Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

Governments' thirst for investment is compounded by the insatiable appetite of employers for new markets and a 'competitive' labor force, by which they mean cheap and endlessly exploitable.

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

With the coming of peace, the workers are no longer needed as soldiers; they are no longer comrades, defenders of the fatherland, heroes. Once more they become beasts of burden, objects of exploitation.

Labor alone creates and pays the profits of capital.

It is impossible to place labor and capital in harmonious or friendly relations, except by the means of slavery

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition.

Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.

Private industry's job is to make money. Private industry's job is to create a huge economic engine.

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.

But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.

The wealth which the capitalist appears to give in exchange for the workman's labour was generated neither by the labour nor the riches of the capitalist, but it was originally obtained by the labour of the workman

Affirm the priority of work over capital and the fact that material goods are meant for all … The priority of work over capital places an obligation in justice upon employers to consider the welfare of the workers before the increase of profits.

The priority of work over capital places an obligation in justice upon employers to consider the welfare of the workers before the increase of profits.

The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman's speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss.

The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.

If work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

Capital is a result of labor.

There is no mutuality of interests ... between capital and labor. It is the iron heel of a soulless monopoly, crushing the manhood out of sovereign citizens.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.

Capitalists … can grow rich only where there is an oppressed body of labourers

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.

“I make you free,” so speak the Rights of Man to the laborer, “free to earn a wretched living and turn your employer into a millionaire; free to sell him your liberty for a mouthful of bread. He will imprison you ten hours or twelve hours in his workshops; he will not let you go till you are wearied to the marrow of your bones, till you have just enough strength left to gulp down pour soup and sink into a heavy sleep. You have but one of your rights that you may not sell, and that is the right to pay taxes.

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.

The struggle against imperialism develops ever more into the decisive struggle between capital and labor.