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.
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
Definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. Karl Marx
Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves. Karl Marx, The German Ideology 1845
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
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. Henry David Thoreau
We must eradicate the greed of those who want to have everything and who give nothing to the workers. Julius Caesar, cited Valerio Manfredi, Caesar: A Roman Murder
Arbeit Macht Frei [Work makes you free] inscribed on gates above entrance to Dachau, and subsequently Auschwitz camp
Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. Albert Camus
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Cyril Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law, 1958
Holding hands at midnight
’Neath a starry sky,
Nice work if you can get it,
And you can get it if you try. Ira Gershwin, Nice Work If You Can Get It, song 1937
The laboring man, that tills the fertile soil,
And reaps the harvest fruit, hath not in deed
The gain, but pain; and if for all his toil
He gets the straw, and lord will have the seed. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, The Labouring Man, 1573
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Oscar Wilde
Audience Woman on pedestal: I have three jobs and I feel like I contribute.
George W Bush: You work three jobs?
Audience Woman on pedestal: Three jobs.
George W Bush: Uniquely American isn’t it? You are just fantastic doing that. Get any sleep?
Capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work, what they do. George W Bush, lecture Manhattan Institute
Bud: What about hard work?
Gordon Gecko: What about it? Wall Street 1987 starring Michael Douglas & Charlie Sheen & Martin Sheen & Daryl Hannah & Terence Stamp & John C McGinley & James Karen & Hal Holbrook & Sean Young & James Spader et al, director Oliver Stone, aeroplane worker to son
We’ll show you how to do an honest day’s work. ibid.
We are invincible. Red Robbo to Longbridge workers
For the industrial masses their work has no human meaning in itself. And offers no satisfying interest. They save their living for their leisure but don’t know how to use it except in the bingo hall, filling pools forms, spending money, eating fish and chips in Spain. Nothing but emptiness that has to be filled with drink, sex, eating, background music, and what the papers and telly supply. F R Leavis, public lecture recorded BBC
cf.
Richard Hoggart, a lecturer not from Oxbridge but Hull, seriously studied the lives of the urban working classes. Coining a new term ‘cultural studies’ he investigated an ignored culture of pubs, of racing and music hall songs. Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words III: Culture Wars, BBC 2011
What I mean by a cultural study of society is trying to understand better and to interpret therefore the whole way of life of that society as it shows itself, as the way it goes about its daily business. Richard Hoggart, interview BBC
Two things rob people of their peace of mind: work unfinished and work not yet begun. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Work Without Hope
O let us love our occupations,
Bless the squire and his relations,
Live upon our daily rations,
And always know our proper stations. Charles Dickens, The Chimes
Even though work stops, expenses run on. Cato the Elder
Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day. A J Cook, 1885-1931, speech York 3rd April 1926
These works brought all these people here. Something should be done to get them at work again. Edward VIII aka Duke of Windsor, 18th November 1936
We spend our midday sweat our midnight oil;
We tire the night in thought, the day in toil. Francis Quaries, Emblems, 1635
Gentlemen, I think it is about time we ‘pulled our fingers out’ … If we want to be more prosperous we’ve simply got to get down to it and work for it. The rest of the world does not owe us a living. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, speech London 17th October 1961
Do you work in a strip club? Prince Philip to female sea cadet
Kenneth Williams: I don’t believe it! They’re coming back!
Syd James: I had a feeling they would come back today.
Kenneth Williams: Why today?
Syd James: It’s the annual works’ outing. Carry on at Your Convenience 1971 starring Kenneth Williams & Charles Hawtrey & Joan Sims & Hattie Jacques & Bernard Bresslaw & Kenneth Cope et al, director Gerald Thomas
I am a young executive
No cuffs than mine are cleaner
I have a slim-line briefcase
And I use the firm’s Cortina.
In every roadside hostelry
From here to Burgess Hill
The [Matra] Hotel known only too well
And let me sign the bill.
You ask me what it is I do
Well actually you know I’m partly a liaison man
And partly PRO.
Essentially I integrate the current export drive
And basically I’m viable
From ten o’clock to five. John Betjeman, Executive