Every system of values rests on exploitation and oppression;
every system of values effectively negates exploitation and oppression (even
aristocratic systems, if not explicitly at least in their internal logic);
every system of values confirms exploitation and oppression (even systems
constructed by oppressed classes, if not in intention, at least in so far as
they are systems); every system of values, in so far as it is based on a social
practice, contributes directly or indirectly to establishing devices and
apparatuses which, when the time comes (for example, on the basis of a
revolution in techniques and tools) will allow this particular oppression and exploitation to be negated; every
system of values, at the moment of its revolutionary efficacity, ceases to be a
system, and values cease to be values: their character was due to the fact that
they could not be transcended; and circumstances, overthrowing structures,
institutions and exigencies, transform them into transcended significations:
systems are reabsorbed into the organizations which they have created and the
organizations, transformed by the overthrow of the social field, integrate
themselves into new collective actions, carried out in the context of the new
exigencies; and they disclose new values.
--Jean-Paul Sartre
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