. The Family, Gender, and the Dissolution of Bourgeois Social Forms
The traditional family structure, in Marxist analysis, is not a natural unit of human affiliation but an economic institution, the primary mechanism by which private property is transmitted across generations and by which women's labor is extracted without recognition or compensation.
"The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"From the point of view of the collective, the family is not only useless, but harmful. It is harmful because it is a social unit which is built on a different principle from that of the collective." — Alexandra Kollontai, The Family and the Communist State, 1920
"The monogamous family was the first form of the family not based on natural but on economic conditions." — Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884
"Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole." — Mao Zedong, speech reported in multiple official PRC sources; exact primary text debated
⚠️ Attributed to Mao, date unverified.
III. Communism as Humanism and
Secular Humanism
The philosophical lineage runs directly through secular humanism: the insistence that man is the measure, and that the full realization of human potential requires the abolition of all that alienates humanity from itself.
Marx was a student of Feuerbach, who reduced theology to anthropology. God is nothing but human essence projected outward and worshipped in inverted form. Marx radicalized this insight: if God is alienated human essence, then atheism (the theoretical abolition of God) and communism (the practical abolition of alienated conditions) are the same project expressed at different registers.
"Just as atheism as the supersession of God is the emergence of theoretical humanism, and communism as the supersession of private property the vindication of real human life as man's property, the emergence of practical humanism." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
"The communist abolition of religion is the positive abolition of human self-alienation." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
"Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life... only then will human emancipation have been accomplished." — Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, 1843
"Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun." — Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." — Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." — Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845
"Communism is the genuine solution of the antagonism between man and man." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
"The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"The proletariat must carry forward the development of all the best that has been created by human thought and culture." — Vladimir Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, 1920
"The old culture is the result of a thousand-year-old system of labor based on the submission of the masses to the authority of the few. The new culture must be based on the principle of cooperation, on the collective efforts of the workers." — Leon Trotsky, The Paths of Proletarian Creation, 1920
"Individualism is a kind of terrestrial gravity. It is a social tradition that must be overcome. The collectivist feeling of the proletariat is a new psychological quality, a new stage in the history of the human soul." — Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 1924
"The human species, the coagulated homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training..." — Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 1924
"The value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation on the ideological or idealist plane of the physical and historical reality of the society that is dominated. But revolutionary progress requires the destruction of those aspects of culture that are negative or reactionary." — Amílcar Cabral, National Liberation and Culture, 1970
"We must adhere to the people-centered development philosophy, ensuring that the fruits of development are shared by all." — Xi Jinping, Speech at the Communist Party of China Centennial, 2021
IV. Primitive Communism, Indigenous
Wisdom, and the Roots of Collective Life
⚠️ I want to be clear, I didn't get into the indigenous thought as much as I would've liked because of the contradictions both in the Americas and around the globe where some have modern colonial thought about seizing power and control of land, among other things, while the rest are traditional being anti sectarianism and calling for collective oneness and stewardship, denying any people have the right to claim any region of the earth as belonging to them. Which is a subject for another discussion.
Pre-capitalist, tribal, and clan societies demonstrate that collective, egalitarian, stewardship-based social organization is not utopian fantasy. It is the historical baseline of human community.
Marx's late ethnological notebooks and Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State were built substantially on Lewis Henry Morgan's anthropological study of the Iroquois Confederacy. What they found there was not savagery to be overcome but a model of democratic collectivism, free association, communal property, matrilineal governance, to be recovered and elevated in a higher form.
"All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other's freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights." — Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884. Describing the Iroquois gens as documented by Lewis Henry Morgan.
"The society which organises production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong, into the museum of antiquities. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes." — Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884. Engels quoting and endorsing Morgan's conclusion in Ancient Society (1877).
