Working Class Empowerment Quotes

What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

The poor are the very lifeblood of the left, attracting activists, supporting among the intelligentsia, and - perhaps most important - allowing the left to indulge in self-congratulation as people who 'care.' But, if they really cared, they would want to know what the facts are and what the actual consequences of their various nostrums are.

The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.

Politics didn't lead me to working people. Working people led me into politics.

We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.

I want to put the interests of ordinary working people right up there, center stage. Those people who - you know, they're working all the hours. They're doing their best for their families and sometimes they just feel the odds are stacked against them.

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

...the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.

I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.

The great leaders called the working class first whenever difficult and gigantic tasks arose for the revolution, and ushered in fresh heydays of the revolution by relying on them.

Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom realty.

We have to have a shared prosperity. We have to make that our job number one. People want a better economic playing field for working Americans. And they're voting for it. Our job is to make sure that people know that the Democratic party is the party that is going to deliver that for them. And that means strengthening the grassroots. That means strengthening the local precinct county level and making sure that we're all channeled on massive turnout for that program.

Fellow workers, this is the Continental Congress of the working class. The aims and objects of this organization shall be to put the working class in possession of economic power.

It's often said that the Democrats fight 'for the little guy.' That's true: liberals fight to make sure the little guy stays little! Think about it. What if all the little guys were to prosper and become big guys? Then what? Who would liberals pretend to fight for? If the bamboozlers fight for anything, it's to ensure that the little guy stays angry at those nasty conservatives who are holding him down.

[Steven] Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore - the redistribution of wealth and the return of '$17 trillion' stolen from the middle class by Wall Street - is to 'destabilize the country.

It's time for the wealthy to pay their fair share before the middle class becomes the forgotten class.- And it's time for the banks to give back what they were given. There are those in politics, particularly those on the conservative side, who can't get enough of telling people that the wealthy one per cent must not be taxed because doing so kills jobs. The real job-killers are corporate greed and political expediency. It's time for working people in Maine and all across the country to take back the American dream.

Every departure from class struggle has fatal results for the destiny of socialism.

The labor movement is people. Our unions have brought millions of men and women together, made them members one of another, and given them common tools for common goals. Their goals are goals for all America - and their enemies are the enemies for progress. The two cannot be separated.

The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle, hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

It is a protest against the way the world has worked. (explanation of Bolshevism)

Labor has been severely undermined, but that's happened before. In the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually crushed, in large part by Wilson's Red Scare, but it dramatically revived in the 1930s. It spearheaded the social-democratic New-Deal style changes which were beneficial to the country - not sufficient, but beneficial. That could happen again.

In effect, according to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible. By gaining democratic freedoms the working masses come to power.

To claim for socialism that it is a class war is to do it an injustice and indefinitely postpone its triumph. Socialism offers a platform broad enough for all to stand upon. It makes war upon a system, not upon a class.

Jacksonianism [populism] is always an important force in American politics; at times of social and economic stress and change … its importance tends to grow.