Mother Jones Quotes

As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These “humanitarian parts” are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its “antirent and anticapital parts,” means to get rid of the poodle..

I stand with the working-class citizens.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

Wage theft, worker rights and workplace discrimination should not be swept under the rug. The United States cannot have a functional economy where all the gains go to the corporate class while all the pain goes to regular workers.

Let him who will, be he economic tyrant or sordid mercenary, pit his strength against this mighty upsurge of human sentiment now being crystallized in the hearts of thirty million workers who clamor for the establishment of industrial democracy and for participation in its tangible fruits. He is a madman of a fool who believes that this river of human sentiment can be damned.

What the labor movement did in this country is to make sure that capitalism worked.

I’ll stop demonizing business when business stops putting their profits before the country and starts putting their workers before their greed.

For the working class of the world the choice is simple, either to take the organized political action necessary to introduce Socialism or to continue with capitalism. The one thing that cannot be had is to impose on the capitalist jungle some socially acceptable and satisfying wages policy.

The working class must be emancipated by the working class., Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class. Child labor must be abolished by the working class. Society must be reconstructed by the working class. The working class must be employed by the working class ., The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class. War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.

Before there were unions, there was no middle class.

We must organize. We must protest. We must cry out in a loud voice that America needs a raise. We must keep working until workers in this country don't have to struggle to make ends meet.

Each reform, therefore, improving the economical and political situation of the workers proves to be an arm that increases the energy with which the proletarian struggle of classes is fought.

We've got to keep an eye on the battle that we face - a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. And there's only one way to beat and win that war - the one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.

Socialism as such from its very origins is a workers' system, and when there occur deviations, it is workers that react first.

Only with the tools of production in their own hands could the workers ever hope to control their own lives and receive the fruits of their labor.

A nation has its first obligation to its own workers and its own poor.

Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent.

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.

Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.

When the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century brought a rapid increase in wealth, the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth they were creating was conceded only after riots and strikes.

The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.

The only thing that stands between corporate greed and poverty is the union.

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

To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on Saturday night, Socialism does not mean much more than better wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you about.