- Capitalism and Alternatives -

The Sword of God: The Gravedigger

In Reply to: The Sword of God posted by Kweassa on November 16, 1999 at 13:34:32:

: Sartre says the intellectuals are a double-edged sword. They were created by the Bourgeoisie as mid-level managers and experts to promote and support and forge up ideologies and devices to support their rule.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling clss, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.(1)

Which leads to this observation:

The theory of socialism...grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia.(2)

: At the same time, the knowledge that lies within their heads gives them 'reason', which certainly does notice the hypocrisy of it all. Through inner conflict can an intellectual find his own worth - a sword that is wielded by the proletariat. The weapon which was made for the Bourgeoisie now falls under the hands of the Proletariat.

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Notes:
1. Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, International 1848, p. 19.
2. Lenin, 'What Is To Be Done?,' Selected Works volume 1, International 1970, p. 143.

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