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Full Idea
Law, morality, religion are to the proletarian so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
Clarification
'Proletarians' are working class, 'bourgeois' are middle class
Gist of Idea
For the proletariate, law, morality and religion are just expressions of bourgeois interests
Source
K Marx / F Engels (The Communist Manifesto [1848], §1)
Book Ref
Marx,K./Engels,F.: 'The Communist Manifesto', ed/tr. Taylor,A.J.P. [Penguin 1973], p.92
A Reaction
This Marxist idea has been the main driving force in spreading relativist views through modern culture. There is a lot of truth here, but philosophy is plausibly the search for truths which both the bourgeois and the proletarian will accept.
| 1559 | Thracians think tattooing adds to a girl's beauty, but elsewhere it is a punishment [Anon (Diss)] |
| 1561 | Anything can be acceptable in some circumstances and unacceptable in others [Anon (Diss)] |
| 1560 | Lydians prostitute their daughters to raise a dowery, but no Greek would marry such a girl [Anon (Diss)] |
| 1910 | With us it is shameful for men to wear earrings, but among Syrians it is considered noble [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 1911 | Even if all known nations agree on a practice, there may be unknown nations which disagree [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 5303 | For the proletariate, law, morality and religion are just expressions of bourgeois interests [Marx/Engels] |
| 2877 | Morality becomes a problem when we compare many moralities [Nietzsche] |
| 3868 | To proclaim cultural relativism is to thereby rise above it [Quine, by Newton-Smith] |
| 1490 | You would have to be very morally lazy to ignore criticisms of your own culture [Nagel] |
| 10356 | Relativism can be seen as about the rationality of different cultural traditions [MacIntyre, by Kusch] |
| 4934 | Cultures have a common core of colour naming, based on three axes of colour pairs [Edelman/Tononi] |
| 10498 | Classification is no longer held to be rooted in social institutions [Ellen] |