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Class Warfare Quotes

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Class Warfare Quotes

“How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present”

WealthPoorMoneyPovertyCourageOppressionInequalityCowardiceUrbanCityClass WarfareUrbanizationNeighborhoods
Book:The Tanners
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“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

ClassPovertyInequalityClass WarfareSocioeconomics
Author:Terry Pratchett
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“There was another reason why the dollar's hegemony grew: the intentional impoverishment of America's working class. A cynic will tell you quite accurately that large quantities of money are attracted to countries where the profit rate is higher. For Wall Street to exercise fully its magnetic powers over foreign capital, profit margins in the United States had to catch up with profit rates in Germany and Japan. A quick and dirty way to do this was to suppress American wages. Cheaper labour makes for lower costs, makes for larger margins. It is no coincidence that, to this day, American working class earnings languish below their 1974 level. It is also no coincidence that union-busting became a thing in the 1970s, culminating in Ronald Reagan's dismissal of every single unionised air traffic controller. A move emulated by Margaret Thatcher in Britain who pulverised whole industries in order to eliminate the trade unions that inhabited them. And faced with the Minotaur's sucking most of the world's capital into America, the European ruling classes reckoned that they had no alternative but to do the same. Reagan had set the pace. Thatcher had shown the way. But it was in Germany and later across continental Europe that the new class war - you might call it universal austerity - was waged most effectively.”

PovertyCapitalismClass WarfareAusterity
Book:Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
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“We have got into the habit of admiring colossal bandits, whose opulence is revered by the entire world, yet whose existence, once we stop to examine it, proves to be one long crime repeated ad infinitum, but those same bandits are heaped with glory, honors, and power, their crimes are hallowed by the law of the land, whereas, as far back in history as the eye can see—and history, as you know is my business—everything conspires to show that a venial theft, especially of inglorious foodstuffs, such as bread crusts, ham, or cheese, unfailingly subjects its perpetrator to irreparable opprobrium, the categoric condemnation of the community, major punishment, automatic dishonor, and inexpiable shame, and this for two reasons, first because the perpetrator of such an offense is usually poor, which in itself connotes basic unworthiness, and secondly because his act implies, as it were, a tacit reproach to the community. A poor man’s theft is seen as a malicious attempt at individual redress . . . Where would we be? Note accordingly that in all countries the penalties for petty theft are extremely severe, not only as a means of defending society, but also as a stern admonition to the unfortunate to know their place, stick to their caste, and behave themselves, joyfully resigned to go on dying of hunger and misery down through the centuries forever and ever …”

PovertyTheftClass Warfare
Book:Journey to the End of the Night
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“For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

GovernmentPoliticsPresidentWealthMoneyBusinessFinanceUnited States Of AmericaPresidencyBankingElectionsClass WarfareAdministrations
Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“Person 1: Do you know how America's class system works? Person 2: America has a class system? Person 1: Yes, that's how it works.”

WealthInequalityMinimum WageAffluenceClass StruggleClass WarfarePlutocracyClass SystemGilded AgeThe One Percent
Book:Limitarianism The Case Against Extreme Wealth, The Psychology of Management & Get Sh*t Done 3 Books Collection Set
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“JOURNALISM, which shapes, modifies, or subtly suggests public attitudes and states of mind, morbidly attracts the owners of the great fortunes, for whose protection against popular disapproval and action there must be a constantly running defense, direct or implied, specific or general. The protective maneuvers often take the form, in this plutocratic press, of eloquent editorial assaults upon popular yearnings and ideas. The journalism of the United States, from top to bottom, is the personal affair bought and paid for by the wealthy families. There is little in American journalism today, good or bad, which does not emanate from the family dynasties. The press lords of America are actually to be found among the multimillionaire families.”

WealthJournalismClass StruggleClass WarfarePlutocracyJournalist Capitalism
Book:America's 60 Families
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“Raging crime, class warfare, invasive immigrants, light morals, public misbehavior. Always we convince ourselves that the parade of unwelcome and despised is a new phenomenon, which is why the phrase "the good old days" has passed from cliché to self-parody.”

SocietyCrimePrejudiceImmigrationMoralsSocial ChangeSelf DeceptionExclusionParodyXenophobiaSocial NormsClass WarfareClichesNostaliga
Book:Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City
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“Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.”

WorkFreedomCapitalismLaborWork EthicAnarchismWork Life BalanceClass WarfareWork Life ConflictSociology Of Consumption
Book:The Abolition of Work
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“When I say I want to abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimum definition of work is *forced* *labor*, that is, compulsory production. Both elements are essential. Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick. (The carrot is just the stick by other means.) But not all creation is work. Work is never done for its own sake, it's done on account of some product or output that the worker (or, more often, somebody else) gets out of it.”

