Working Class Quotes

“Oh, working man! Oh, starved, outraged, and robbed laborer, how long will you lend attentive ear to the authors of your misery?”
― Lucy Parsons

“How convenient for those in power to have a labour force accustomed to disempowerment and willing to settle for less.”
― Sabba Khan, The Roles We Play

“Disparity, Education and Economy

Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity. Citizens of earth could force big tech to pay their employees fair wages tomorrow, if they just stop buying their fancy, overpriced products and go for humbler alternatives unless the companies bring down their disparities in salary.

The CEO may enjoy certain benefits of their position, but not until those working at the bottom can afford the fundamentals of life for their family. I'll say it to you plainly. An employee wronged is a company wronged.

You see, trying to build a disparity-free economy pursuing revenue is like trying to achieve pregnancy through vasectomy. So long as greed drives the economy, it's not economy, but catastrophe. So long as greed drives the industries, it's not industrialization, it is vandalization.

Ambition to climb the ladder of status so that you could be on the affluent side of disparity, is no ambition of a civilized human, it's the ambition of a caveman. So, before you pursue an ambition in life, educate yourself on a civilized definition of ambition.

Yet the situation in our world is so pathetic that that's exactly the kind of ambition educational institutes sell. Schools and universities don't teach you to build a civilized society free from disparity, they teach you clever tactics to be on the affluent side of disparity. This is not education, this is castration.

Concern for the society should be the bedrock of education - collective welfare should be the bedrock of economy - if not, we might as well start living as hobos on the streets, because with greed as the driving principle of education and economy, sooner or later all of us will end up on the streets.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting

“There are only two roads, victory for the working class, freedom, or victory for the fascists which means tyranny. Both combatants know what's in store for the loser.”
― Buenaventura Durruti

“It's possible to see how much the brand culture rubs off on even the most sceptical employee. Joanne Ciulla sums up the dangers of these management practices: 'First, scientific management sought to capture the body, then human relations sought to capture the heart, now consultants want tap into the soul... what they offer is therapy and spirituality lite... [which] makes you feel good, but does not address problems of power, conflict and autonomy.'¹0 The greatest success of the employer brand' concept has been to mask the declining power of workers, for whom pay inequality has increased, job security evaporated and pensions are increasingly precarious. Yet employees, seduced by a culture of approachable, friendly managers, told me they didn't need a union - they could always go and talk to their boss.

At the same time, workers are encouraged to channel more of their lives through work - not just their time and energy during working hours, but their social life and their volunteering and fundraising. Work is taking on the roles once played by other institutions in our lives, and the potential for abuse is clear. A company designs ever more exacting performance targets, with the tantalising carrot of accolades and pay increases to manipulate ever more feverish commitment. The core workforce finds itself hooked into a self-reinforcing cycle of emotional dependency: the increasing demands of their jobs deprive them of the possibility of developing the relationships and interests which would enable them to break their dependency. The greater the dependency, the greater the fear of going cold turkey - through losing the job or even changing the lifestyle. 'Of all the institutions in society, why let one of the more precarious ones supply our social, spiritual and psychological needs? It doesn't make sense to put such a large portion of our lives into the unsteady hands of employers,' concludes Ciulla.

Life is work, work is life for the willing slaves who hand over such large chunks of themselves to their employer in return for the paycheque. The price is heavy in the loss of privacy, the loss of autonomy over the innermost workings of one's emotions, and the compromising of authenticity. The logical conclusion, unless challenged, is capitalism at its most inhuman - the commodification of human beings.”
― Madeleine Bunting

“When will the people see the real cause of all their woe—the private ownership of the means of life?
When will the masses learn that property is theirs and theirs only who has produced it—earned it?”
― Lucy Parsons

“This is the fate which awaits many of the middle class and the wage-class. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to serve notice on these thieves, and highway robbers, sitting in high places of “honor” and “trust,” that by the eternal god of justice, and by the manhood in you, that you will not, in this land of plenty, allow your children to become the mere hirelings and dependents upon the sweet will of their children?”
― Lucy Parsons

“Give them to understand that you will not stand patiently by and see your hard earnings squandered by a luxuriating class of idlers.”
― Lucy Parsons

“The anti-military spirit which is developing among the masses of Europe will tell the governments of the Earth that the workers have no trouble that needs to be settled by cruel war; and if the rulers have trouble, they can settle them by fighting it out among themselves. The working class wants to enjoy the fruits of their toil, the short time they journey this Earth. But we are told that kind of talk is unpatriotic, that every man ought to be willing to fight for his country. What country belongs to the wage class?”
― Lucy Parsons

“There was a movement at one time, not so many years ago either, which was international in its scope, which had for its object the setting aside the first of May for a general, international holiday, looking ultimately to the inauguration of a short-hour workday, but this grand idea has been side-tracked in later years by a lot of political buncombe and claptrap, thus persuading the working classes into the notion that they can gain their freedom by electing a lot of fellows to office.

