“I do not believe it would be a bad thing for the British working-class if Germany defeated us. It would be a disaster for the profit-makers and capitalists, but not necessarily for the working-class.”

— Stafford Cripps

Speech at Stockport (14 November 1936), The Manchester Guardian (15 November 1936), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 151.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I do not believe it would be a bad thing for the British working-class if Germany defeated us. It would be a disaster f…" by Stafford Cripps?

Stafford Cripps 20

British politician 1889–1952

Related quotes

“The details supplied by Khrushchev on Stalin’s methods … lead us to believe in the existence in these countries of a veritable state capitalism, exploiting the working class in a manner not very different from the way the working class is used in capitalist countries.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Letter to Maurice Thorez resigning from the French Communist Party, October 24, 1956

“Money cannot make armaments. Armaments can only be made by the skill of the British working class, and it is the British working class who would be called upon to use them. To-day you have the most glorious opportunity that the workers have ever had if you will only use the necessity of capitalism in order to get power yourselves. The capitalists are in your hands. Refuse to make munitions, refuse to make armaments, and they are helpless. They would have to hand the control of the country over to you.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech at Eastleigh, Hampshire (14 March 1937), quoted in The Times (15 March 1937), p. 21.

“Present-day society is wholly based on the exploitation of the vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of the landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a slave society, since the “free” workers, who all their life work for the capitalists, are “entitled” only to such means of subsistence as are essential for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 10, pp. 83–87.
Collected Works

“What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech at The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I. (December 1926) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/SEP26.html
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“We live in the capitalist system, so-called because its dominated b the capitalist class. In this system the capitalists are the rulers and the workers the subjects. The capitalists are in a decided minority and yet they rule because of the ignorance of the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Working Class Politics (1910)

“If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I would shout, 'Freedom for the working class!”

Mary Harris Jones (1837–1930) Irish-born American labor and community organizer

Autobiography of Mother Jones, p. 146 http://books.google.com/books?id=lFFfyG6DPXMC&pg=PA146

“The working class must be emancipated by the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
Variant: War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.
Context: 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.