WorkFreedomCapitalismLaborWork EthicAnarchismWork Life BalanceClass WarfareAnti CommunismWork Life Conflict
Book:The Abolition of Work
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“The alternative to work isn't just idleness. To be ludic is not to be quaaludic. As much as I treasure the pleasure of torpor, it's never more rewarding than when it punctuates other pleasures and pastimes. Nor am I promoting the managed time-disciplined safety-valve called "leisure"; far from it. Leisure is nonwork for the sake of work. Leisure is the time spent recovering from work and in the frenzied but hopeless attempt to forget about work.”

WorkFreedomCapitalismLaborAnarchyWork EthicSociologyWork Life BalanceClass WarfareWork Life Conflict
Book:The Abolition of Work
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“The Renaissance was the culture of a wealthy and powerful upper class, on the crest of the wave which was whipped up by the storm of new economic forces. The masses who did not share the wealth and power of the ruling group had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened—but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power. A new despotism arose side by side with the new individualism. Freedom and tyranny, individually and disorder, were inextricably interwoven. The Renaissance was not a culture of small shopkeepers and petty bourgeois but of wealthy nobles and burghers. Their economic activity and their wealth gave them a feeling of freedom and a sense of individually. But at the same time, these same people had lost something: the security and feeling of belonging which the medieval social structure had offered. They were more free, but they were also more alone. They used their power and wealth to squeeze the last ounce of pleasure out of life; but in doing so, they had to use ruthlessly every means, from physical torture to psychological manipulation, to rule over the masses and to check their competitors within their own class. All human relationships were poisoned by this fierce life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with one's fellow man—or at least with the members of one's own class—was replaced by a cynical detached attitude; other individuals were looked upon as "objects" to be used and manipulated, or they were ruthlessly destroyed if it suited one's own ends. The individual was absorbed by a passionate egocentricity, an insatiable greed for power and wealth. As a result of all this, the successful individual's relation to his own self, his sense of security and confidence were poisoned too. His own self became as much an object of manipulation to him as other persons had become. We have reasons to doubt whether the powerful masters of Renaissance capitalism were as happy and as secure as they are often portrayed. It seems that the new freedom brought two things to them: an increased feeling of strength and at the same time an increased isolation, doubt, scepticism, and—resulting from all these—anxiety. It is the same contradiction that we find in the philosophical writings of the humanists. Side by side with their emphasis on human dignity, individuality, and strength, they exhibited insecurity and despair in their philosophy.”

HumanismParadoxRenaissanceReformationClass Warfare1941
Book:Escape from Freedom
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“Under the old order, which enabled those whose lives were secure to play the fools and eccentrics at the expense of the others while the majority led a wretched existence, it had been only too easy to mistake the foolishness and idleness of a privileged minority for genuine character and originality. But the moment the lower classes had risen, and the privileges of those on top had been abolished, how quickly had those people faded, how unregretfully had they renounced independent ideas--apparently no one had ever had such ideas!”

ClassCommunismMarxismIntellectualismClass Warfare
Book:Doctor Zhivago
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“It started off very underprivileged, but got more affluent.' Amis suddenly smiles to himself, remembering a moment with his father. 'I remember saying – I'm very interested in class, generally – when I was going to this grammar full of Old Etonians – I remember asking my father if we were nouveau riche, and he replied: 'Well, we're very nouveau, but not very riche.' Which is about the size of it.”

ClassClass WarfareEtonAspirationalNouveau RicheMartin Amis
Book:The Martin Amis Interview
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“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

MoneyBusinessEconomicsLaborProfitClass Warfare
Book:An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations
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“Not only poetry but also music in the ordinary sense of the term are to be controlled by a rigid censorship, and both are to be devoted entirely to strengthening the stability of the state by making the young more conscious of class discipline, and thus more ready to serve class interests. Plato even forgets that it is the function of music to make the young more gentle, for he demands such forms of music as will make them braver, i.e. fiercer. (Considering that Plato was an Athenian, his arguments concerning music proper appear to me almost incredible in their superstitious intolerance, especially if compared with a more enlightened contemporary criticism. But even now he has many musicians on his side, possibly because they are flattered by his high opinion of the importance of music, i.e. of its political power. The same is true of educationists, and even more of philosophers, since Plato demands that they should rule.) The political principle that determines the education of the soul, namely, the preservation of the stability of the state, determines also that of the body. The aim is simply that of Sparta.”

