Russia Quotes

We can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that.

Many workers already realize that the rule of the Socialist or Communist party will be only the concealed form of the rule of the bourgeois class in which the exploitation and suppression of the working class remains.

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.

… if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality, must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia.

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins.

In Russia the workers are powerless, kept in spiritual as well as physical bondage. The American workers are free to take up the fight, free to act, to read, to publish, to discuss, to instruct themselves, to combine in unions, to assemble in meeting, to strike. Hence it is only here [America] that the fight for peace can begin…. The [solution] consists in mass-actions of American workers against capitalist power. If they should proceed to wrench the decision on policy from big capital, the most essential step to deter the threat of atomic war would be made

A struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the Earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.

The history of all countries shows that, by its own efforts, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness—that is, the realization of the need of getting together in unions in order to fight employers and to demand from the government the passing of laws necessary for the workers.

To the workman we appeal by the memory and traditions of his own sufferings and wrongs to be vigilant to avoid the great guilt of inflicting upon his fellow-citizens the injustice from which he has himself escaped.

That's the Rebel Girl, That's the Rebel Girl. To the working class she's a precious pearl. She brings courage, pride and joy To the fighting Rebel Boy We've had girls before, but we need some more In the Industrial Workers of the World For it's great to fight for freedom With a Rebel Girl

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.

The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

Everything is produced by the workers, and the minute they try to get something by their unions they meet all the opposition that can be mustered by those who now get what they produce.

We are with you in this work. Workingmen must form a party of their own, take charge of the government, dispose gilded fraud, and put honest toil in power.

The revolution in Russia was victorious with the help of the poor peasants. This should always be borne in mind here in Western Europe and all the world over. But the workers in Western Europe stand alone: this should never be forgotten in Russia.

What shall the workers do? Sit idly by and see the vast resources of nature and the human mind be utilized and monopolized for the benefit of the comparative few? No. The laborers must learn to think and act, and soon, too, that only by the power of organization, and common concert of action, can either their manhood be maintained, their rights to life (work to sustain it) be recognized, and liberty and rights secured.

Why does the great body of workingmen still permit itself to be ruled and exploited by the capitalists? Why are they not in a position to drive the minority of exploiters from power? Because they are an unorganized, undisciplined, individualistic and ignorant mass. The majority is impotent because it consists of a divided crowd of individuals each one of whom wishes to act according to his own impulse, regard his own interests.

Solidarity forever …. We stand outcast and starving from the wonders we have made.

Solidarity Forever

Every capitalist is your enemy. Every working man is your friend.

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.

No strike is a loss or failure to the workers, even if the point sought is not gained for the time being. If naught else they teach the capitalists that they are expensive luxuries.

Trade unionism means the enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.

Only idiots think that the proletariat will win a majority right away. First we topple the bourgeoisie. Then we seize power. That is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The emancipation of the masses can become a reality only with the abolition of the competitive system of society.