Quotes About Class

The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.

The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy's cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this.

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

The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution.

The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.

I particularly approve of and welcome the arrest of millionaire saboteurs in the first and second-class railway carriage.

Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.

The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich: this is the democratism of capitalist society.

After the experience both of Europe and Asia, anyone who speaks of non - class politics and of non - class socialism deserves to be simply put in a cage and exhibited alongside of the Australian kangaroo.

O Estado é "uma força especial de repressão". Esta notável e profunda definição de Engels é de uma absoluta clareza. Dela resulta que essa força especial de repressão do proletariado pela burguesia, de milhões de trabalhadores por um punhado de ricos, deve ser substituída por uma "força especial de repressão" da burguesia pelo proletariado (a ditadura do proletariado)

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich -- that is the democracy of capitalist society.

when there is no materialist criticism of political institutions, and when the class character of the modern state is not understood, it is only one step from political radicalism to political opportunism.

According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of "order", which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.

A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters.

The ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, "the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital. By way of exception, however, periods occur in which the warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state power as ostensible mediator acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of both....

In reality the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.

The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.

Marx and Engels thought all of these things could be traced to one root -- private property. If they used a final revolutionary class uprising to overthrow private property, it would mean that class struggle would become unnecessary because there would be nothing to fight over!

It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.