(1906)”
― Lucy Parsons

“A reduction of the hours of labor to the point where all can have employment is worth a General Strike, because upon this point all efforts can be focused, and if carried, its beneficial effects would be felt immediately by the whole working class, men, women and children.”
― Lucy Parsons

“I revisit the past to arrive at the present. We are again in an important historical moment, a time to mobilize masses of people in order to transform society for the benefit of poor and working people, for the advancement of all humanity.

(2009 speech)”
― Iris Morales, Through the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords, 1969-1976

“It must have been about this time that I first heard Eugene Debs speak. He was facing an audience which packed the Academy of Music. On that same stage Henry Ward Beecher had stood and upheld the cause of the Democratic party in a tense campaign. I had been greatly interested in seeing Debs, for I had read and been told much about him-of his fearless leadership in the railroad strike of 1894, his term in jail as a consequence, and his fighting spirit. But I was disappointed that night-not by what he said, but by his manner. I thought him too much like a school-boy elocutionist. In after years, however, I attended several mass-meetings at which Debs was the main speaker, and he who had once been amateurish had become a real tribune of the people and a master of chastisement of the profit pharisees. No question about it an inspiring man because he was himself inspired. He was emotional, and used the logic of understanding born of long experience with workers. When one heard him voice a natural sympathy for the enslaved, one felt that here was a champion who would go to the stake rather than sacrifice his own beliefs.”
― Art Young, Art Young: His Life and Times

“During the last four decades of his life-journey, as this chronicle has revealed, it became more and more evident that there was one wrong, one thing over all, standing in the way of honest and contented living the unjust treatment of those who produce the wealth of the world by those who own most of that wealth; and that the continual fight between the moneyed interests and the working people (including artists) was the vital problem of our time. Now, during these recurring and ever-increasing conflicts, is it not obvious that we have to take sides? I think it has come to that, for all of us.”
― Art Young, Art Young: His Life and Times

“Marxism was simply Marxism until Freud was invited into its bed. It then became fucking Marxism! It moved the focus from the factory floor to the bedroom, from necessity to narcissism to the abandonment of the toilers and the move towards todays obsession with toiletry freedom.”
― Dean Cavanagh

“Tak peduli betapa brengseknya bos, betapa culasnya teman kerja, betapa banyaknya pekerjaan walau gajinya sama saja, tetap saja... Di akhir bulan, gajian akan menjadi dewa penyelamat.”
― Ayu Welirang, Romance Is Not For IT Folks

“Sebenarnya start-up kayak kita kan ‘hidup segan, mati tak mau’. Kalau nggak ada pemasok dana, mana bisa ritme kerja kayak gini bikin bahagia padahal gajian telat mulu? Gue sih bisa aja punya sense of ownership tinggi karena berhasil mewu- judkan cita-cita perusahaan. Tapi, kalau nggak gajian, ya gue bisa kelaparan juga,” lanjut Yongki lagi.”
― Ayu Welirang, Romance Is Not For IT Folks

“Yang banyak mikir dan mewujudkan tujuan kantor pasti karyawan, tapi nanti di akhir bulan atau akhir kesuksesan, berita yang dibahas pasti soal para VP atau para CTO-nya yang keren dan tampak bonafide. Di balik semua kesuksesan itu, mungkin ada banyak karyawan yang nyaris tewas dan sampai diinfus beberapa hari karena kurang istirahat. Ya... walau memang dikasih bonus juga, sih.”
― Ayu Welirang, Romance Is Not For IT Folks

“Kita bekerja karena paling suka pas gajian udah datang berikut segala bonus-bonus karyawan. Hidup tuh, kayaknya bagi karyawan seperti kita, cuma satu bulan jaraknya. Dari gajian ke gajian.”
― Ayu Welirang, Romance Is Not For IT Folks

