Graph search · entity page

Communism

subject · http://data.judaicalink.org/data/ep/1891890

Karl Marx and most of his followers considered ethnicity a construct of the ruling bourgeoisie in capitalist societies. Ethnicity was designed to divert the attention of the working class away from its economic and political grievances and focus attention on the identities and cultures that divided workers, rather than on the class interests that united them. Thus, the ruling capitalists were said to pit workers of one nation against those of another on the pretext that their primary allegiance should be to the nation, not the class. In World War I, French and British workers on one side, and German and Austrian workers on the other, tried to kill each other out of loyalty to their respective nations. Along with other socialists, Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, viewed this as a tragic strategic error that could occur only because of the shortsightedness and lack of class consciousness of the proletariat. As it matured and was educated by the “vanguard of the proletariat,” the more historically conscious intelligentsia that led the socialist movement, the proletariat would come to realize that its common interests transcended national borders and that all workers together should combat the exploiting capitalists, who themselves were a transnational class.

Identifiers

Wikidata

Q6186

Sources (1)

As data: Turtle · N-Triples · JSON-LD · SPARQL · in production: data.judaicalink.org