"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and Revolution Link
That first page of State and Revolution broke my fucking brain when I first read it. Suddenly all of these pieces clicked into place and started making sense. I also credit the book the Assassination of Fred Hampton on really being the watershed moment for me politically. I was always somewhat left but reading what my own government did to a guy who grew up maybe 10 minutes away from me who had the same views as me pushed me down a path I can't come back from. I recommend anyone in the Chicago area to visit the statue of Fred Hampton in Maywood. The first time I went I just cried in my car for a few minutes.
Literally the first person I think of when reading that opener to State and Revolution is MLK. But it goes double for the likes of Malcolm X and Fred Hampton.
Oh absolutely, MLK was pretty much the first person to pop into my head when I first read it too.