MusicCensorshipPlatoTotalitarianismAthensClass WarfareSpartaPlatonismThe RepublicClass Structure
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“When Republicans recently charged the President with promoting 'class warfare,' he answered it was 'just math.' But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality. Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not. President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are.”

PoliticsUnited StatesSocietyMoralityEconomicsMathematicsLiberalismConservatismClass WarfareBarack ObamaRepublican Party United States
Author:Robert B. Reich
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“Here's a fact omitted in many article about growing numbers of poor people living on the street: if the U.S. had remained as equitable as it was in 1975 for the next forty-three years through 2018, the bottom 90 percent of Americans would have earned an extra $47 trillion. Instead that money went to people already at the top, who use that money, among other things, to influence the political system and to hoard real estate.”

CapitalismInequalityOligarchyClass WarfareCopagandaGenerational TheftWealth Hoarding
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“In Nevada I could feel the Long Crisis with a terrifying intimacy, as if it was some sort of uncanny, bodily contact— like the feeling you get camped out in the swirling, galaxy-littered darkness of the open range when a reptile brushes up against your prostrate body. Except that the reptile at least shares with you some deep, serpentine connection, a lineage lost somewhere in the plummet of primeval time. The Crisis, on the other hand, is a vast creature, not contained by familiar scales of time or space. It is a social terror made of masses of machinery and animals, yet not in any way kin to these components. And what we sense of it today is merely one of its many limbs extending backward from its true body writhing somewhere just out of sight, at home in our own incomprehensible future.”

PoliticsEconomicsCrisisInequalitySociologyClass WarfareClass WarClass ConflictCosmic Horror
Book:Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict
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“Living in America exposes a citizen to the refined genteelness that draws some people to public services as well as the glad-handing politicians and their bucket brigade of minions fervidly running interference for their party’s headline hunting political agendas. The clash of social tension, imagery of racial and class outrage, and frequent raucous celebrations inundate America. Americans are also targets to the ceaseless wave of propaganda spewed out by national and international companies hawking their plastic products. The unadulterated grotesque mélange spit out by the American publicity machine exposes its citizenry to more meaningless mental pulp than other any other county’s citizens must tolerate. Public debates, scandals, violence, political grandstanding, and crisis management drive much of the public discourse. American politics is an oily affair, akin to watching a pack of overfed, flushed face, and breathless contestants chasing a greased pig at a county fair. Politics is class warfare and American politics contains its share of Rambo politicians. Warring American political parties include Taliban subgroups, people who would prefer to cut the heads off their ideological enemies.”

PoliticsDemocracyPolitical PartiesPoliticiansAmerican PoliticsClass WarfareAmerican DemocracyClass War
Author:Kilroy J. Oldster
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“Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.”

SocialismHypocrisyBourgeoisClass StruggleClass WarfareCommunists1960Frequently Misquoted
Book:America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
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“Antagonism between the classes will be removed. I do not envisage a dead and artificial level among the people. There will be a variety among them as there is among the leaves of a tree. There will certainly be no have-nots, no unemployment, and no disparity between classes and masses such as we see to-day. I have no doubt whatsoever that if non-violence in its full measure becomes the policy of the State, we shall reach essential equality without strife.”

CapitalismClass WarfareClass WarClass Wars
Book:Harijan Vol 8
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“Disparities in economic standing drive radical differences in Americans’ values, causing a pronounced and antagonistic political ideologically. Americans are progressively viewing members of the domestic opposition party as the greatest threat to their wellbeing. Instead of fearing a war overseas, Americans are increasing distrustful of other Americans. A great American cultural war between the rich and poor is inevitable, unless corporate America and its wealthiest citizens voluntary commence accepting a larger load of taxation and the government implements dramatic steps to shore up the disparity that continues to widen between the people on contrasting economic poles.”

Social JusticeRich And PoorClass WarfareEconomic DisparityPolitical IdeologyClass WarCultural RevolutionCultural WarCultural Reformation
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Miners were like insignificant carpenter ants; their entire life and purpose was simply to bore through hard substances, whereby destroying nature and themselves in the grueling process. Meanwhile, men like Huxley,, Carnegie and Frick were the very select few who were reaping the gargantuan rewards of gold, or in this case, coal and steel.”