"The population was small, and there was no need for a complex state apparatus. All are free and equal, the women as well as the men. There is no place yet for slaves, nor, as a rule, for the subjugation of other tribes." — Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884
"The female part generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common. The women were the dominating power in the clans (gentes) and everywhere else." — Arthur Wright, 19th-century missionary among the Seneca Iroquois, quoted approvingly by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884
"Communism in living was the rule in the gens." — Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877. The foundational anthropological text that directly shaped Marx's and Engels' theory of primitive communism.
"The Iroquois tribes were essentially democratic; their government was based upon the gens." — Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877
"In all earlier stages of society production was essentially collective and the products were consumed directly within the gens or the village community." — Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884
"A prehistoric stage of any well-grown people can be said to exist only when its earliest historical record is found to be preceded by a culture of the kind that is now found among the primitive people. This is the stage of 'primitive communism' where the land is the common property of the clan or the community." — Rosa Luxemburg, Introduction to Political Economy, written 1907–1913, published posthumously
"The simple organization for production in these self-sufficing communities constantly reproduces itself... This simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies." — Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, 1867
"Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle." — Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, 1902
"The village community has been the primitive form of society." — Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, 1902
"To what extent is it possible to call the Inca state socialist? Socialist principles were clearly expressed in the structure of the Inca state: the almost complete absence of private property, in particular of private land; absence of money and trade; the complete elimination of private initiative from all economic activities." — Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon. Shafarevich was a critic of socialism, but his analysis of the Inca state's structural resemblance to socialist organization is widely cited.
V. Indigenous Voices: The Philosophy of the Collective
The indigenous worldview, across vastly different cultures and geographies, converges on principles structurally identical to the core moral claims of communist humanism: the earth cannot be owned; the individual exists only in and through relationship; obligation extends to all living things and to future generations; the accumulation of personal wealth at the expense of the collective is moral failure.
"All red races are born Socialists, and most tribes carry out the communistic ideas to the letter. Amongst the Iroquois, it is considered disgraceful to have food if your neighbor has none. To be a creditable member of the nation, you must divide your possessions with your less fortunate fellows." — Tekahionwake (E. Pauline Johnson), A Strong Race Opinion, 1892. One of the few directly verified primary-source indigenous-communist convergence statements.
"The first principle of Indian humanism is the belief in the inherent worth of every human being, regardless of their status or achievements. This worth is not granted by a higher power, but is a natural consequence of being a part of the web of life." — Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 1973
⚠️ Maybe paraphrased
"Everything was shared. There was no such thing as 'mine' and 'thine.' If one had food, all had food. If one was hungry, all were hungry. This was the natural law of our people." — Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks, as told to John G. Neihardt, 1932
"Before our white brothers came to civilize us, we had no jails. Therefore, we had no criminals. You can't have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi, or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away." — John Fire Lame Deer, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, 1972
"When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift." — John Fire Lame Deer, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, 1972
"What made traditional economies so radically different and so very fundamentally dangerous to Western economies were the traditional principles of prosperity of Creation versus scarcity of resources, of sharing and distribution versus accumulation and greed, of kinship usage rights versus individual exclusive ownership rights, and of sustainability versus growth." — Rebecca Adamson, founder of First Peoples Worldwide; from her published speeches and writings on indigenous economics
"The indigenous understanding has its basis in a recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things, a holistic and balanced view of the world. All things are bound together. All things connect. What happens to the Earth happens to the children of the Earth. Humankind has not woven the web of life; we are but one thread. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves." — Rebecca Adamson, from her published writings on indigenous economic philosophy
"For tribal people, who see the world as a whole, the essence of our work is in its entirety. In a society where all are related, simple decisions require the approval of nearly everyone in that society. It is society as a whole, not merely a part of it, that must survive. This is the indigenous understanding. It is the understanding in a global sense. We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along." — Rebecca Adamson, from speeches and writings on indigenous governance and global solidarity
"The Haudenosaunee law acknowledges the land and living things, not as a resource or assets intended for the use and enjoyment of humans, but as vital parts of a larger circle of life, each entitled to respect and protection. Our relationship with all these is one of gratitude and humility." — Haudenosaunee Confederacy, official statement on Haudenosaunee philosophy and governance
"I joined the Communist party because of poverty, because of mistreatment, because things had to change. I was a leader. Speaking to people made them see our sorrows. After so much struggle, even made the government cry." — Tránsito Amaguaña, Ecuadorian Kichwa indigenous communist leader and labor organizer; from recorded interviews
VI. Anti-Individualism and Liberation
Through the Collective
The individual is not abolished by communism. The bourgeois individual, defined by property, competition, and isolation, is abolished so that the full human being can emerge.
"There is no such thing as a non-class or above-class ideology." — Vladimir Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 1902
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 1845–46
"In all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura." — Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1845
"The knowledge that the individual is part of the whole and that his interests are inseparable from those of the collective is the basis of communist morality." — Vladimir Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, 1920
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers. The community cares for that part of the Earth, but cares for it as a circle, which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected. All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really one." — Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks, as told to John G. Neihardt, 1932
"To our way of thinking the Indians' symbol is the circle, the hoop. Nature wants to be round. With us, the circle stands for togetherness of people who sit with one another around the campfire, relatives and friends united in peace while the sacred pipe passes from hand to hand, symbol and reality at the same time, expressing the harmony of life and nature." — John Fire Lame Deer, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, 1972
"All things are bound together, all things connect. Whatever befalls the earth befalls also the children of the earth." — Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation; from public addresses
"We need to rediscover our sense of community, our sense of shared responsibility, and our commitment to the land and to each other." — Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, 1999
"Warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity." — Sitting Bull, widely attributed; from oral tradition and reported speeches
"The most fulfilled people are the ones who get up every morning and stand for something larger than themselves. They are the people who care about others, who will extend a helping hand to someone in need or will speak up about an injustice when they see it." — Wilma Mankiller, from her memoir Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, 1993
"We don't fight exploitation with Black capitalism; we fight capitalism with basic socialism." — attributed to the Black Panther Party, central to the Party's Ten-Point Program; associated with Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and the Party's platform documents
VII. Global Union: The Abolition of
Nations and the Single Proletarian
Humanity
'Workers of the world, unite!' is not rhetoric. It is a literal program for the dissolution of national borders and the formation of a single, borderless human community.
The state, in Marxist theory, is a temporary instrument of class rule. Once class is abolished, the state itself must wither away, not by proclamation, but by rendering itself superfluous. What replaces it is not chaos but a global human community organized around collective need.
"The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!" — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"The interference of the state power in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things. The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away." — Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1878
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." — Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875
"The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force, an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population in the work of organizing a socialist economy." — Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917
"The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property." — Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917
"To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's Association, 1864
"In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"Proletarian in content, national in form, such is the universal human culture toward which socialism is marching." — Joseph Stalin, Speech at the 16th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1930
"Communism is the Horizon. Queer indigenous Feminism is the Way." — Nick Estes, The Red Nation, statement articulating the convergence of indigenous decolonial politics with communist horizon theory
"To decolonize our understanding of sovereignty would be moving back to collective rights, moving back to ideas of nationhood that aren't based on exclusivity, but are based on mutuality and reciprocity." — Nick Estes, The Red Nation
"Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it." — Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, speech at Washington D.C., 1879
"As Native Americans, we believe the Rainbow is a sign from the Spirit in all things: It is a sign of the union of all people, like one big family. The unity of all humanity, many tribes and peoples, is essential." — Thomas Banyacya, Hopi traditional leader; from his 1992 United Nations address
"Man must learn to serve man and share freely from now on. We must bring back the level of life where land is free, water is free, there are no boundaries and there is freedom of spiritual understanding." — Thomas Banyacya, United Nations address, 1992
"We shall call each other Brother, as we are equal. In one canoe is our way of life, laws, and people. In the other is your ship with your laws, religion, and people. Our vessels will travel side by side down the river of life." — The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, from the Two Row Wampum (Guswenta) treaty tradition
"We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along." — Rebecca Adamson, from published speeches on global indigenous economics and solidarity
VIII. Equitable Egalitarianism: From
Each, To Each
Communist egalitarianism is not formal equality, the fiction that equal rules apply to unequal people. It is substantive equity: distribution according to need, contribution according to ability.
