Home » Blog » Words of Wisdom

Class

Words of Wisdom

“Any profiteer is free to shorten the lives of his countrymen by denying them the essentials of life and he does this as a member of a highly respected class. The police protect him and his gains against the victims…” Professor Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi — mathematician, historian, philologist, and geneticist

by World Socialist Party US

Published:

Updated:

1 min read

In his Foreword to the Indian edition of Dyson Carter, Sin and Science (1950), Professor Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi (1907—1966), mathematician, historian, philologist, and geneticist, wrote:

“Any profiteer is free to shorten the lives of his countrymen by denying them the essentials of life and he does this as a member of a highly respected class. The police protect him and his gains against the victims. The scientist ignores the effects of starvation, filthy lodging, and lack of education upon those who made the profit possible, and rushes to help the capitalist with technical advice, medical aid or even gratuitous praise. For who but the rich can pay well, who but those who have made heavy profits endow research? 

As for religion, it merely proclaims that the oppressed will get their due in some other life, or — still more comfortingly — that they must have misbehaved in a previous birth to suffer so now. That is, they may be ignored altogether or squeezed even more painfully. The reformer, with the best of intentions, attempts to gain the benefits of a revolution without the revolution itself.”

Photo of author
Standing for socialism and nothing but.

Related Articles

Capitalism, Class, Economics, Work

The Insanity of Coal Mining

Views: 698 National Public Radio (NPR) and the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI) teamed up to produce a special investigative report on the increased incidence of black ...

5 min read

Class, History

Frederick Douglass: The Scottish Connection

Alan Johnstone describes the connection of the great anti-slavery writer and orator Frederick Douglass with Scotland.

4 min read

Archives, Class

WPA Strikes (1939)

Views: 687 From the December 1939 issue of The Western Socialist Karl Marx, in his writings, predicted that some day the capitalists would have to take care of their ...

3 min read

Archives, Class

Who Are ‘The Poor’? (2013)

Views: 462 From the October 2013 issue of The Socialist Standard Socialists are reluctant to talk about ‘the poor’ as a distinct social group. In a certain real ...

3 min read
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
This site uses User Verification plugin to reduce spam. See how your comment data is processed.
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Share to...