Instead of being the voice of freedom, liberalism, like Hegel’s nationalism, was only the voice of a greedy bourgeoisie, “a few vulgar and self-educated upstarts transformed into eminent cotton spinners [and] sausage makers.” They disguised their greed for profit under a cloak of natural right, including the right to private property. This disguise was not deliberate, or at least not entirely so. It was the inevitable result of living in a world that could not confront its own contradictions; that must hide the material struggle for dominance and exploitation under a cloak of high ideals,
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