Proletarian

“ Indeed, even among those who have become thoroughly conscious of the necessity of the proletarian class struggle, there are still plenty who cannot escape from the influence of present society, and who doubt or despair of the victory of the proletariat. ”

“ The proletarian conception of the Industrial Democracy, harmonizing man with the method of wealth production and distribution, finally harmonizes him with his environment and therefore, through universal well being, guarantees the generation of a highly cultured race, which from its viewpoint, is the purpose of human life upon this planet. The program of the proletariat is necessarily dependent upon the industrial system and upon the degree of its own intelligence. ”

“ And in how great a measure the English proletariat has succeeded in attaining independent education is shown especially by the fact that the epoch-making products of modern philosophical, political, and poetical literature are read by working-men almost exclusively. The bourgeois, enslaved by social conditions and the prejudices involved in them, trembles, blesses, and crosses himself before everything which really paves the way for progress; the proletarian has open eyes for it, and studies it with pleasure and success. ”

“ You cannot possibly comprehend the proletarian civilization of the future. It is to be evolved from the proletarian class to which we belong, and with which your young friend wishes to connect himself, as I perceive with pleasure. ”

“ So the proletarian is a figure put into flat opposition to something called capital. I find in large type outside the current number of the Plebs, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” ”

“ In what fashion could the modern proletarian of the great industrial cities, exposed continuously to the alternatives of misery or subjection, how could he realize that way of living, regulated and monotonous, which was the one suited to the members of the trade guilds, whose existence seemed imbedded in a providential plan? ”

“ The proletarian does not exist for him. The working-classes are merely so much cement, filling in the bricks of the temple—or, better, folks in embryo, potential owners of bungalows on pleasant suburban streets. ”

“ When taken to the factory the young proletarian finds himself in the midst of ignorant and coarse men caring nothing for him, and soon picks up their bad habits. It is in this environment that the proletarian will pass [270] the greatest part of his life without hope of ever raising himself above it. ”

“ That movement contained the true element of the proletarian and revolutionary spirit, the lack of which makes organized labor of to-day a ball in the hands of selfish aspirants, know-nothings and politicians. ”

“ In proportion as the proletarian power increases in self-consciousness it becomes embodied in definite forms; in universal suffrage, in trades-unions, co-operative societies, and the various branches of the public service in the democratic State And we cannot treat the power of the proletariat apart from the forms in which it has already organised itself, the machinery that it has already partially adapted to its own uses. ”

“ This conclusion Marx bases on an analysis of the role played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society, on the facts of the development of this society, and on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the proletarian and capitalist classes. ”

“ The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the State. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death. ”

“ The proletarian movement has grown in a colossal fashion during these last thirty years. In the midst of numberless difficulties, through gains and losses, it has little by little taken on a political form. ”

“ I have known numbers of bourgeois Socialists, I have listened by the hour to their tirades against their own class, and yet never, not even once, have I met one who had picked up proletarian table-manners. Yet, after all, why not? Why should a man who thinks all virtue resides in the proletariat still take such pains to drink his soup silently? It can only be because in his heart he feels that proletarian manners are disgusting. ”

“ Ever greater grows the number of proletarians, ever more enormous the army of surplus workers, ever sharper the opposition between exploiters and exploited, ever bitterer the class-war between bourgeoisie and proletariat, which divides modern society into two hostile camps, and is the common hall-mark of all industrial countries. ”

“ The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties; formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. ”

“ Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and Proletarian Dictatorship. ”

“ They are the military school of the working-men in which they prepare themselves for the great struggle which cannot be avoided; they are the pronunciamentos of single branches of industry that these too have joined the labour movement. And when one examines a year’s file of the Northern Star, the only sheet which reports all the movements of the proletariat, one finds that all the proletarians of the towns and of country manufacture have united in associations, and have protested from time to time, by means of a general strike, against the supremacy of the bourgeoisie. ”

“ A keen observer of the contemporary proletarian movement has expressed the same ideas: "They, like their ancestors (the French revolutionaries) , are for struggle, for conquest; they desire to accomplish great works by force. ”

“ The question then is where the people begins and where it ends, for each day competencies shift, ruin lowers one, and fortune raises another; roles change, he who was a bourgeois this morning is going to become again a proletarian this evening, and the proletarian of just now, may turn into a bourgeois in a day, if he finds a purse, or inherits from an uncle. ”

“ The growth of proletarian class consciousness makes class struggles undergo a transformation; it deepens them; it puts a foundation of principle under them, thus provoking a corresponding reaction on the part of the governing classes. ”

“ In a word it knows, or it is beginning to understand that the dictatorship of the proletariat which shall have for its task the socialization of the means of production cannot be the work of a mass led by a few and that it must be, and that it will be, the work of the proletarians themselves when they have become in themselves and through long practice a political organization. ”

“ Whereas during the primitive stage of capitalist accumulation “political economy considers the proletarian only as a worker,” who only needs to be allotted the indispensable minimum for maintaining his labor power, and never considers him “in his leisure and humanity,” this ruling-class perspective is revised as soon as commodity abundance reaches a level that requires an additional collaboration from him. ”

“ You will become proletarians. And the beauty of it is that you will then add to our strength. We will hail you brothers, and we will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of humanity.
“You see, labor has nothing concrete of which to be despoiled. Its share of the wealth of the country consists of clothes and household furniture, with here and there, in very rare cases, an unencumbered home. But you have the concrete wealth, twenty-four billions of it, and the Plutocracy will take it away from you. Of course, there is the large likelihood that the proletariat will take it away first. ”

“ Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. ”

“ If it were conceivable that non-capitalist laborers should give up struggling to become capitalists, should give way to vulgar enjoyments and passions, should recklessly increase their numbers, and should become a permanent caste, they might with some justice be called proletarians. ”

“ Thus proletarian violence has become an essential factor of Marxism. Let us add once more that, if properly conducted, it will suppress the Parliamentary Socialists, who will no longer be able to pose as the leaders of the working classes and the guardians of order. ”

“ Still farther off from the table of the prosperous I see the great mass of the proletarians, those who for their whole fortune have only their arms and their brains; working men and women of the factory, exposed to long periods of unemployment ”

“ Correlatively with this development, whereas the proletarians of other days were content to sulk in their hovels as they contemplated the brilliant gyrations of the capitalist constellation, merely cursing in secret the sorrows of their lot, to-day the workers of the two worlds are advancing in serried ranks to the conquest of a new humanity and a new life. ”

“ The mass of the workers, denominated proletarians, had no political representation, and had not even learned to organize trade unions on any effective scale, indeed, they were only just beginning to develop rudimentary forms of these organizations. ”

“ As this concentration proceeds, a large class of proletarians is formed on the one hand, and a small class of capitalist lords on the other, an essential antagonism of interests existing between the two classes. Petty industries may continue to exist, though, upon the whole, the tendency is toward their extinction. ”

“ The whole dream of democracy is to elevate the proletarian to the level of the imbecility of the bourgeois. ”

“ First of all there are two types of workers, two types of proletarians, Workers who adhere to the organization, attend meetings and carry out orders, are a class conscious revolutionary mass base, and are therefore by implication independent, creative and courageous. However, workers who act on their own, creatively, independently of the initiative, guidance or direction of the revolutionary organization, are said to act spontaneously. ”

“ In order further to gain the sympathy of the proletarian masses in favor of Communism, a state of things under which political freedom can be fully utilized and under which bourgeois democracy could in no case manifest itself as a dictatorship of capital—such a state of things is of great importance from the point of view of the development of proletarian dictatorship. ”

“ So we are brought to an examination of the proletariat itself and to a somewhat close analysis of its component parts, that we may the better appreciate the substantial power which it actually possesses, with a view of determining its possible effectiveness in a revolutionary struggle. ”

“ The Marxian classification broadly and very satisfactorily divides modern industrial communities into three broad sections—the greater and dominant capitalism, which is practically in control; the smaller capitalism which has lost control but which stubbornly and incessantly maintains the fight against the greater capitalism, and the proletariat which is practically, so far, a negligible quantity. ”

“ Selfcriticism, cruel, unsparing criticim that goes to the very root of the evil is life and breath for the proletarian movement. ”

“ They will find their way into the Soviets, and into the courts of law, and into every sphere of administration, as it is impossible to build up Communism otherwise than out of the human material created by capitalism. Since it is impossible to expel and to destroy the bourgeois intelligentsia, it becomes indispensable to conquer this intelligentsia, to change, to re-train and to re-educate it, just as it is necessary to re-educate, in the process of a long struggle, the proletariat itself, on the basis of proletarian dictatorship. ”

“ Of all the classes that stand face-to-face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry ”