Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

The minority puts a dogmatic view in place of the
critical, and an idealist one in place of the materialist. They
regard mere discontent, instead of real conditions, as the
driving wheel of revolution. Whereas we tell the workers:
You have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil wars and
national struggles, not only in order to change conditions
but also to change yourselves and make yourselves capable
of political rule; you, on the contrary, say: "We must
come to power immediately, or else we may as well go to
sleep." Whilst we make a special point of directing the
German workers' attention to the underdeveloped state of
the German proletariat, you flatter the national feeling and
the status-prejudice of the German artisans in the crudest
possible way - which, admittedly is more popular. Just as
the word "people" has been made holy by the democrats,
so the world "proletariat" has been made holy by you.
Karl Marx - on the 1850 split in
the German Communist League
3rd Edition
Originally published under the title "Mythology of the White Proletariat: A Short Course in Understanding
Babylon"
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