Daniel De Leon Quotes

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.

Free trade would place our farmers and workers in competition with peasant and sweated labor products.

A Socialist Government cannot carry on a capitalist system better than the capitalists. The men bred by a capitalist system are men of affairs who understand their business. They are not apprentices.

The countries that stand to benefit most from greater competition and openness are those nations that display the highest protection.

Between the working class and the capitalist class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class struggle for life. No glib-tongued politician can vault over it, no capitalist professor or official statistician can argue it away; no capitalist parson can veil it; no labor faker can straddle it; no “reform” architect can bridge it over. It crops up in all manner of ways

Labor is, on the one hand, more and more furnished by a class; Property or Capital, on the other, held and controlled by another class. Here you have workers without property—the proletariat. There you have property without work—or capital…. The workers without property are excluded from their products, from the riches they create—which accumulate in the hands of the property holders, capitalists and large land-owners.

The people who are banking on Oriental trade are bound to be disappointed. The United States cannot compete with foreign countries until we can manufacture products at a lower cost, which means cheaper labor

The profit-grinding system is maintained by competition, or veiled war, not only between the conflicting classes, but also within the classes themselves: there is always war among the workers for bare subsistence, and among their masters, the employers and middle-men, for the share of the profit wrung out of the workers; lastly, there is competition always, and sometimes open war, among the nations of the civilised world for their share of the world-market.

While protectionism doesn’t work, pure free trade doesn’t work either.

We socialists live to some extent in symbiosis with capitalism.

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

I'm not for the sort of trade deals that hollow out our standards while they hollow out our middle class and middle class wages.

I'm not opposed to free trade if it's fair trade. But I am opposed to bad trade deals.

Let me say at the outset that I do not reflexively oppose international trade.

Now, given the experience that we have had thus far, with our subsequent trade agreements with NAFTA and others, you would think that with our experience of job loss that we have had there that when you find yourself in a hole that you might stop digging.

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.

Few countries have become rich through free-trade, free-market policies, and few ever will.

Property is theft.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

Europe should stick to an open economy, to competition and we should refuse protectionism. It will not save one single job in the long run to protect non-competitive industries.

Before we move forward with new efforts to lower the barriers to international free trade, we must review the consequences of the policies of the past and address the problems of the present.

Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.

I'm particularly happy that the Ronald Reagan Building is both public and private, and embraces his lifelong belief... in free and open trade.

I debated free trade in college. I came out as a free trader. I'm a free markets guy. I'm an Adam Smith guy.

Opposing the free flow of goods or people is a bad idea.