Class Consciousness Quotes
Quotes tagged as "class-consciousness"
Showing 1-18 of 18

“Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities. As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.”
― Magick Without Tears
― Magick Without Tears

“A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself鈥攆or slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
"We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don鈥檛 expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry fort you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.鈥
This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance if it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothings else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon鈥檚 poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line 鈥淣e pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres鈥 by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man鈥檚 experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day鈥檚 liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 鈥淎nything,鈥 he thinks, 鈥渁ny injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.”
― Down and Out in Paris and London
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
"We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don鈥檛 expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry fort you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.鈥
This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance if it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothings else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon鈥檚 poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line 鈥淣e pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres鈥 by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man鈥檚 experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day鈥檚 liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 鈥淎nything,鈥 he thinks, 鈥渁ny injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.”
― Down and Out in Paris and London

“In my opinion the basic cause for the relative failure of the two greatest revolutions in history resides not, to borrow again from Voline, in "historic inevitability," or simply in the subjective "errors" of revolutionary actors. The revolution bears within itself a serious contradiction (a contradiction which fortunately鈥攁nd we will return to the subject 鈥攊s not irremediable and is attenuated with time): it can only arise, it can only vanquish if it issues from the depths of the popular masses, from their irresistible spontaneous uprising; but although the class instinct drives the popular masses to break their chains, they are yet lacking in education and consciousness. And since, in their formidable but tumultuous and blind drive towards liberty, they run up against privileged, conscious, educated, organized, and tested social classes, they can only vanquish the resistance they meet if they succeed in obtaining in the heat of the struggle, the consciousness, the science, the organization, and the experience they lack. But the very fact of forging the weapons I have just listed summarily, and which alone can ensure their superiority over the enemy, bears an immense peril within it: that of killing the spontaneity that is the very spirit of the revolution; that of compromising freedom through organization; that of allowing the movement to be confiscated by an elite minority of more educated, more conscious, more experienced militants who, to begin with, offer themselves as guides in order, in the end, to impose themselves as chiefs and to subject the masses to new forms of the oppression of man by man.”
― For a Libertarian Communism
― For a Libertarian Communism

“They imagine that their poverty is transitory, and that they only need a stroke of good luck to transform them into capitalists.
Education, they think, is the lucky number in the social lottery, and it will bring them the grand prize. They do not perceive that this ticket given them by the capitalist class is a fraud, that labor, whether manual or intellectual, has no other chance than to earn its daily pittance, that it has nothing to hope for but to be exploited, and that the more capitalism goes on developing, the more do the chances of an individual raising himself out of his class go on diminishing.”
― The Right to Be Lazy
Education, they think, is the lucky number in the social lottery, and it will bring them the grand prize. They do not perceive that this ticket given them by the capitalist class is a fraud, that labor, whether manual or intellectual, has no other chance than to earn its daily pittance, that it has nothing to hope for but to be exploited, and that the more capitalism goes on developing, the more do the chances of an individual raising himself out of his class go on diminishing.”
― The Right to Be Lazy
“A socialist must be 'class-conscious', recognizing his identity as a member of the working class and understanding his interests as permanently against those of the master class.”
―
―

“A class cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group with common problems, interests and prospects - although this manifestation may for long periods be weak, confused, and subject to manipulation by other classes.”
―
―

“I felt such a stranger there, like a poor lodger. One must be with one's own people.”
― The Black Prince
― The Black Prince

“The psychology of the naturalistic drama, in which the characters are interpreted as social phenomena, has its origin in this urge which the spectator feels to identify himself with his social compeers. Now, however much objective truth there may be in such an interpretation of the characters in a play, it leads, when raised to the status of an exclusive principle, to a falsification of the facts. The assumption that men and women are merely social beings results in just as arbitrary a picture of experience as the view according to which every person is a unique and incomparable individual. Both conceptions lead to a stylization and romanticizing of reality. On the other hand, however, there is no doubt that the conception of man held in any particular epoch is socially conditioned and that the choice as to whether man is portrayed in the main as an autonomous personality or as the representative of a class depends in every age on the social approach and political aims of those who happen to be the upholders of culture. When a public wishes to see social origins and class characteristics emphasized in the human portraiture, that is always a sign that that society has become class-conscious, no matter whether the public in question is aristocratic or middle-class. In this context the question whether the aristocrat is only an aristocrat and the bourgeois only a bourgeois is absolutely unimportant.”
― The Social History of Art Volume 3: Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism
― The Social History of Art Volume 3: Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism

“There is nothing more vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue; my heart aches from the consciousness that I am working for money, and money is the centre of all I do.”
―
―
“I am not speaking here of the theory of the class struggle 鈥 I am speaking of the fact as the workers know it. Hundreds and thousands of workers are class-conscious without ever having heard of Marx and without coming in contact with the doctrine as such. They are class-conscious because their struggles for existence and their desire to escape from oppression and monotony, find constant opposition.”
― The Labor Movement : Its Conservative Functions and Social Consequences / (1921) [Leather Bound]
― The Labor Movement : Its Conservative Functions and Social Consequences / (1921) [Leather Bound]

