Anton Pannekoek Quotes

What we call Monopoly is Business at the end of its journey. The concentration of wealth, the wiping out of the middle classes, are other names for it. To get it is, in the world of affairs, the chief end of man.

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.

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.

There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.

Capitalists personally are often the mildest-mannered men that ever shattered a family or drained a workingman of his marrow.

Keep up the middle class; lop off aristocracy on the one hand, and a rabble at the other; let the middle class ... have the power.

Capitalism will kill competition.

Capitalists are no more capable of self sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself by his own bootstraps.

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

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.

This contempt for money is a trick developed by the rich to keep the poor without it.

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 fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few.

The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the production of wealth is not the work of any one man, and the acquisition of great fortunes is not possible without the co-operation of multitudes of men.

The contest will be between the capitalists and operatives; for into these two classes it must ultimately divide society.

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.

If you turn your people into bourgeois, you also turn them into pacifists.

I believe in capitalism for everybody, not necessarily high finance but capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country who are out there paddling alone in America right now.

Luxury may possibly contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor.

Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.

The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them.

No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.

The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I.

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.