“The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers.”

—  Friedrich Engels

(1847)

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 "The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers." by Friedrich Engels?
Friedrich Engels photo
Friedrich Engels 87
German social scientist, author, political theorist, and ph… 1820–1895

Related quotes

James Connolly photo

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

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

in P. Beresford Ellis (ed.), James Connolly - Selected Writings, p. 191.

Eugene V. Debs photo

“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)

“Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything's different.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Variant: You know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon... everything's different.

“The principal contradiction within capitalism from the outset was that between the capitalists and the workers. To keep their system going, the capitalists had constantly to step up the rate of exploitation of their workers. At the same time, European workers were gaining increasing mastery over the means of production in the factories and mines, and they were learning to work collectively in big enterprises and within their own trade union structures. If the bourgeoisie continued to deprive them of the major part of the fruits of their own labor and to oppress them socially and politically, then those two classes were set on a collision path. Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, Marx had predicted class collision would come in the form of revolution in which workers would emerge victorious. The capitalists were terribly afraid of that possibility, knowing full well that they themselves had seized power from the feudal landlord class by means of revolution.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 314.

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay”

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

“The worker in a capitalist state — and that is his deepest misfortune — is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Neil Gaiman photo

“Nothing will remain of the armies of the living and of the dead, of the dreams of the gods and the bravery of their warriors, nothing but ash.
Soon after, the swollen ocean will swallow the ashes as it washes across all the land, and everything living will be forgotten under the sunless sky.
That is how the worlds will end, in ash and flood, in darkness and in ice. That is the final destiny of the gods.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Source: Norse Mythology (2017), Chapter 16, “Ragnarok: The Final Destiny of the Gods” (p. 279)

Marcus Aurelius photo

“The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“We must remember that machines do not, as in the capitalist system, compete with workers or enslave workers. Workers must view machines as the liberators of their force. Machines are placed at the service of workers as soon as the exploitation of man by man stops. And that is what we are striving for: we are trying to turn machines into liberating instruments of peasants, so they will have more time for leisure, so they will have more time to study, to develop in every sense, to achieve the most important thing we must achieve: individuals developed to the full, this is the aim we are all struggling for.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Speech at the National Sugar Plenary Meeting in Camagüey, February 9, 1963 Ernesto Che Guevera. Escritos y discursos. Op. cit., vol. 7.
On Automation (1963)

Leon Trotsky photo

“In case of actual danger, the social democracy banks not on the "Iron Front" but on the Prussian police. It is reckoning without its host! The fact that the police was originally recruited in large numbers from among social-democratic workers is absolutely meaningless. Consciousness is determined by environment even in this instance. The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker. Of late years, these policemen have had to do much more fighting with revolutionary workers than with Nazi students. Such training does not fail to leave its effects. And above all: every policeman knows that though governments may change, the police remains.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Source: Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944), Ch. 4

Related topics