Marx famously said: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Mao said: “Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
Mao also said: “In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.”
Mao added: “In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress [minorities and the lower classes]. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people.”
Gramsci said: “Take away from the [poor and working class] its class consciousness, and what have you? Puppets dancing on a string!”
Fukuyama wrote: “Aristocrats thought of themselves as better than other people and possessed what we may call megalothymia, the desire to be recognized as superior. Predemocratic societies rested on a foundation of social hierarchy, so this belief in the inherent superiority of a certain class of people was fundamental to the maintenance of social order.”
Fukuyama added: “The problem with megalothymia is that for every person recognized as superior, far more people are seen as inferior and do not receive any public recognition of their human worth.”
In a word, class. Social order, something so basic and essential, ends up falling apart, given that social order is aimed solely “to legitimate the relations of domination” to borrow from Fukuyama. Cruel, elite liberals and cruel, elite Marxists gave way to the salvation religion of the masses in Afghanistan. And as a result, Afghanistan has perhaps set the precedent for everything as a result of that.
Adam A. Azim 