"Similar though Marx and Thoreau may be in their accounts of the consequences of living in a society defined by money, their suggestions for how to respond to it are poles apart. Forget the Party. Forget the revolution. Forget the general strike. Forget the proletariat as an abstract class of human interest. Thoreau's revolution begins not with discovering comrades to be yoked together in solidarity but with the embrace of solitude. For Thoreau, Marx's first and fatal error was the creation of the aggregate identity of the proletariat. Error was substituted for error. The anonymity and futility of the worker were replaced by the anonymity and futility of the revolutionary. A revolution conducted by people who have only a group identity can only replace one monolith of power with another, one misery with another, perpetuating the cycle of domination and oppression. In solitude, the individual becomes most human, which is to say most spiritual."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Curtis White, "The spirit of disobedience: An invitation to resistance," Harper's, April 2006, pp. 37-38.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Karl Marx
1818 – 1883
deutscher Journalist, Ökonom, Gesellschaftswissenschaftler und Philosoph
539 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Karl Marx →
Related Quotes
"The property-owning class and the class of the proletariat represent the same human self-alienation. But the former f…"
"Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, he eats for the rest of his life."
"Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This plebeian, who worked his way up from stone-breaker to Senato…"
"The South has conquered nothing — but a graveyard."
"Lincoln's proclamation is even more important than the . Lincoln is a sui generis figure in the annals of history. He…"
"Lincoln's place in the history of the United States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington!"
"It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying …"
"The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity."
"It is impossible to pursue this nonsense any further."
"Is a fixed income not a good thing? Does not everyone love to count on a sure thing? Especially every petty-bourgeois…"