“This planet has never been the home of the human race, it has always been the home of the rich and privileged, while the rest of humanity slave their butt off, barely scraping by on hand-me-downs and leftovers.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability

“Schools and universities don't teach you to build a civilized society free from disparity, they teach you clever tactics to be on the affluent side of disparity. This is not education, this is castration.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting

“I come from a line of people
who could not discern their exploitation
from someone else’s:
people who will always stop for the car that is pulled over to the side of the road,
but participate in a culture
curated by a ruling class
that individualizes
and disconnects
the marginalized.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“I'm retired, not tired!”
― James Hauenstein, No Return Address

“Un fantasma recorre Europa, el fantasma del comunismo.”
― Marx Karl, El manifiesto comunista

“Brenda was having none of it. She sat there like one of the working-class ladies of his childhood, bitter fighters with bright red faces, emanating a savage scary blankness that he understood to mean: Fuck you, you are not forgiven.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Stress costs British business over £400 million a year, and the Health and Safety Executive predict that the bill will continue to rise. The World Health Organisation estimates that stress will account for half of the ten most common medical problems in the world by 2020. The economic costs, and the threat of legal action, have alarmed employers and governments alike; it is these, rather than the human cost, which are driving government policy - it is the Secretary of Trade and Industry who comments on stress, not the Health Secretary. Over the last decade there has been a huge amount of research into the causes of stress, yet its incidence has continued to soar. Little has come out of the research except a burgeoning industry which offers stress consultants, stress programmes, stress counsellors, therapists and, when all that fails, lawyers to fight stress claims. This amounts to a dramatic failure of collective will either to recognise the extent of the problem or to do anything effective about it. All that is offered are sticking plasters to cover the symptoms, rather than the kind of reform of the workplace which is required to tackle the causes.

According to one major study into the causes of stress, 68 per cent of the highly stressed report work intensification as a major factor.”
― Madeleine Bunting, Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives

“The analogy with the environment [crisis] is apt, because both forms of sustainability - human and environmental - have no market value, they cannot be bought and sold. Both fall into the category of what economists call the tragedy of the commons': in an unfettered market, they are subject to its depredations without any accounting for their true value. Just as the damage to the environment has become increasingly clear, so we will see in the coming decades a growing anxiety about the erosion of human sustainability as we witness an exponential rise in depression, stress and anxiety. It is the conditions of our working lives which are one of the main causes.”
― Madeleine Bunting, Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives

“What we have lost to a very great degree is the possibility of resistance, confrontation or reform of taking the struggle for freedom back into the workplace. Many of the private sector jobs worst hit by long hours and rising stress have a low rate of trade union membership. The number of workplaces with high union density and well-established collective bargaining fell from 47 per cent in 1980 to only 17 per cent in 1998.26 Two-thirds of all workplaces have no union presence at all.”
― Madeleine Bunting

“Work's enormous drain on time and energy is depriving relationships of care and dependence, the investment they urgently need right now. At the same time, it often adds new demands on those relationships as the stress and exhaustion spill over. Overwork erodes intimate relationships, which have never been so brittle and which, in a competitive, individualistic society, have never been so essential in supporting individual well-being, identity and security. Never have we so needed a place to call home, a place of refuge from the dictates of the market, from its crude calibration of value and its demands on us to perform. Yet at the very same moment, the time we have at home is shrinking, and the privacy we have there is fast disappearing.

What is in conflict here is a labour-market ethic of individual achievement and effort, versus older ethics of the dignity of dependence and the fulfilment of selflesness.”
― Madeleine Bunting

“As their personal connections to a geographical community shrink, so people look to work to compensate; volunteer schemes organised through the workplace and corporate social responsibility programmes become a substitute. Putnam quotes one commentator's conclusion: 'As more Americans spend more of their time "at work", work gradually becomes less of a one-dimensional activity and assumes more of the concerns and activities of both private (family) and public (social and political) life.

It is the corporation which hands out advice on toddler pottytraining and childcare, offers parenthood classes and sets up a reading support programme in a local school - all of which exist in British corporations – rather than the social networks of family, friends and neighbours. This amounts to a form of corporate neopaternalism which binds the employee ever tighter into a suffocating embrace, underpinning the kind of invasive management techniques described in Chapter 4.”
― Madeleine Bunting, Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives