After all, if there is no class stratification in a society, it follows that there is no state, because the state arose as an instrument to be used by a particular class to control the rest of society in its own interests.
Walter RodneyRead
Revolution is the most dramatic appearance of a conscious people.
Interpretation
Revolution signifies a powerful expression of collective awareness and action by the people.
Walter Rodney's quote highlights the idea that a revolution represents a significant moment when a group of people becomes fully aware of their circumstances and decides to take bold action to change them. It implies that revolutions are not just random upheavals, but are instead a culmination of collective consciousness and the desire for transformation.
In practice
This quote could be used during a speech about social movements.
After all, if there is no class stratification in a society, it follows that there is no state, because the state arose as an instrument to be used by a particular class to control the rest of society in its own interests.
For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor.
Come senators, congressmen, Please heed the call, Don't stand in the doorway, Don't block up the hall, For he that gets hurt, Will be he who has stalled, The battle outside ragin', Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, For the times they are a-changin'...
When there's a disappointment, I don't know if it's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure.
It's true that globalization, with all its fantastic improvements in the world and the technological progress linked to it, has increased inequality at country level, especially inside countries. And there are people that were left behind - people, sectors, regions - that has created a sense of frustration in the rust belts of the world.
I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up...These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with.
We need to work together to embrace and repair our land, repair our power systems, and repair ourselves. It's time to stop building the shopping malls, the prisons, the stadiums, and other tributes to all of our collective failures.
And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization a simply a question of relative strength.
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