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Class Struggle

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Does Nazi Germany’s attempt to reduce Slavs to the condition of black slaves in the service of the master race, and the epic resistance to this war of colonial subjugation and actual enslavement—the ‘great racial war’ undertaken by the Third Reich—mounted by entire peoples, have nothing to do with class struggle? — location: 183 ^ref-17844

that the struggle for a ‘foreign policy’ supportive of oppressed nations was an integral part of ‘the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes’. — location: 360 ^ref-12561

Far from being of minor relevance from the standpoint of class struggle, the exploitation and oppression that obtain internationally are a precondition, at least methodologically, for understanding social conflict and class struggle at a national level. — location: 372 ^ref-26173

defeat of this project provoked an immense wave of anti-colonial revolutions on a global scale. — location: 593 ^ref-43864

The sections and members of the exploiting class and oppressor nation most inclined to theoretical study and moral reflection are invited not to lose sight of the grave practical drawbacks and general human devastation created by the social system, of which they are nevertheless beneficiaries in immediate material terms. — location: 1573 ^ref-61375

that the ‘outward appearance’ or ‘delusive appearance’ of a phenomenon does not coincide with its ‘essence’; and hence, a prolonged, laborious intellectual engagement was required to achieve ‘science’, ‘scientific truth’. — location: 1585 ^ref-11155

Reason can certainly be employed to justify privilege, domination and oppression. Yet, as Nietzsche recognizes, inherent in it is the tendency to assert relations of equality, and hence, to delegitimize privilege, domination, and oppression. Emancipatory class struggle and reason have a tendency to converge. — location: 1627 ^ref-8800

everything is prey to conflict, but not in the same way and, in any event, not in a way that is immutable over time. — location: 1642 ^ref-36994

the ethos of the community of the concept and reason goes hand in hand with the ethos of human community, which is the inspiration for emancipatory class struggle. — location: 1651 ^ref-8566

the history of the West as a whole can be interpreted in the light of the principle that a people which oppresses another people is not free. — location: 2245 ^ref-32671

the totalitarian domination and genocidal practices running from top to bottom of the colonial tradition erupted in the very continent where this historical sequence started, in the wake of Hitler’s attempt to build a continental empire in Eastern Europe, subjugating, decimating and enslaving the ‘natives’ who inhabited it. — location: 2246 ^ref-55014

The binary interpretation of social conflict, which perceives only one contradiction (opposing rich and poor), does not make it possible to understand emancipatory movements, whose social basis is not formed exclusively of poor people. — location: 2398 ^ref-28994

Marx was not wrong to reprove him for pursuing an ‘alliance with absolutist and feudal opponents against the bourgeoisie’, 6 flirting with someone who later promulgated ruthless anti-socialist (and anti-working class) laws. — location: 2403 ^ref-32741

the attempt to extract gracious concessions from the existing government in the direction of a welfare state—went hand in hand with neglect of other fronts in the class struggle and a narrowly economistic view of working-class struggle itself. — location: 2406 ^ref-1292

a populist current which (Engels observed) liked ‘to describe the Russian peasants as the true vehicles of socialism, as born communists, in contrast to the workers of the aging, decayed European West, who would first have to go through the ordeal of acquiring socialism artificially’. — location: 2422 ^ref-48860

The underestimation of the task of abolishing an ancien régime notable for its oppression of nations and women, as well as the working class, was patent. Once again, the class struggle is heavily mutilated and, even when it comes to engagement on behalf of the subaltern classes, what remains is trifling. — location: 2425 ^ref-65528

in the very years when Marx and Engels were expressing their hopes in the proletariat as the agency of universal emancipation with youthful hyperbole, followers of Fourier (and Saint-Simon) planned to construct communities of a more or less socialist kind in Algeria, on land taken from the Arabs in a brutal, sometimes genocidal war. — location: 2434 ^ref-36805

