“Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois. According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged, and the executioners were the ones who executed.”
- August 13, 1926 – November 25, 2016
- Cuban
- Revolutionary, Prime Minister and President of Cuba, Communist Leader
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Quote
“Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois. According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged, and the executioners were the ones who executed.”
Explanation
This quote reflects Fidel Castro’s effort to clarify and humanize Marxist thought, pushing back against the caricature that communism advocates violent extermination of the bourgeois class. By asserting that “Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois,” Castro is emphasizing that class struggle, as envisioned by the founders of Marxism, is about systemic change—not revenge or mass execution. It’s a defense of revolutionary ethics, suggesting that socialism seeks justice and transformation, not indiscriminate violence.
The second part—“According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged, and the executioners were the ones who executed”—points to a distinction in liberal legal theory: the rule of law separates powers and ensures due process. Castro references this to underline that even within bourgeois legal systems, violence was institutionalized, not anarchic, and justice was supposed to follow procedure. In doing so, he turns the argument back on critics of socialism, implying that bourgeois regimes also relied on systems of punishment, often without moral superiority.
In today’s context, the quote remains a relevant rebuttal to misrepresentations of socialism as inherently violent. It affirms that ideological change does not require dehumanization, and that true revolution must maintain moral and procedural discipline, even when confronting oppression. Castro’s words serve as a call to principled struggle, grounded in the belief that liberation is not achieved through terror, but through structure, justice, and the reorganization of power.
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