Class Conflict Quotes

“The bang of the modernist metal doorknocker exploded in the room. Jolting upright on the edge of the couch, Isa froze, her heart beating a discordance of dread. Her mind went blank as she stared
at the door. No.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“I like to search for class struggle in strange domains. For example it is clear that in classical Hollywood, the couple of vampires and zombies designates class struggle. Vampires are rich, they live among us. Zombies are the poor, living dead, ugly, stupid, attacking from outside. And it's the same with cats and dogs. Cats are lazy, evil, exploitative, dogs are faithful, they work hard, so if I were to be in government, I would tax having a cat, tax it really heavy.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“People turned against each other cannot turn against those responsible.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“The more we're thrown into conflict with each other through engineered distrust, the less able we are to unite against those responsible.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“you can't hide from a hurricane under a beach umbrella”
― Philip Rahv

“In Nevada I could feel the Long Crisis with a terrifying intimacy, as if it was some sort of uncanny, bodily contact— like the feeling you get camped out in the swirling, galaxy-littered darkness of the open range when a reptile brushes up against your prostrate body. Except that the reptile at least shares with you some deep, serpentine connection, a lineage lost somewhere in the plummet of primeval time. The Crisis, on the other hand, is a vast creature, not contained by familiar scales of time or space. It is a social terror made of masses of machinery and animals, yet not in any way kin to these components. And what we sense of it today is merely one of its many limbs extending backward from its true body writhing somewhere just out of sight, at home in our own incomprehensible future.”
― Phillip Neel, Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict

“Adrian kom denna klara höst till socialisterna, dit varje ung individualist kommer, då han vill söka uttrycket för sin individualism, utan att finna det. Människan vill aristokrati. Den fattigaste arbetare älskar djupast sett endast lyxkvinnan, som bäst förkroppsligar hans kvinnoideal, står över hans förnuft och även över klasskampen, liksom skönheten står över allting. Men när den ensamme icke når dit han vill, då går individualisten till socialisterna och inordnar sig i kampen för den demokratiska idén." (Sid. 231)”
― Ivar Lo-Johansson, Kungsgatan

“A class cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group with common problems, interests and prospects - although this manifestation may for long periods be weak, confused, and subject to manipulation by other classes.”
― Harry Braverman

“Pareto explained how every elite is overthrown by a jealous minority which stirs the masses by denouncing the abuses of the establishment and finally replaces it. Elites, as he said, circulate. Naturally, their names and the rationalizations of their privileges change. But it is important to note also that each elite inspires a new socio-political mythology by which the new situation is interpreted for the occasion. Yet the same leitmotiv runs through all these self-glorifications: “where would the people be if it were not for our services?”
― Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process

“The road to Hell is paved with evildoers, they'd tell us. And the evildoers were those who had bad thoughts. We always wanted to be good. We believed that to be good was to bow one's head, not to protest, not to demand anything, not to get angry. No one had clarified these things for us. On the contrary, we were always being offered a celestial paradise. The reward for being good. To respect one's neighbor was really to respect the landowner. And to respect the landowner was to conform to his whimsey. If there were no beans to eat after working on the plantation, it was because the landowner couldn't manage, the landowner was suffering losses. If there were no hammocks to sleep in, it was because the harvest had not left the landowner enough time to provide them. And there we were without food, waiting for the afternoon or the evening to go home to eat, a whole day without eating; or we'd go to sleep under the pepetos trees in the coffee fields.
We used to confuse goodness with resignation.”
― Manlio Argueta, One Day of Life

“Så hade Adrian blivit borgare, inte arbetare, och Moderats sätt mot honorn förändrades [...] därför att han blivit "fin". Under alla de följande åren skulle Adrian komma att bli en kronans tjänsteman. Han kunde därmed tillräkna sig respekt överallt, till och med i Humla, där man brukade säga, allvarligt som om det varit ett ordspråk: "Kronans kaka är liten, det må vara sant, men naggande god är den .. ." Man menade därmed, att den var säker, att lita på, nästan som jorden själv." (Sid. 92)”
― Ivar Lo-Johansson, Kungsgatan

“We have thus seen that even the most favorable situation for the working class, namely, the most rapid growth of capital, however much it may improve the material life of the worker, does not abolish the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the capitalist. Profit and wages remain as before, in inverse proportion.”
― Karl Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit

“Consider how many conservatives are motivated by hatred of the wealthy or elites. They do not know who these elites are, and have never met them, which is why they cannot comprehend that these elites are simply getting wealthy by following the trend cascade.

Such “conservatives” talk about guillotines and revolutions as if these would solve the situation, forgetting that what got us into this situation was overthrowing our natural leaders and replacing them with the temporary favorites of the mob.

The people who succeed in this society do so by taking advantage of trends. If a lot of people believe something, there is money and power in it. Therefore, if you want to succeed, you repeat the dogma and intensify it without considering that it is true.

Nothing else explains why you suddenly have circus freaks walking the streets, working in government, and dominating what is left of your arts and culture. The elites, Freemasons, Jews, Bilderbergers, Davos, and Illuminati did not do this to you; you did it to yourselves.”
― Brett Stevens

“Se os aparelhos ideológicos de Estado têm a função de inculcar a ideologia dominante, isso quer dizer que existe resistência; se há resistência, é porque há luta; e essa lura é, em definitivo, o eco direto ou indireto, próximo ou, em geral, longínquo, da luta de classes.”
― Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

“Appena parla di imposte sul capitale, dal centro lo interrompono: «Sul suo capitale!». Al suo primo discorso alla Camera, dopo poco più di trecento parole pronunciate, gli viene ripresentata la colpa della sua ricchezza. «Naturalmente anche sul mio» risponde lesto e beffardo «avete impegnato tanto tempo a capirlo?».”
― Antonio Funiciello, Tempesta: La vita (e non la morte) di Giacomo Matteotti