The distinction between equality and equity is central to Marxist political economy. Bourgeois equality, the formal legal equality of persons before the market, is, in Marx's analysis, itself a form of inequality: it applies the same standard to people in radically different conditions and so reproduces and legitimizes existing disparities. Communist egalitarianism demands not equal treatment of unequal people, but the material conditions under which inequality of condition is itself abolished.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" — Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875
"The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor. But one man is physically or mentally superior to another, and supplies more labor in the same time. This right, index of inequality, is a bourgeois right." — Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875
"We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour." — Vladimir Lenin, To the Rural Poor, 1903
"The real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity." — Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877
"The demand for equality in the mouth of the proletariat has therefore a double meaning. It is either the spontaneous reaction against the crying social inequalities, against the contrast between rich and poor, or on the other hand, it has arisen as a demand for the abolition of classes." — Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877
"Equality is an empty phrase unless equality is understood to mean the abolition of classes." — Vladimir Lenin, On Deceiving the People with Slogans about Liberty and Equality, 1919
"By equality Marxism means, not equalisation of personal requirements and everyday life, but the abolition of classes, the equal emancipation of all working people from exploitation, the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive in return according to their needs." — Joseph Stalin, from his summaries of Marxist-Leninist doctrine on equality; the formulation appears across multiple Stalinist-era texts as an interpretive summary of Marx
⚠️ This is more if an inference of Stalin's thought.
"Communism is not a society of privileges, but one where each works according to their ability and receives according to their need." — summarized formulation of Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto and Critique of the Gotha Programme, the standard paraphrase of their combined argument on distribution
⚠️ This is a summarized statement
"Using the latest in science and technology to shatter today's economic paradigm of 'insatiable individuals competing for scarce resources,' Planetary Citizenship brings us full circle to the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples and the sacredness of creation." — Rebecca Adamson, from her writings connecting indigenous economics to contemporary political economy
"What we're looking at is a range about an economic system that works for all. We have to begin to ask how we measure our economy based on the well-being of the society. Not on GDP. Not on profit margins. But on the well-being of all of us. Those are principles that are coming out of indigenous understanding." — Rebecca Adamson, from public lectures on indigenous economics and global justice
"Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children." — Sitting Bull, widely attributed; from oral tradition and recorded speeches
"It seems that we are living in a time of prophesies, a time of definitions and decisions. We are the generations with the responsibility and option to choose the path of life with a future for our children, or the path that defies the laws of regeneration." — Oren Lyons, from public addresses on indigenous responsibility and the seventh generation
IX. The Strategic Necessity of
Suppressing Regressive Forces
The transition to full collective humanity requires the active suppression of those forces, ideological and material, that maintain division, hierarchy, and exploitation.
Communist theory has never been pacifist about the question of transition. The withering of the state, the dissolution of classes, the supersession of sectarian identity: none of these happen automatically. They require organized, directed, and where necessary forceful political action. The vanguard's role is not merely to educate but to clear the field of forces that would otherwise reassert themselves.
"The dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie." — Vladimir Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918
"The dictatorship of the proletariat is rule unrestricted by law and based on force." — Vladimir Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918
"The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle, bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative, against the forces and traditions of the old society." — Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, 1920
"The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force, an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population in the work of organizing a socialist economy." — Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917
"We must learn to combine the 'public meeting' democracy of the working people with iron discipline while at work, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work." — Vladimir Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, 1918
"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." — Mao Zedong, Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, 1927
"Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are 'blank.' This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. A clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it, the newest and most beautiful pictures can be painted on it." — Mao Zedong, Introducing a Co-operative, 1958. This quote is celebrated in Maoist literature as an argument for the revolutionary transformation of culture; it is also one of the most criticized Mao quotes for its implication of cultural erasure.
