What is happening ... to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation.... 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. --V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917