For the two representatives of socialism cited here, commitment to the abolition of slavery in the colonies or the North American republic distracted attention from the social question, which remained a burning issue in the capitalist metropolis. — location: 2446 ^ref-18322

the inventor of a ‘socialism’ more appropriately defined as ‘imperial’ than ‘feudal’. Far from meeting with derision from the popular classes, this was socialism that often enchanted and ensnared them. — location: 2460 ^ref-12192

the English aristocracy had shelved the caste, even racial arrogance it traditionally displayed towards the popular classes; and now it was the ‘fraternal’ national English community as a whole that adopted a pose of supreme aristocratic disdain for other nations, especially colonial populations. — location: 2468 ^ref-25065

the popular masses and proletariat were invited to respond to the dominant classes’ limited social reforms with patriotism and support for colonial expansionism. — location: 2482 ^ref-17457

An adequate understanding of a concrete historical situation requires overcoming the habitual binary logic that claims to explain everything on the basis of a single contradiction. — location: 2487 ^ref-4383

absolutizing a temporary, short-lived situation. — location: 2528 ^ref-54940

What is intimated here is a scenario of well-nigh global revolution, whose protagonist would be black slaves in the USA, serfs in Russia, and wage slaves or workers in Britain. — location: 2545 ^ref-15516

the expectation of a general revolt from below by black slaves, serfs and wage slaves clouded the capacity for historical prediction. — location: 2565 ^ref-30324

as opposed to a general insurrection of the poor against the rich, revolution is anticipated from a conjunction of international war and internal social conflict. We are reminded of October 1917. — location: 2572 ^ref-30885

the proletariat was not immune from the chauvinist wave. — location: 2601 ^ref-29752

The ‘obviousness’ of exploitation and, with it, the unity of the exploited class disappears so that a binary interpretation of social conflict becomes unsustainable. — location: 2601 ^ref-56173

evidence, revolutionary consciousness presupposes an understanding of political and social relations extending far beyond the conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat. — location: 2607 ^ref-2056

workers, even those in large-scale industry, constitute ‘a crowd of people unknown to one another’ and ‘an incoherent mass … broken up by their mutual competition’. — location: 2613 ^ref-10795

the category of lumpen-proletariat refers to a mutable political function rather than a clearly defined social condition. — location: 2621 ^ref-25759

Depending on the case, it can place itself at the service of the dominant bloc or, more rarely, let itself be drawn into the revolutionary movement. — location: 2622 ^ref-31228

ideological and political maturity and the politics of alliances have taken the place of the decisive role of direct sensory self-evidence and the binary reading of social conflict and the revolutionary process. — location: 2629 ^ref-48832

So political maturity allowing for alliances is on key thing, but shitty alliances (like feudalists against booj) are also decried. It has to be done intelligently

What emerged in some sections of the communist movement was an unrealistic internationalism that tended to liquidate different national identities as mere prejudices. — location: 5152 ^ref-53823

idealism of practice—the view that, as a result of revolutionary class struggle, the material objectivity of different national interests would disappear. — location: 5349 ^ref-36862

Just as it does not betoken the end of the state, so socialism does not entail either the disappearance of the market, or the fusion of the countries engaged in constructing a new social order into a community free of tensions and conflicts. — location: 5400 ^ref-34180

What cast a shadow of suspicion was the attitude adopted by the USSR along with the other great powers at Yalta, the ‘secret agreement dividing up spheres of influence among them, — location: 5405 ^ref-3284

interests’. The influence of the national question had been decisive: ‘I don’t mean it was because of the ideological disputes; we no longer think that everything we said at that time was right. The basic problem was that the Chinese were not treated as equals and felt humiliated. However, we have never forgotten that in the period of our First Five-Year Plan the Soviet Union helped us lay an industrial foundation’. — location: 5407 ^ref-38010

When we remember that religion can be a key moment in the construction of national identity, this is another reason for casting doubt on the thesis of the inevitable disappearance of religion after the victory of proletarian class struggle. — location: 5414 ^ref-2689

Intoxication gave way to exhaustion. And on the eve of its collapse the condition of real socialism in Eastern Europe was one of exhaustion. — location: 5419 ^ref-50680

initially, to overcome penury and the absolute qualitative inequality bound up with it, the rulers in Beijing were mainly concerned to consolidate the industrial and technological base. — location: 6596 ^ref-41652

