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Bourgeoisie Quotes

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Bourgeoisie Quotes

“it was Marx who declared that the whole idea of Communism could be summed up in a single formula—the abolition of private property; that the state of the future must take over the centralized management of the means of production, and that the abolition of capital meant the abolition of wage-labour. There was nothing flagrantly illogical in deducing from this that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the nationalization of industry and agriculture would bring about the general emancipation of mankind.”

CommunismPrivate PropertyEmancipationBourgeoisieMarxExpropriation
Book:Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown
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“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”

CapitalismCommunismExploitationFree TradeBourgeoisieEvils Of Capitalism
Book:The Communist Manifesto
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“Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limitations to its economic expansion. The bourgeoisie turned to politics out of economic necessity; for if it did not want to give up the capitalist system whose inherent law is constant economic growth, it had to impose this law upon its home governments and to proclaim expansion to be an ultimate political goal of foreign policy.”

CapitalismForeign PolicyImperialismBourgeoisie1967Constant Growth
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“And with this feeling, I poised in my mind some other questions as to the soundness of beliefs I had long held, based upon copy-book maxims drilled into one generation of American children after another: "Merit wins...Survival of the fittest...You can't change human nature...The best people...The poor you have with you always...and the whole long line of rubber-stamp moral precepts. What were these but glittering emblems set up by the moneyed class to serve its own purposes? Born bourgeois, my brain had been filled from infancy with the nonsense of super-patriotism, with the lily-white virtues of imperialism added in due time. I had harbored these false values because I didn't know any better. I had been a drifter, innocent and sheep-minded long enough.”

ValuesMeritPatriotismImperialismBourgeoisieSurvival Of The Fittest
Book:The Best of Art Young
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“The oppressed class, although the ideology of the oppressing class is imposed upon it, nevertheless elaborates religious, ethical and political ideas corresponding to its condition of life; vague and secret at first, they gain in precision and force in proportion as the oppressed class takes definite form and acquires the consciousness of its social utility and of its strength; and the hour of its emancipation is near when its conception of nature and of society opposes itself openly and boldly to that of the ruling class.”

MarxismProletariatBourgeoisieClass StruggleDirect ActionCultural Hegemony
Book:The Right To Be Lazy
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“The militant socialists, following the example of the encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, have to make a merciless criticism of the economic, political, historical, philosophical, moral and religious ideas of the capitalist class in order to prepare in all spheres of thought the triumph of the new ideology which the proletariat introduces into the world.”

ProletariatBourgeoisieClass WarCultural HegemonyClass SocietyRevolutionary Socialism
Book:The Right To Be Lazy
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“The Marxist critique of the postulates of bourgeois democracy is in fact based on the definition of the class character of modern society. It demonstrates the theoretical inconsistency and the practical deception of a system which pretends to reconcile political equality with the division of society into social classes determined by the nature of the mode of production.”

DemocracyCapitalismLiberalismMarxismProletariatBourgeoisieClass StruggleHistorical Materialism
Book:The Democratic Principle
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“Always remain calm and unruffled, no matter what happens. If your coachman has a heart attack, your carriage crashes, your hat blows off and your drawers fall down, just say: 'Goodness me, such excitement,' and get in a hansom. Remember that the country is better than the town, idleness is superior to work, old is preferable to new and rank is more important than money. Know a little about everything, but never be an expert.”

RichnessBourgeoisieSocial ClassEliteProtege
Book:A Dangerous Fortune
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“The real contradiction between Marx's scientific socialism and all bourgeois philosophy and sciences consists entirely in the fact that scientific socialism is the theoretical expression of a revolutionary process, which will end with the total abolition of these bourgeois philosophies and sciences, together with the abolition of the material relations that find their ideological expression in them.”

PhilosophyCapitalismMarxismBourgeoisieClass StruggleSocial RevolutionHistorical MaterialismClass WarDialectical MaterialismScientific Socialism
Book:Marxism and Philosophy
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“Braid Scots is still in most Scottish communities (in one or other Anglicised modification) the speech of bed and board and street and plough, the speech of emotional ecstasy and emotional stress. But it is not genteel. It is to the bourgeoisie of Scotland coarse and low and common and loutish, a matter for laughter, well enough for hinds and the like, but for the genteel to be quoted in vocal inverted commas... But for the truly Scots writer it remains a real and haunting thing, even while he tries his best to forget its existence and to write as a good Englishman.”

BourgeoisieScots LanguageGenteelScottish Writers
Book:Scottish Scene: or, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Albyn
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“Il n'y a pas deux sortes de mouvement révolutionnaire, de nature différente, l'un d'espèce bourgeoise et l'autre d'essence prolétarienne; la Révolution tout court, cette vieille taupe, comme disait Marx, poursuit son bonhomme de chemin, d'abord à travers une même crise révolutionnaire, et ensuite de crise révolutionnaire en crise révolutionnaire. Même quand elle paraît assoupie, elle creuse encore. Une crise révolutionnaire n'est que la continuation directe de la crise précédente. Il n'est pas possible de placer quelque part un poteau frontière et d'y inscrire: REVOLUTION BOURGEOISE ! DEFENSE D'ALLER PLUS LOIN !”

