Class Consciousness Quotes

• The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Country, Class, History

  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (2012). “Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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• For example, the insurance industries and the big banks are absolutely euphoric now - on the business pages they don't even conceal it - because they've succeeded in coming out of the crisis even stronger than they were before, and in a better position to lay the basis for the next crisis. But they don't care, because they'll get bailed out again. That's class consciousness with a vengeance.

  Noam Chomsky

  Class, Stronger, Example

  Source: www.iww.org

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• Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women's class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle.

  Clara Zetkin

  Struggle, Class, Tasks

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• The traveler to the United States will do wellto prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Class, United States, Consciousness

  "The United States". The New York magazine article on November 15, 1971, reprinted in "A View from the Stands", 1986.

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• Some American delusions: 1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country. 2) That American coffee is good. 3) That Americans are business-like. 4) That Americans are highly-sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Country, Travel, Coffee

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• From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Class, Hatred, Steps

  Mary Roberts Rinehart (2015). “A Poor Wise Man”, p.175, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class.

  Ernest Mandel

  Real, Class, Historical

  Ernest Mandel (1994). “Revolutionary Marxism and social reality in the 20th century: collected essays”, Humanities Press Intl

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• You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected.

  Ernest Mandel

  Class, Levels, Consciousness

  Ernest Mandel (1994). “Revolutionary Marxism and social reality in the 20th century: collected essays”, Humanities Press Intl

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• No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Destiny, Government, Class

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• In all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have always been drawn to the novels of Edith Wharton, among others, where social dynamics are crucial. Wharton's class consciousness fascinates me, and some of the tension in my books stems from that.

  Susan Wiggs

  Book, Class, Elements

  Interview with Suzanne Fox, www.publishersweekly.com. January 28, 2002.

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• You need a vanguard organization in order to overcome the dangerous potential brought about by the uneven development of class militancy and class consciousness.

  Ernest Mandel

  Order, Class, Organization

  Ernest Mandel (1994). “Revolutionary Marxism and social reality in the 20th century: collected essays”, Humanities Press Intl

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• The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

  Leon Trotsky

  Philosophy, Mistake, Class

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• It's true: one of the things that I've always thought about American society is that you never get the sort of natural politicisation of class consciousness that you would get in the United Kingdom or even in Australia.

  Peter Carey

  Class, Australia, Kingdoms

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