China finds itself having to confront two different inequalities: global inequality and domestic inequality. — location: 6614 ^ref-53052

the development of a country that has made an anti-capitalist or anti-colonial revolution is inconceivable if it does not hook up with a world market still largely controlled by the bourgeoisie. There is no real alternative to the option of dancing with wolves. — location: 6623 ^ref-61688

a politico-ideological offensive that seeks to demonize Mao on the basis of an absolutization and de-contexualization of his unhappiest years in power. — location: 6627 ^ref-10183

Western ideologues are silent about the fact that the Great Leap was, in many respects, a desperate attempt to deal with a devastating embargo. — location: 6633 ^ref-25764

Mao, the protagonist of an epic national liberation struggle that defeated the plans for colonization and enslavement pursued by the Third Reich’s Asian imitators, is put on a par with Hitler! This operation aims to undermine the self-respect of members of the Communist Party and citizens of the People’s Republic, in the context of a crusade seeking to wield the power of wealth over Beijing, in order to suppress what is regarded as an intolerable anomaly. — location: 6638 ^ref-61971

Workers struggling for higher wages and better living and working conditions, who have achieved (and are achieving) significant results, often clash with it. But such struggles are not aimed at overthrowing or challenging the government, and in fact often call on its support to face down the arrogance and resistance of particular local employers or bosses. — location: 6647 ^ref-7153

within the Communist Party of China there seems to be a clash between a purely national current, which regards the revolutionary process as concluded with the achievement of national objectives (modernization, restoration of territorial integrity, and the renaissance of China), and a current with much more ambitious objectives pertaining to the history and ideals of the communist movement. — location: 6677 ^ref-47875

With its development, which continues to be largely directed by the political power, and even now seeks to subordinate the hunt for profit by private sectors of the economy to general ends, China is the country that more than any other is challenging the international division of labour imposed by colonialism and imperialism, and furthering the end of the Columbian epoch—a fact of enormous, progressive historical significance. — location: 6680 ^ref-39929

The struggle of those who obey against those who command, when the type of domination involves the destruction of human dignity by the latter, is the most legitimate, the most justified, the most authentic thing in the world. This struggle exists from the moment those who command tend, without necessarily being conscious of it, to crush the human dignity of those in their power. — location: 6840 ^ref-34381

the struggle to perpetuate exploitation and oppression is also class struggle—for — location: 6852 ^ref-28449

class struggle could assume such ‘different forms’ that the protagonist of the emancipatory process might be the famished workers in rags of June 1848 or the formidable army commanded by Lincoln. — location: 6884 ^ref-51813

The masses in this country … are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy. …When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended us to have. Sewers are a luxury to be reserved for those who deserve them, the leaders of Spain, not the slave stock. — location: 6922 ^ref-35423

Whether as regards Spain or the international conflict, we can ask what sense it makes to put aspirant slave-holders and potential slaves on a par. — location: 6926 ^ref-14144

To speak of class struggle, Weil seeks the weak—‘those who do not command’—and does not notice the overwhelming mass of slaves or potential slaves on the horizon. — location: 6927 ^ref-63419

As for Soviet Russia, it risked being reduced to a colony: ‘[t]o defend itself, it must constantly expand its productive apparatus and armaments, and this at the cost of complete enslavement of the labouring masses’. — location: 6938 ^ref-59941

The Soviet Union’s commitment to developing its productive and military apparatus in order to avert colonialist enslavement can be interpreted as perfectly consistent with the second appeal. — location: 6955 ^ref-4909

what Weil condemns is the race against time to escape the danger of colonial enslavement. — location: 6958 ^ref-46822

Hitlerism precisely consists in Germany’s application of the methods of colonial conquest and rule to the European continent and, more generally, to white race countries’. — location: 6962 ^ref-7341

we must unquestionably speak of class struggle in connection with the Great Patriotic War and other liberation struggles against German and Japanese imperialism. — location: 6970 ^ref-41284

the possibility, in specific circumstances, of class struggle taking the form of national struggle lay beyond her intellectual horizons. — location: 6972 ^ref-11121

populism functioned as a way of evading the class struggles that were raging all around. — location: 6984 ^ref-32708

we have seen Marx cast the class struggle as a struggle for recognition, waged against a socio-political system that dehumanizes and reifies a huge mass of concrete individuals; and denounce capitalist production for ‘sqander[ing] human lives’, — location: 6997 ^ref-35180

as a result of the unity between humanity and nature and the decisive role of consciousness in the development of the productive forces, the squandering and prodigality of human lives is, at the same time, a squandering and prodigality of material wealth. — location: 7005 ^ref-56695

