“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.”

1880s, Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)

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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton112

British politician and historian 1834–1902

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“The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)

“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)
Context: The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.

“There are no such things as classes: they cannot be. Class means caste and caste means race.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

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“In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

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“Democracy is in principle the suppression of class government, though it is not yet the actual suppression of classes.”

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“As an advocate of birth control I wish … to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation…. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

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“No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself.”

Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949) Bulgarian politician

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“Multitude is a class concept. … Class is determined by class struggle. There are, of course, in infinite number of ways that humans can be grouped into classes - hair color, blood type, and so forth - but the classes that matter are those defined by the lines of collective struggle. Race is just as much a political concept as economic class is in this regard. … Class is a political concept, in short, in that a class is and can only be a collectivity that stuggles in common.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

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“you can't know the meaning of the lesson until class is over!”

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“I repeat that when communism enters a country it makes the classes class-conscious. It makes races race-conscious, in order to weaken the internal structure of the country and pave the way for communism.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

1940s

“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.”

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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton112

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