Utah Phillips Quotes

Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.

History is written by the rich so the poor get blamed for everything.

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

'The Deuce' takes a look at the remarkable paradigm of capitalism and labor: where money goes and how it's routed; who has power and who doesn't; who is exploited and who's not.

Charity has always been a expression of the guilty consciences of a ruling class.

There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe.

The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.

Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism.

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.

There is no alternative to class struggle.

He who before was the money owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labor-power follows as his laborer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other hesitant, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but a hiding.

The rich don't have to kill to eat. They employ people, as they call it. The rich don't do evil themselves. They pay. People do all they can to please them, and everybody's happy.

It's often said that the Democrats fight 'for the little guy.' That's true: liberals fight to make sure the little guy stays little! Think about it. What if all the little guys were to prosper and become big guys? Then what? Who would liberals pretend to fight for? If the bamboozlers fight for anything, it's to ensure that the little guy stays angry at those nasty conservatives who are holding him down.

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.

We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?

It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.

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

Control would be exercised by a few over the political conduct of the many by first acquiring that control over the labor and earnings of the great body of people.

When the proletariat is not organized enough to conduct a successful struggle against the political power of the ruling class, it must be trained for such a purpose by steady and hostile instigation.

The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, no worse, for a people than another.

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.

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.