"Every social group creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function." — Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, written 1929–35
"Revolutionary progress requires the destruction of those aspects of culture that are negative or reactionary." — Amílcar Cabral, National Liberation and Culture, 1970
"We do not believe in an eternal morality, and we expose the falseness of all the fables about morality. Our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle." — Vladimir Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, 1920
"The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848
X. Conclusion: Communism as the
Return to Human Nature
Communism does not invent a new humanity. It strips away the pathological distortions of class society and returns us to what we have always been: a cooperative, collective, steward species.
The convergence documented in this text is not accidental. Indigenous communities on every continent developed, through millennia of lived experience, the same core insight that Marx and Engels arrived at through materialist philosophy: that the individual is a relational being, that the earth is held in common, that wealth is realized through distribution rather than accumulation, and that the division of humanity against itself is a disease, not a destiny.
"In a higher phase of communist society... after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly, only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" — Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875
"Communism is not as such the goal of human development, the form of human society." — Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Marx's point being that communism is the necessary transition to full human flourishing, not the final form.
"The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority." — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
"Peace comes from being aligned with the natural world, with the spiritual world, and with each other." — Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, 1999
"I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more." — Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, from his speeches and recorded statements
"There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men." — Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks, 1932
"Let us live in peace and harmony to keep the land and all life in balance." — Thomas Banyacya, from his public addresses on Hopi prophecy and global responsibility
"I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one." — attributed to Crazy Horse, widely cited in indigenous spiritual literature; primary source unverified, see Appendix
⚠️ Attributed quote, not verified.
"A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky." — attributed to Crazy Horse, widely cited; primary source unverified, see Appendix
⚠️ Attributed quote, not verified.
"I hope to contribute to a global warming of hearts and a climate change in human consciousness." — Q'orianka Kilcher, indigenous actress and activist; from interviews and public statements
"The things I do, I do from the heart and out of love and respect for our planet and all living things. And I draw my courage from my love for justice and truth, and I calm my fears by comforting those who are more scared than me." — Q'orianka Kilcher, from interviews and public statements
X-A. The Two Readings of Indigenous Philosophy: Literal Truth vs. Colonial Reinterpretation
Section X-A is an additional section that was need after response to the original blog. A critical fault line runs through the reception of indigenous philosophy in political discourse. It is not a fault line between indigenous people and outsiders. It is a fault line between those who take indigenous people at their literal word and those who reinterpret that word until it no longer threatens the logic of property.
The philosophical record is unambiguous. Across every tradition cited in this document and across virtually every indigenous tradition on every continent, the statement is the same: the land cannot be owned. It cannot be bought. It cannot be sold. We do not inherit it from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children. It is not a commodity. It is a relative. These are not metaphors. These are not poetic expressions requiring academic translation. They are direct philosophical and ontological claims about the nature of the earth and humanity's relationship to it.
"My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon." — Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak), Black Hawk: An Autobiography, 1833
"Before our white brothers came to civilize us, we had no jails. Therefore, we had no criminals... We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings." — John Fire Lame Deer, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, 1972
"What made traditional economies so radically different... were the traditional principles of prosperity of Creation versus scarcity of resources, of sharing and distribution versus accumulation and greed, of kinship usage rights versus individual exclusive ownership rights." — Rebecca Adamson, from published writings on indigenous economic philosophy
These statements are universal in their structure. "No one owns the land" means no one. If the statement applies to settlers, to colonizers, to capital, it applies equally to any people who would use it as the foundation for an exclusive territorial claim. A philosophy that says "no one owns the land" cannot simultaneously be the basis for asserting that a specific nation owns specific land without collapsing into the same property logic it originally opposed. To argue otherwise is not to defend indigenous philosophy. It is to betray it.
Two groups have received this tradition:
Group One takes the words at face value. No one owns the land. Stewardship is collective obligation. Oneness is real and universal. The earth is held in common for all living things and all future generations. This reading is internally consistent. It applies the philosophical claim universally, as it was stated. It converges directly with communist theory's insistence that the earth and its resources cannot be the private property of any individual, class, or nation. The people who said these words, Black Hawk, Lame Deer, Amaguaña, Adamson, Banyacya, said them as universal truths, not as legal briefs for territorial exclusivity.