LaborAmerican HistoryClass WarfareChild LaborGilded AgeCoal MinerSteel And Coal
Book:A Blazing Gilded Age
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“How does Plato solve the problem of avoiding class war? Had he been a progressivist, he might have hit on the idea of a classless, equalitarian society; for, as we can see for instance from his own parody of Athenian democracy, there were strong equalitarian tendencies at work in Athens. But he was not out to construct a state that might come, but a state that had been—the father of the Spartan state, which was certainly not a classless society. It was a slave state, and accordingly Plato’s best state is based on the most rigid class distinctions. It is a caste state. The problem of avoiding class war is solved, not by abolishing classes, but by giving the ruling class a superiority which cannot be challenged. As in Sparta, the ruling class alone is permitted to carry arms, it alone has any political or other rights, and it alone receives education, i.e. a specialized training in the art of keeping down its human sheep or its human cattle.”

PlatoTotalitarianismClass WarfareEgalitarianismCaste SystemRuling ClassPlatonismSpartans
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“– Independent farmers are arrested and deported somewhere to the Urals or Siberia. I fear we may be the next to be labeled ‘kulaks’. — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Two Context note: During the forced collectivization in the USSR, millions of peasants were forcibly deported to remote regions such as Siberia and the Urals as part of state repression against on wealthy peasants (nicknamed "kulaks" by the Soviet authorities).”

Soviet UnionTotalitarianismPeasantsUkraineClass WarfarePolitical ViolenceCollectivization1930 SState TerrorismRepression Books
Book:Камень. Биографический роман. Книга вторая. Непростые дороги в ад: Выживание в условиях насилия
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“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”

PoliticsLiberalismAmerican CultureClass WarfarePlutocracyRight Wing OppressionAux Armes CitoyensRight Wing Thuggery
Author:Wendell Berry
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“The name Atlantis came from an old book Victoria had never read. A lifetime residency in the ASM paradise was rumored to cost anywhere from 15 to 20 million dollars. The rich and powerful lived under the dome because they considered themselves separate and superior. Few of them left the comfort and security of Atlantis. To them the outside world was weak. Second Sector citizens where miscreant dregs of a defunct society. In order to enter the Atlantian dome one first had to be cleared by a resident. Gate security personnel strictly enforced this rule, even when outsiders carried a badge and gun.”

Science FictionClass WarfareCops
Book:Atlas
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“Democracy is popular because of the illusion of choice and participation it provides, but when you live in a society in which most people’s knowledge of the world extends as far as sports, sitcoms, reality shows, and celebrity gossip, democracy becomes a very dangerous idea. Until people are properly educated and informed, instead of indoctrinated to be ignorant mindless consumers, democracy is nothing more than a clever tool used by the ruling class to subjugate the rest of us.”

ConsumerismClass WarfareDemocracy QuotesIgnorant QuotesIllusion Of Choice
Author:Gavin Nascimento
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“We treat politics as a sport, political parties as the teams we root for, and political leaders as our favorite sports stars. But we forget that politics is not an entertainment sport. In sports, rivalry between fans of opposing teams is "Them vs Us", but in politics such rivalry becomes "Us vs Us". Political outcomes have far greater effect on our life than sports outcomes. In a democracy, "we, the people" are supposed to be the kings, not the pawns. We are the examiners and watchdogs of the political system, not the fans. We should step back from our blind loyalty to a party, and start taking an educated stand. Instead of forming our opinions based on hearsay and emotions, we should form our opinions based on hard facts. The time has come to stop being loyal to any political party, and start being loyal to our country and its betterment.”

PhilosophyPoliticsDemocracyPolitical PhilosophyDemocratic SocietyClass WarfareClass Divide
Author:Shon Mehta
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“The ending of revolutions reduced the drama of social conflict in Western and Central Europe. But revolutions had produced scant benefits for the urban masses that participated in them, often at great sacrifice. Freed from the goad of the worst misery, taught by their experiences in 1848, the working classes stopped fighting a futile battle against industrialization and gradually elaborated the concrete political and economic demands that had begun to emerge in the 1848 revolutions themselves. Each reader must judge whether the methods of protest subsequently developed have been more or less successful than those which produced the wave of revolutions. Each must judge, also, whether conditions may induce a return to the classic revolutionary method in the future. It is clear that the revolutions of 1848 encouraged a reorientation of expectations—or some might argue, a tragic narrowing of hopes—on the part of various classes in Europe. This conditioned the history of Europe for more than a century.”

RevolutionClass Warfare19741848
Book:1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe
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“It was built as a prototype to prove to the rich that this was a bunker that could work. If you were careful enough, if you were rich enough, you could buy something just like this and sit in it to comfortably watch the world around you stutter to a stop as it ran out of everything you had bought up just before the end. And it wasn't the end of everything. Only the end of the things they coveted: money power and comfort. P 49”

EnvironmentClass WarfarePost Apocalyptic
Book:We Speak Through the Mountain
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