The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! ibid.
The more the division of labour and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. Karl Marx, ‘Wage, Labour and Capital’
Capital is dead labour which vampire-like lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. Karl Marx
For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools. Karl Marx
42,381. The capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes labour power out of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence from all life’s enjoyments. The drive is always to go on accumulating and exploiting long after the individual capitalist has stashed away a million times more cash than he can hope to spend on himself in ten lifetimes. His motto is: ‘accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and all the prophets!’ Karl Marx, Capital I
The alienation of labour when work is external to the worker not part of his nature so that he does not fulfil himself in his work but denies himself and is physically exhausted and mentally debased; this alienated labour that casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines thus depriving man of his species character of free conscious activity and productive life. Karl Marx, cited Noam Chomsky, lecture Poetry Center of New York 1970, ‘Government in the Future’
Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source – next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself. Friedrich Engels
In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production. It goes without saying that society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed. The old mode of production must therefore be revolutionised from top to bottom, and in particular the former division of labour must disappear. Its place must be taken by an organisation of production in which, on the one hand, no individual can throw on the shoulders of others his share in productive labour, this natural condition of human existence; and in which, on the other hand, productive labour, instead of being a means of subjugating men, will become a means of their emancipation, by offering each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full — in which, therefore, productive labour will become a pleasure instead of being a burden. Friedrich Engels
There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them. William Tecumseh Sherman
In my time we was beaten, rotten egged, cussed, threatened, tarred and feathered and blackballed from other jobs. Hurt in so many different ways. But at our meetings our advice to the men and women that was hurt, we would just say to them what the good book says – the Lord will not put more upon you than you can bear, at least none of us lost our lives like some did in the early 30s. Thank God! W M Jack Anderson, first local president UAW 645 TX
Without unions workers will lose many of the protections against abusive employers. Wages for all will be depressed, even as corporate profits soar. The American Dream will be destroyed for millions. And we will have a government of the corporations, by the already powerful, for the wealthy. Kenneth Bernstein, 2011
5,094. Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organised and that their organisations must be recognised by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
Labor will remain united and continue to work to protect the interests of America’s working families. William Burrus, November 2004
The only effective answer to corporate greed is organised labor. Thomas Donahue
We have come too far – struggled too long – sacrificed too much and have too much left to do to allow that which we have achieved for the good of all to be swept away without a fight. And we have not forgotten how to fight. Lane Kirkland
Our struggle is the struggle of every working man and woman in America. We built this country, we have fought and died in its wars, paid our taxes and built every road and building in it from one coast to the other. And all we’ve asked in return is a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Moe Lepore, president Boston Metro Area Local APWU, 2010
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose. Don Marquis
Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor the world over. Victor Hugo & Henry George
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labour and there is invisible labour. Victor Hugo
Everything in the world is purchased by labour. David Hume
We labour soon, we labour late,
To feed the titled knave, man;
And a’ the comfort we’re to get,
Is that ayont the grave, man. Robert Burns, The Tree of Liberty
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be? Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Lotus-Eaters, 1832
Nay, but I choose my physician and my clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work. By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good workman, to be ‘chosen’. The natural and right system respecting all labour is that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by his competition to work for an inadequate sum. John Ruskin
We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity. John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice: The Nature of Gothic
5Such hath it been – shall be – beneath the sun
The many still must labour for the one. Lord Byron, The Corsair
The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and street-sellers. The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering. ‘So-old again,’ roars one. ‘Chestnuts all ’ot, a penny a score,’ bawls another. ‘An ’aypenny a skin, blacking,’ squeaks a boy. ‘Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy – bu-u-uy!’ cries the butcher. ‘Half-quire of paper for a penny,’ bellows the street stationer. ‘An ’aypenny a lot ing-uns.’ ‘Twopence a pound grapes.’ ‘Three a penny Yarmouth bloaters.’ ‘Who’ll buy a bonnet for fourpence?’ ‘Pick ’em out cheap here! three pair for a halfpenny, bootlaces.’ ‘Now’s your time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot.’ ‘Here’s ha’p’orths,’ shouts the perambulating confectioner. ‘Come and look at ’em! Here’s toasters!’ bellows one with a Yarmouth bloater stuck on a toasting-fork. ‘Penny a lot, fine russets,’ calls the apple woman: and so the Babel goes on. Henry Mayhew, Victorian social essay