Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov Quotes

What did the workers and peasants gain when power passed from the kings and nobles to the bankers and manufacturers?

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

We all know from a study of history the progress of the working people from the stage of barbarism to that of slavery, serfdom and later individual freedom... .

Every capitalist is your enemy. Every working man is your friend.

In the society of to-day the means of production are a monopoly of the capitalistic class; the dependence of the working classes which results from this is the cause of misery and of servitude in all its forms.

Ever greater grows the mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unemployed, ever sharper the contrast between oppressors and oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie and proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps and is the common characteristic of ever industrial country.

The working men have no country. We cannot take away from them what they have not got.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

The mass of workers, as yet non-Socialist, is retarded in its development towards Socialism.

The circulating medium being issued only by those who labor, they would suddenly become invested with all the wealth and all the power; and those who did not labor, be they ever so rich now, would as suddenly become poor and powerless.

In Russia bureaucracy as the ruling class is master of production and produce, and the Russian workers are an exploited class.

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.

For the laboring class there cannot exist a peace of compromise on the basis of a capitalist regime

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

The workers, whose grievances were once the driving energy for social change, are more satisfied with society than the intellectuals. The workers have not achieved Utopia but their expectations were less than those of the intellectuals, and the gains correspondingly larger.

Every socialist recognizes the dependence of the workingman on the capitalist.

We socialists live to some extent in symbiosis with capitalism.

We deny your internationalism, because it is a luxury which only upper classes can afford; the working people are hopelessly bound to their native shores.

I've never felt like a pop star - this is a nine-to-five sort of gig. It comes from working in the factories, that world. You don't forget it.

If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.

For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.