You cannot buy the Revolution—
You cannot make the Revolution—
You can only Be the Revolution—
It is in your Spirit or it is nowhere.²
Everything in us is absorbed by a single,
Exclusive Interest, a single Thought,
A single Passion: the Revolution.³
Let the ruling classes Tremble at the Revolution.⁴
If you want Justice to reign, Workers use your
Intelligence, Arise! Let your Strong Hands
Crush the loathsome forces of reaction.⁵
Your leaders’ Stumblin’—so
You he’ps to mak’ dem Fall.⁶
We hate them that Oppress us—
They shall either Release us
Or we shall Destroy them!⁷
Rise as Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake off your chains to the earth like dew—
For ye are Many and they are few—⁸
Dislodge, and leave Unworshipped,
Unobeyed, the throne supreme.⁹
Revolutions are Festivals of
The Exploited & Oppressed!¹⁰
¹ Langston Hughes, Letter to the Academy
² Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
³ Sergey Nechayev, The Revolutionary Catechism
⁴ Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels tr. original, The Communist Manifesto
⁵ Paris Communards, Declaration by the Central Committee of the National Guard
⁶ Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr., The Don’t-Care Negro
⁷ Walt Whitman, The Sleepers
⁸ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
⁹ John Milton, Paradise Lost
¹⁰ Vladimir Lenin tr. original, Two Tactics of Social Democracy