“But every class struggle is a political struggle.”

— Karl Marx

Section 1, paragraph 39, lines 8-9.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

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Karl Marx 290

German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and … 1818–1883

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“The task of a theory of class is to identify the existing conditions for potential collective struggle and express them as a political proposition.”

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Attributions

“Class struggle does not take place within the constituted forms of capitalist social relations: rather the constitution of those forms is itself class struggle.”

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“In modern society, the meaning of words changes much more quickly than it did in antiquity or even in the recent past. This arises from the intermingling of social classes, the struggle of interests and opinions, the struggle of political parties and the variety of aspirations and tastes.”

Michel Bréal (1832–1915) French philologist

Source: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 104-5 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:14).

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