“That's one of the reasons why, say, Canada, a very similar country, has a health care system and we don't. In Canada, the unions struggled for health care for the country. In the United States, they struggled for health care for themselves. So if you're an autoworker here in the United States, you had a pretty god health care and pension system. Union workers won health care for themselves in a compact with the corporations. They thought it was a deal. What they couldn't see was that it's a suicide pact. If the corporation decides the compact is over, then it's over. Meanwhile, the rest of the country didn't get health care. So now the United States has a completely dysfunctional health care system, while Canada has one that more or less works. That's a relation of different cultural values and institutional structures in two very similar countries. So yes, the working class did continue to develop and grow here, but with class collaboration, that is, in a compact with the corporations.”
― Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire
― Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire

“The road to Hell is paved with evildoers, they'd tell us. And the evildoers were those who had bad thoughts. We always wanted to be good. We believed that to be good was to bow one's head, not to protest, not to demand anything, not to get angry. No one had clarified these things for us. On the contrary, we were always being offered a celestial paradise. The reward for being good. To respect one's neighbor was really to respect the landowner. And to respect the landowner was to conform to his whimsey. If there were no beans to eat after working on the plantation, it was because the landowner couldn't manage, the landowner was suffering losses. If there were no hammocks to sleep in, it was because the harvest had not left the landowner enough time to provide them. And there we were without food, waiting for the afternoon or the evening to go home to eat, a whole day without eating; or we'd go to sleep under the pepetos trees in the coffee fields.
We used to confuse goodness with resignation.”
― One Day of Life
We used to confuse goodness with resignation.”
― One Day of Life

“I cannot let things remain as they are, because then I would not be free. If I cease to act because I fear the future, then I create a worse enslavement for myself. That much I know. While my people are not free, I am not free. If the freedom and justice I seek loose destruction upon the earth, then I accept that responsibility, but it seems to me that the real responsibility must be borne by those who keep me from my freedom. I must act!”
― Heart of Aztlan
― Heart of Aztlan

“That鈥檚 what the welfare people want,' Tranquilino gritted his teeth, 'to have us on welfare and to have our women working. Then they can point to our broken families and say the mexicano is a lazy, no good son-of-a-bitch!”
― Heart of Aztlan
― Heart of Aztlan

“Individuals were all right, she said to herself, lots of them, but it was this rigid system that kept people from knowing each other. Was there another country in the world where the class barriers were so high as in England, and where it was so loudly proclaimed that none existed at all?”
― Clash
― Clash

“Until the individual has won this freedom by heroic effort in philosophical thinking he does not fully belong to himself, and his mental tortures are the shameful tribute he pays to external necessity that stands opposed to him. But as soon as this individual throws off the yoke of this painful and shameful restriction he is born for a new, full and hitherto never experienced life; and his free actions become the conscious and free expression of necessity. Then he will become a great social force; and then nothing can, and nothing will, prevent him from
― The Role of the Individual in History
Bursting on cunning falsehood”
Like a storm of wrath divine鈥
― The Role of the Individual in History
“Grief reminds us, with some violence, that our selves are unbounded, and also that this reminder of unboundedness leads to the very edge of the abyss.”
― We, The Heartbroken
― We, The Heartbroken

“Who led the February revolution? Conscious and tempered workers educated for the most part by the party of Lenin.”
― History of the Russian Revolution <3> (Iwanami Bunko) (2000) ISBN: 4003412761 [Japanese Import]
― History of the Russian Revolution <3> (Iwanami Bunko) (2000) ISBN: 4003412761 [Japanese Import]
All Quotes
|
My Quotes
|
Add A Quote
Browse By Tag
- Love Quotes 99k
- Life Quotes 78k
- Inspirational Quotes 74k
- Humor Quotes 43.5k
- Philosophy Quotes 30.5k
- Inspirational Quotes Quotes 28k
- God Quotes 26.5k
- Truth Quotes 24k
- Wisdom Quotes 24k
- Romance Quotes 23.5k
- Poetry Quotes 22.5k
- Life Lessons Quotes 21.5k
- Death Quotes 20k
- Quotes Quotes 19.5k
- Happiness Quotes 19k
- Hope Quotes 18k
- Faith Quotes 18k
- Inspiration Quotes 17k
- Spirituality Quotes 15.5k
- Motivational Quotes 15k
- Religion Quotes 15k
- Relationships Quotes 15k
- Writing Quotes 14.5k
- Life Quotes Quotes 14.5k
- Love Quotes Quotes 14.5k
- Success Quotes 13.5k
- Motivation Quotes 13k
- Time Quotes 12.5k
- Science Quotes 12k
- Motivational Quotes Quotes 11.5k