"Socialism in Practice" Requires Force

“It was perfectly clear, too, that if socialism was to stem the crisis and remake the world, socialism involved a violent struggle to get and keep political power. At some point, socialism would have to consolidate its power by force…This was not theory or statistics. This was socialism in practice. This was how it worked.

I quickly passed on to Lenin’s State and Revolution and the ABC of Communism (its three authors were all shot during the Great Purge). Here was no dodging of the problem of getting and keeping power. Here was the simple statement that terror and dictatorship are justified to defend the socialist revolution…Terror is an instrument of socialist policy.” (Whitaker Chambers, Witness, 1952, pages 194-195)