Class Dominance Quotes

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

The former ruling class kept the community of actors in ignorance by means of various lies.

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them

The collectivizations and socializations in the economy count for nothing when State power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

The ruling ideas of each age have always been the ideas of the ruling class.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

The ruling class is the rich. . . . And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.

One of the most constant laws of history is … immediately [if] any one class becomes preponderant—nobles, clergy, army, or the people—it speedily tends to enslave others.

Look, in neoliberalism the ruling elite understand something.

The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution - particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements

The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like Venice's oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.

The courts, over time, have always responded to the dominant classes in our society.

The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political] parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class.

Inequality [is] a social control mechanism supported by financial interests’ belief in the desirability of oligarchy.

The Confederacy was built on a false idea, not of a common government, but a government of gentlemen, of men of money, men of brains, who hold slaves.

Democracy is not the ideally best form of government … unless it can be so organized that no class, not even the most numerous, shall be able to reduce all but itself to political insignificance, and direct the course of legislation and administration by its exclusive class interest.

The exclusive owners of property ever have been, ever will, and perhaps ever ought to be the virtual rulers of mankind

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth. The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking action of dominant classes.

Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.

In England the rich own the poor and the men own the women.

It matters not one iota what political party is in power or what President holds the rein of office. We are not politicians, or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all our tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connections, our purchased Senators, our hungry Congressmen, and our public-speaking demagogues, into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign that threatens the integrity of our estate.

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same