Quote preview background for Leon Trotsky
We seek to uncoverbehind the events changes in the collective consciousness. We reject wholesale references to the __pontaneity_ of the movement, references which in most casesexplain nothing and teach nobody. Revolutions take place according to certain laws. This does not mean that the masses in action are aware of the laws of revolution, but it does mean that the changes in mass consciousness are not accidental, but are subject to an objective necessity which is capable of theoretic explanation, and thus makes both prophecy and leadership possible.
Leon Trotsky History of the Russian Revolution
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We seek to uncoverbehind the events changes in the collective consciousness. We reject wholesale references to the __pontaneity_ of the movement, references which in most casesexplain nothing and teach nobody. Revolutions take place according to certain laws. This does not mean that the masses in action are aware of the laws of revolution, but it does mean that the changes in mass consciousness are not accidental, but are subject to an objective necessity which is capable of theoretic explanation, and thus makes both prophecy and leadership possible.

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The revolutionary woman knows the world she seeks to overthrow is precisely one in which love between equal human beings is well nigh impossible. We are still part of the ironical working-out of this, our own cruel contradiction. One of the most compelling facts which can unite women and make us act is the overwhelming indignity or bitter hurt of being regarded as simply __he other_, __n object_, __ommodity_, __hing_. We act directly from a consciousness of the impossibility of loving or being loved without distortion. But we must still demand now the preconditions of what is impossible at the moment. It is a most disturbing dialectic, our praxis of pain.