Group Two takes the same words and qualifies them into a sovereignty claim. "No one owns the land" becomes the philosophical foundation for asserting that a specific people have exclusive rights to specific territory based on prior occupancy. The universal is made particular. The abolition of ownership becomes a different ownership with a different owner. This is not a defense of indigenous philosophy. It is the colonial interpretive move performed with indigenous vocabulary. The structure of the argument is identical to the colonial logic it claims to oppose, only the proposed owner changes. Settler colonialism said: we claim this land by right of discovery and conquest. The sovereigntist reinterpretation says: we claim this land by right of prior occupancy. Both are claims. Both operate within the logic of ownership. Neither honors the actual philosophical content of what indigenous people said.
The deepest indigenous wisdom does not argue prior claim. It argues the abolition of the claim itself. That is not a legal position. It is an ontological one. And it is precisely the ontological position that communist theory arrives at from a different direction, through the materialist critique of private property, through Marx's insistence that the earth is not a commodity but the common body of humanity, through Engels' recognition that the Iroquois confederacy demonstrated collective stewardship not as primitive underdevelopment but as the human baseline that class society destroyed.
Anyone who tells you that "no one owns the land" was not meant literally about land ownership is not defending indigenous philosophy. They are diluting it into a property claim their framework can manage. The literal reading is the honest reading. It is the reading that takes indigenous people at their word. It is the reading that converges with collective stewardship, with communist humanism, with the species-being that Marx identified as humanity's unrealized essence. Group One and Group Two are not equally valid interpretations of the same tradition. One honors what was said. The other bends it until it serves the logic of the very system indigenous philosophy arose to oppose. Like it or not, these two groups have become gateways to solidarity and hostilities due to fundamental irreconcilable differences. And that should not be mistaken for infighting. The two groups are frenemies at best.
Appendix: Attributed, Disputed, and
Circulating Quotes
The following quotes are widely associated with the figures named, widely circulated in the traditions of communist and indigenous thought, and reflect worldviews consistent with the argument of this document. Their exact provenance, however, is disputed by historians, unverifiable against surviving primary sources, or subject to questions of translation and embellishment. They are presented here not as verified primary sources but as part of the living intellectual and cultural tradition. The argument does not depend on them; the argument is made without them. But they exist, they circulate, and they belong to the conversation.
★ All quotes in this appendix are presented with their dispute or attribution note. They should be cited in any secondary work as 'attributed to' the named figure, not as verified primary sources.
Chief Seattle
The famous ecological speeches attributed to Chief Seattle present a complex attribution problem. The historical Chief Seattle (c. 1786–1866) gave a speech in 1854 that was recorded in English translation by Dr. Henry A. Smith and published in 1887. The ecological-philosophical version widely circulated today, containing the most famous passages, was largely composed by screenwriter Ted Perry for a 1971 documentary. The philosophical content, however, accurately reflects the worldview of Pacific Northwest indigenous peoples and is consistent with Chief Seattle's documented thought.
"The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." — attributed to Chief Seattle, widely circulated version substantially composed by Ted Perry, 1971, based on Smith's 1887 translation of Seattle's 1854 speech
⚠️ The poetic ecological version is largely Ted Perry's composition. The sentiment reflects documented Coast Salish and Duwamish worldviews but should not be cited as Seattle's verbatim words.
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children." — attributed widely to Chief Seattle and others, no verified primary source; appears in late 20th-century environmental literature
⚠️ Often attributed to Chief Seattle, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Native American oral tradition generally. No verified primary source for any specific attribution.
Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse (c. 1840–1877) left no recorded writings and no verified direct quotations. The spiritual quotes circulating in his name derive from later oral tradition, sympathetic biography, and in some cases appear to be modern compositions placed in his voice.
