"Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years"
About this Quote
Mao Zedong reduces history to a relentless drama of class antagonism, echoing Marx and Engels while sharpening the claim with a stark promise: some classes triumph and others are eliminated. The phrase is both descriptive and prescriptive. It reads history through historical materialism, where social orders change not by moral suasion but by conflict rooted in economic structures. By invoking thousands of years, Mao universalizes the pattern, recasting dynastic cycles and imperial eras as repeated clashes between exploiters and exploited.
The rhetoric matters. Elimination is not merely an intellectual supersession; it implies a material and political outcome. In the Chinese context of the 1920s through the 1949 revolution, this line served to legitimize a strategy that centered on mobilizing peasants against landlords and local elites. Mao adapted classical Marxism, which foregrounded the industrial proletariat, to a largely agrarian society, arguing that the peasantry could function as the revolutionary backbone. Land reform, struggle sessions, and campaigns against counterrevolutionaries were justified as necessary moments in this long arc of class history.
Philosophically, the formulation aligns with dialectics: old social relations persist until contradictions intensify, producing a rupture that clears the ground for new relations. Politically, it rejects gradual accommodation and liberal pluralism in favor of a zero-sum contest, where conciliation risks perpetuating exploitation. The revolutionary state thus claims the authority to compress historical time, accelerating what is cast as an inevitable process.
The line also signals a moral posture. By framing struggle as the engine of civilization, it transforms hardship and upheaval into markers of progress. That framing became a touchstone in later campaigns, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, where perceived class enemies were targeted in the name of history’s forward motion. Supporters saw ruthless clarity; critics saw a doctrine that made violence both thinkable and obligatory. Either way, the sentence captures the hard edge of Mao’s revolutionary worldview and the way it translated theory into transformative, and often devastating, political practice.
The rhetoric matters. Elimination is not merely an intellectual supersession; it implies a material and political outcome. In the Chinese context of the 1920s through the 1949 revolution, this line served to legitimize a strategy that centered on mobilizing peasants against landlords and local elites. Mao adapted classical Marxism, which foregrounded the industrial proletariat, to a largely agrarian society, arguing that the peasantry could function as the revolutionary backbone. Land reform, struggle sessions, and campaigns against counterrevolutionaries were justified as necessary moments in this long arc of class history.
Philosophically, the formulation aligns with dialectics: old social relations persist until contradictions intensify, producing a rupture that clears the ground for new relations. Politically, it rejects gradual accommodation and liberal pluralism in favor of a zero-sum contest, where conciliation risks perpetuating exploitation. The revolutionary state thus claims the authority to compress historical time, accelerating what is cast as an inevitable process.
The line also signals a moral posture. By framing struggle as the engine of civilization, it transforms hardship and upheaval into markers of progress. That framing became a touchstone in later campaigns, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, where perceived class enemies were targeted in the name of history’s forward motion. Supporters saw ruthless clarity; critics saw a doctrine that made violence both thinkable and obligatory. Either way, the sentence captures the hard edge of Mao’s revolutionary worldview and the way it translated theory into transformative, and often devastating, political practice.
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| Topic | Equality |
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