William Green Quotes

The progress of society is mainly the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.

Entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

Every socialist recognizes the dependence of the workingman on the capitalist.

Whether as victim, demon, or hero, the industrial worker of the past century filled the public imagination in books, movies, news stories, and even popular songs, putting a grimy human face on capitalism while dramatizing the social changes and conflicts it brought.

I may, and I think I represent a tradition that means a lot to me, which has really always been about fighting for others, for middle-class families, for working class - for working people, you know, and that's a tradition and a commitment that I take very seriously.

With the laborers of England generally, does not the moral coercion of want subject their will as despotically to that of their employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier, the seaman, or the slave?

The boycott, which the bourgeoisie regards with sentimental tenderness when directed against the trade of its commercial rival, it considers as a crime when employed by the workers in defense of their livelihood.

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

Workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe, or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear, and to be housed withal — to say nothing of their share of the other social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as education and artistic gratification.

The concept of a 'job' is pretty recent. If you go back a few hundred years, everyone was either a slave or a serf, or living off slave or serf labor to pursue science or philosophy or art.

I'm a worker, but I think that all workers get an idea of what to do to get free. Any kind of bondage, even economic bondage, is slavery.

If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.

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.

Long live the liberation of the workers off all countries from the infernal chasm of war, exploitation and slavery!

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny.

Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.

These interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries.

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 focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.

Without Socialism the working class is a heterogeneous mixture of different categories, some of which have independent, varying interests, sometimes opposed to each other.

The individual's freedom to withhold personal service is basic to the constitutional concept of liberty. Without this freedom, working people would be at the total mercy of their employers, unable either to bargain effectively or to extricate themselves from an intolerable situation. Such a situation would make a mockery out of the fundamental right to pursue life, liberty and happiness....

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

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.