"I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one." — attributed to Crazy Horse, no traceable primary source; widely circulated in indigenous spiritual and New Age literature
⚠️ No documented source. Reflects Lakota spiritual philosophy but cannot be verified as Crazy Horse's words.
"A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky." — attributed to Crazy Horse, no traceable primary source
⚠️ No verified primary source. Consistent with Lakota tradition but unverifiable.
Black Hawk: Important Separation Note
Two distinct figures have been conflated in circulation under the name 'Black Hawk': the historical Sauk leader Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Hawk, 1767–1838), who authored a genuine autobiography in 1833, and the contemporary hip-hop artist Black Hawk. Several quotes circulating online attributed to the historical Black Hawk are in fact song lyrics from the artist. The following are verified from the historical figure's autobiography:
"My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon. So long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away." — Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak), Black Hawk: An Autobiography, 1833, verified primary source
"I got my best foot forward onto greener grass 'cause there ain't no future living in the past." — Black Hawk (hip-hop artist), song lyric, NOT the historical Sauk leader Black Hawk
⚠️ This is a contemporary hip-hop lyric, not a statement of indigenous philosophy. The two figures share a name only.
Thomas Jefferson on Indigenous Communal Property
"The principle of common property was the basis of their society." — attributed to Thomas Jefferson, cited in connection with Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785
⚠️ This exact formulation does not appear in Notes on the State of Virginia as a direct quote. Jefferson did observe and write about indigenous communal land use, but this specific sentence requires further verification against his primary texts.
Rosa Luxemburg: Misattributed Anti-Capitalism Quote
"We are not fighting for the distribution of wealth, but for the destruction of the very categories of 'rich' and 'poor' that define the human condition under capital." — cited as Rosa Luxemburg, 'Resistance and Decolonization, 1970s', IMPOSSIBLE ATTRIBUTION, Luxemburg was killed in 1919
⚠️ Rosa Luxemburg died January 15, 1919. Any work dated 'the 1970s' cannot be hers. This quote may be Amílcar Cabral's or another anti-colonial theorist's, or may be apocryphal. Do not attribute to Luxemburg.
Selena Mills
"We are guests on this land. Nobody owns it." — Selena Mills, Indigenous journalist and writer; from published essays on land acknowledgment and non-indigenous relationships to indigenous territory
⚠️ Selena Mills is a real contemporary Anishinaabe writer. These quotes reflect her published work. Exact article titles and dates should be confirmed for academic citation.
"All we're asking you to do is to remember, and remember with us." — Selena Mills, from essays on land acknowledgment
⚠️ Same as above, real contemporary author; exact publication details should be confirmed.
John Trudell: Misattributed Quote
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." — circulated as John Trudell, this formulation is most commonly attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Wayne Dyer
⚠️ While John Trudell may have used this phrase, it is not original to him and is not verifiable as his composition. The idea appears across multiple sources. Cite with caution.
Lenin: Goal of Socialism Formulation
"The goal of socialism is the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, the elimination of class distinctions, and the establishment of equality." — attributed to Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917. This is an accurate summary of Lenin's argument in The State and Revolution but is not a verbatim sentence from that text. Cite as a paraphrase of Lenin's argument, not as a direct quote.
Castro
"A socialist society is one where the wealth is not concentrated in the hands of a few, but where every person can access education, health, and opportunity." — attributed to Fidel Castro, speech to the United Nations, 1979
⚠️ Castro gave a major UN address in 1979. This sentiment is consistent with his documented speeches but the exact sentence requires verification against the speech transcript.
Vine Deloria Jr.
"The first principle of Indian humanism is the belief in the inherent worth of every human being, regardless of their status or achievements." — attributed to Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 1973
⚠️ Deloria's argument in God Is Red is consistent with this claim, but the exact sentence should be verified against the text before use as a direct quote.
- Punctuation corrections and spell check done by Claudia AI.
- After double checking quote sources for credibility, had Claudia AI also verify credibility of all quotes.
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