Selig Perlmann Quotes

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.

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.

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

My heart lies with the workers.

… when so many people seem to be beset by fears of socialism and communism, it seems particularly important that the workers of our country should have an opportunity to study the labor movement and the economic problem of the day. Only through understanding can they be expected to look at questions in a comprehensive way. Our great difficulty in the past has always been that individual groups only see their own point of view and could not understand the situation as a whole.… Those who are interested in the future development of this country must be interested in the education of the workers.

Instead of focusing on attacking unions and the labor movement, we need to find ways to strengthen and empower workers so we can put more money in the pockets of middle class families.

I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

While unions did not play a part in my family life when I was being brought up, my early years were most certainly spent in a working-class community.

By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie.

Workers do not strike every day, they cannot do that the way they function in the capitalist economy. The way they have to live by selling their labor power makes that impossible.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

My father was a meat worker. He was a union organizer in the meat workers union.

The labor movement has failed to capture the support of the public at large.

In Russia bureaucracy as the ruling class is master of production and produce, and the Russian workers are an exploited class.

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.

Workers of the world unite!

Workers! Leave the Socialist Party. It is your enemy and ours.

When wage controls and other legal restrictions on Canadian workers of the government's only answer to that country's deepening economic problems, the labor movement's response has to be fundamentally political.

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

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.

The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting all working peoples of all nations and tongues and kindreds.

Fight labor's demands to the last ditch and there will come a time when it seizes the whole of power, makes itself sovereign and takes what it used to ask.

Any member of the party who … advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation, shall be expelled from membership of the party.

It is essential that there be organization of labor…. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

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