Bourgeoisie Quotes - Page 3

• It is the bourgeoisie which has turned religion into an opium of the people by preaching a God, lord of the heavens only, while taking possession of the earth for itself.

  Frei Betto

  People, Heaven, Earth

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• If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism.

  Talcott Parsons

  Materialism, Ends, Idealism

  Max Weber, Talcott Parsons (2003). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.3, Courier Corporation

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• The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.

  Karl Marx

  Country, Character, Feet

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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.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Son, Men, Class

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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.

  George Orwell

  Fighting, Men, Class

  "The Road to Wigan Pier". Book by George Orwell (Diary 6-10 February), March 8, 1937.

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• Once you get past the grand normative claims made in the West for literature, especially the novel, in the post-Christian era - that it is a secular substitute for religion, hallmark of modern civilization, a priori liberal and cosmopolitan, with authors appearing to implicitly embody such pious ideals - you encounter a less agreeable reality: parochialism, blinkered views, even racial prejudices of the kind the bourgeoisie have held everywhere.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Christian, Past, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The bourgeoisie's weapon is starvation. If as a writer or artist you run counter to their narrow notions they simplyand silently withdraw your means of subsistence. I sometimes wonder how many people of talent are executed in this way every year.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Running, Mean, Artist

  Quoted by Lloyd Osbourne in 'The Death of Stevenson', preface To Tusitala edition of Weir of Hermiston (published 1924).

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• The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Political, Republic, Communism

  Vladimir Il'ich Lenin (1975). “Izbrannye Proizvedenii͡a V Trekh Tomakh”

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• The bourgeoisie are the only people who want to help me. The enlightened bourgeoisie are the only ones who ever buy anything, look after it, and don't ask for a discount. They want to look after you.

  Liam Gillick

  People, Looks, Want

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background... Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value... On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.'

  Richard Pipes

  Powerful, War, Party

  "Property and Freedom". Book by Richard Pipes, 1999.

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• The Communist Manifesto was correct but we see the privileges of the capitalist bourgeoisie yielding to democratic organizations. In my judgment success lies in a steady [peaceful] advance [rather] than in a catastrophic crash.

  Eduard Bernstein

  Success, Peace, Lying

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• I can't agree that what we're seeing is a matter of the American bourgeoisie confronting workers everywhere. It's more like the international plutocracy eliminating the American middle class while inadvertently creating a bourgeoisie in India, China, etc. I do agree that Soros's role is paradoxical, but if all billionaires (or even a few more) were like Soros, the dialectic would give us global social democracy PDQ.

  Hendrik Hertzberg

  Creating, Class, Giving

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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• The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeoisie. The Jewish worker is our brother.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Brother, Enemy, Judaism

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• The People's democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the alliance of the workers and the peasants, because these two classes comprise 80 to go per cent of China's population. These two classes are the main force in overthrowing imperialism and the Kuomintang reactionaries. The transition from New Democracy to socialism also depends mainly upon their alliance.

  Mao Zedong

  Class, Two, People

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.27, Lulu.com

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• If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.

  Lionel Trilling

  Artist, Doe, Virtue

  "Partisan Review: 50th Anniversary Edition", ed. William Philips, 1985.

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• A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem.

  Robert Motherwell

  Art, Struggle, Simple

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• Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Class, Wings

  "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works".

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• After the countrywide victory of the Chinese revolution and the solution of the land problem, two basic contradictions will still exist in China. The first is internal, that is, the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The second is external, which is the contradiction between China and the imperialist countries. Consequently, after the victory of the people's democratic revolution, the state power of the people's republic under the leadership of the working class must not be weakened but must be strengthened.

  Mao Zedong

  Country, Chinese Revolution, Land

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• I am of the international upper class, the Swedish petit bourgeoisie of Jewish extraction with poor language skills, a conveyor of a few expressions and faces, with some intonation that combines ancient human experience with timely coquetry.

  Erland Josephson

  Expression, Class, Skills

  "Erland Josephson obituary" by Ronald Bergan, www.theguardian.com. February 26, 2012.

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• It is not to save capitalism that we fight in Russia … It is for a revolution of our own. … If Europe were to become once more the Europe of bankers, of fat corrupt bourgeoisies we should prefer Communism to win and destroy everything. We would rather have it all blow up than see this rottenness resplendent. Europe fights in Russia because it [i.e., Fascist Europe] is Socialist. what interests us most in the war is the revolution to follow The war cannot end without the triumph of Socialist revolution.

  Leon Degrelle

  War, Fighting, Blow

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• It is a very good thing, and a significant one too, to exterminate the bourgeoisie and capitalism in China.

  Mao Zedong

  Good Things, Significant, China

  Zedong Mao (1977). “Selected Works: The period of the socialist revolution and socialist construction. (I)”

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• Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Law, Use, Violence

  "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" by Vladimir Lenin, (p. 11), 1972.

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• I am invariably and have been since adolescence inimical to the Republican mind which shows at the most inflated size the bad qualities of the bourgeoisie rather than the good qualities of the middle class which the Democrats call forth.

  Janet Flanner

  Class, Mind, Quality

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• The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy's cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Suicide, Class, Giving

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• It will take a long period to decide the issue in the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism in our country. The reason is that the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the intellectuals who come from the old society will remain in our country for a long time to come, and so will their class ideology. If this is not sufficiently understood, or is not understood at all, the gravest mistakes will be made and the necessity of waging the struggle in the ideological field will be ignored.

  Mao Zedong

  Country, Mistake, Struggle

  "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works".

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