BourgeoisiePolitiqueRévolutionMarxismeProlétariatRevolution Française
Book:La Révolution française et nous (Petite collection Maspero ; 172)
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“It would be a much happier situation if Queen Elizabeth were functioning as an opiate to forestall the coming socialist revolution. The truth is many degrees more dismal. She and her pyramid of lackeys constitute a dead-weight repressing - to so speak - the revolution before last in Britain. Their ideological force is built upon a now ancient loss of radical nerve by the bourgeoisie itself - upon the inner capitulation of last century, mosts strikingly expressed for us by the virtual disappearance of middle-class republicanism in Victoria's reign. The 'magic' of our monarchs is the sweet odour of decay arising from this mountainous dungheap of unfinished bourgeois business.”

MonarchyBourgeoisieRepublicanismLackeysElizabeth IiSocialist RevolutionOpiate
Book:Old Nations, Auld Enemies, New Times
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“If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.”

CapitalismSocialismCommunismBourgeoisieScientific Socialism
Author:Friedrich Engels
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“Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.”

HugeCivilizationDareShockCivilizedBourgeoisieCivilized SocietyNoblemen
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“Marx's Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element.”

MenWantMomentsClassWrittenMiddleSonRevolutionElementsRedConservativeSocialismSupposed To BeRevolutionaryFlagsWorking ClassProletariatBourgeoisieUpper ClassWorking Man
Author:George Bernard Shaw
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“Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeosis epoch from all earlier ones.”

SocialConditionsConstantProductionsUncertaintyEverlastingDisturbanceEpochBourgeoisieAgitationSocial ConditionsCommunist Manifesto
Book:Karl Marx on Society and Social Change: With Selections by Friedrich Engels
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“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.”

MenEndsSelfHandsLeftInterestNaturalRelationBoundsSuperiorsNakedTiesCashExploitationTornPaymentSelf InterestBourgeoisieCallousManifestosCommunist ManifestoIdyllicUpper HandNexus
Book:Marx: Selected Writings
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“No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.”

EndsEtcCashPortionsExploitationWagesBourgeoisieLandlordLabourersShopkeepers
Book:Communist Manifesto: The revolutionary text that changed the course of history
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“In America we have only the bourgeoisie, and the love of the heroic is one of the few counterpoises available to us. In us the contempt for the heroic is only an extension of the perversion of the democratic principle that denies greatness and wants everyone to feel comfortable in his skin without having to suffer unpleasant comparisons. Students have not the slightest notion of what an achievement it is to free oneself from public guidance and find resources for guidance within oneself.”

WantFeelsAmericaSufferingPrinciplesStudentsGreatnessAchievementComfortableResourcesSkinsDemocraticNotionOneselfAvailableDenyGuidanceComparisonContemptHeroicExtensionsBourgeoisiePerversion
Book:Closing of the American Mind
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“The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality. It is obvious that this kind of courage to be must become conformist the moment its revolutionary attack on that which contradicts reason has ceased, namely in the victorious bourgeoisie.”

KindStatesReasonMomentsHigherEnlightenmentOneselfObviousBridgesAtmosphereRevolutionaryRationalityBourgeoisieConformist
Author:Paul Tillich
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“I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.”

MenFactsHelpingFightingClassMiddleHe ManTradeUnionsIncomeIdeologyDevelopingPostsOfficialsAppropriateMiddle ClassLabourBourgeoisBourgeoisieWorking ManTrade Unions
Author:George Orwell
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“In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.”

LongClassModernIncreaseSellsCompetitionProportionLabourArticlesExposedCommerceCommodityWorking ClassProletariatBourgeoisieFluctuationVicissitudesLabourers
Book:Karl Marx: Selected Writings
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“Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify.”

ProblemSocialTermResponsibilityMoralSubjectsPhysicsJustifyBehaviourScornBourgeoisieMoral ResponsibilityWithering
Book:An Interpretation of Christian Ethics
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“Let me go out on a limb and suggest that those who see hints of a new class ideology developing around information technology are not necessarily wild-eyed. "Bit-twiddlers" are neither exactly proletariat nor bourgeoisie. They may not own the means of production in the sense that Marx argued, but they certainly do have significantly control over those means, in a more profound way than the term "symbols analysts" or "knowledge workers" captures. As a rough generalization, they value science and technological problem-solving elegance equally at least with profit.”

WayMayMeanProblemValuesBitsTermClassTechnologyInformationLet MeProfoundWorkersProfitProductionsIdeologySymbolsDevelopingRoughCaptureProblem SolvingTechnologicalLimbsEleganceHintsInformation TechnologyProletariatAnalystsBourgeoisieGeneralizationLet Me GoKnowledge WorkersNew Class
Author:Steven Weber
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“I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.”

GivingReasonMomentsBlackForgetNumbersGreaterBattleSucceedHundredDecadesResistanceConclusionCrushRepresentativesForget ItBrutalityReactionariesClergyBourgeoisieExecuting
Author:Vladimir Lenin
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