Capitalist destruction of the productive forces and capitalist destruction of human resources are intimately related—in fact, go hand in hand. The ‘greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself’, the proletariat. — location: 7007 ^ref-31838

‘enforced idleness’ and overwork alike involve the humiliation and degradation of concrete individuals, flesh-and-blood human beings, while they also represent the squandering and destruction of material resources. — location: 7012 ^ref-10534

Acquisition of a mature class consciousness presupposes overcoming Luddism: it is a question of fighting not machines and modern industry, but capitalist utilization of them. — location: 7027 ^ref-5918

for a poorly developed country to renounce modern industry is to expose itself to extremely grave dangers. — location: 7038 ^ref-26445

in abdicating from the task of promoting modern industry and science and technology, and de facto consigning itself to the laws and rule of the strongest, an undeveloped country adopts a stance that is also problematic morally. — location: 7041 ^ref-27728

termination of ‘political annexation’ is not in and of itself the overcoming of ‘economic’ annexation — location: 7053 ^ref-29359

the recognition that makes self-constitution as a nation-state possible is not really achieved. This is proved today by wars whose victims are countries unable to mount any real resistance to the Western great powers. — location: 7054 ^ref-21622

Populism, which regards the constitution of a national liberation movement as a state as contamination, winds up being heavily contaminated by support for the military interventions of the most powerful state in the world. — location: 7317 ^ref-29128

If victorious, the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989 would, in all probability, have meant the rise to power of a Chinese Yeltsin. — location: 7382 ^ref-2088

Only a populist can believe in such miracles—on condition, that is, of abandoning secular analysis of classes and class struggle (domestic and international), and replacing it by mythological credence in the redemptive value of the ‘people’ and the ‘masses’. — location: 7386 ^ref-16741

In absolutizing the contradiction between masses and power, and condemning power as such, populism proves incapable of drawing a line of demarcation between revolution and counter-revolution. — location: 7400 ^ref-838

given the absolute centrality and urgency of what was at stake on each occasion (the respective fates of the ancien régime, black slavery on Santo Domingo, wage slavery in France, black slavery in the USA, and the new colonial slavery that the Third Reich was resolved to impose on Slavs), all the other contradictions, all the other relations of coercion, became (in that determinate historical moment) altogether secondary. — location: 7444 ^ref-37909

if the demonstrators confine themselves to denouncing the grave consequences of the economic crisis, we are witnessing not so much the return of Marxian class struggle as its permanent and effective mutilation by the dominant class and ideology. — location: 7453 ^ref-9495

under a different set of social and political relations, contemporary science and technology could powerfully accelerate the growth of the productive forces and social wealth. However, in the West parties capable of giving organized expression to the burgeoning mass discontent do not exist. There is no reason for the magnates to be particularly anxious. — location: 7458 ^ref-12552

The district of high finance is identified as the district of war and the military-industrial complex. An awareness of the link between capitalism and imperialism is emerging or starting to emerge. — location: 7461 ^ref-60462

oday we know that the war led to at least 30,000 deaths, as opposed to the 300 victims of the initial repression’, perpetrated by Gaddafi. — location: 7465 ^ref-11229

In the USA, especially, following an established tradition and tried-and-tested technique, it seeks to externalize social conflict, diverting growing popular anger to emerging countries—particularly China, which, having left behind the ‘century of humiliation’ and desperate mass poverty that followed the Opium Wars, is now challenging the ‘Columbian epoch’ and 500 years of uncontested Western supremacy. — location: 7480 ^ref-24321

the organization of dependent workers into a coherent class struggle in the capitalist metropolis requires a capacity for orientation amid the multiple contradictions and class struggles traversing the contemporary world. — location: 7483 ^ref-1491