"The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848"
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James compresses a century of class formation into a single dramatic entrance, treating the proletariat less like a demographic trend than a historical actor stepping into a spotlight. The phrasing "first appeared on the scene" borrows from theater, and that’s the tell: he’s not doing neutral sociology. He’s staging modern history as a conflict in which the working class becomes visible, organized, and finally unavoidable.
The intent is polemical clarity. By locating the proletariat’s debut in the "early Thirties" and naming 1848 as its "first great action", James builds a timeline that flatters neither gradual reform nor elite benevolence. The point is not simply that workers existed before; it’s that the proletariat, as an international political subject, had to be made through industrial capitalism, urban concentration, print culture, and cross-border contagion of revolt. "International" matters: he’s smuggling in a critique of narrow nationalism, insisting that class consciousness and class struggle spill past borders faster than governments can contain them.
The subtext pushes against liberal narratives that treat 1848 as an abstract "springtime of peoples". James tilts it toward labor, implying that the real novelty wasn’t constitutional talk but mass participation from those with little property and less patience. Coming from a journalist and Marxist historian attuned to empire and race, the line also signals method: history should be read from below, and the proper protagonists are those who had to fight to be counted as political life in the first place.
The intent is polemical clarity. By locating the proletariat’s debut in the "early Thirties" and naming 1848 as its "first great action", James builds a timeline that flatters neither gradual reform nor elite benevolence. The point is not simply that workers existed before; it’s that the proletariat, as an international political subject, had to be made through industrial capitalism, urban concentration, print culture, and cross-border contagion of revolt. "International" matters: he’s smuggling in a critique of narrow nationalism, insisting that class consciousness and class struggle spill past borders faster than governments can contain them.
The subtext pushes against liberal narratives that treat 1848 as an abstract "springtime of peoples". James tilts it toward labor, implying that the real novelty wasn’t constitutional talk but mass participation from those with little property and less patience. Coming from a journalist and Marxist historian attuned to empire and race, the line also signals method: history should be read from below, and the proper protagonists are those who had to fight to be counted as political life in the first place.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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