Quotes about worker
page 9

“what is called the flexibility of the labor market means that no job is secure. There is no longer a clear division but rather a large gray area in which all workers hover precariously between employment and unemployment. Second there is no "reserve" in the sense that no labor power is outside the process of social production. The poor, the unemployed, and the underemployed in our societies are in fact active in social production even when they do not have a waged position.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

131
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Sense

“Unlike most great talkers, the rooks are good workers, too.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

February Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

“The Democratic Party has to return to its populist base, to rediscover the party of FDR, the one that appealed to my grandfather and the factory workers and others. To do this, there must be a period of self-criticism. We must face this head-on or continue to be governed by the Republicans. We must examine how we set up the rise of Republicans on campuses, where the dissent should be coming from. It is explained by the lack of energy; and ideas from the other side. As a result, campuses are the most depressing places, devoid of passion.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Idea, Passion

“Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

The Mother (1945)

Children, Silence, Forgetting

“Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love-it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Source: Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October, 1956

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/26/world/asia/29leekuanyew-quotes.html

Love, People, Making love, Sense

“I heard one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek speak on the rich young ruler text that Rich (Mullins) had talked about in Wheaton's chapel. The teaching pastor had said, "now this doesn't mean you have to go sell your rollerblades and golf clubs," and he went on to "contextualize" the teaching to show that we just need to be careful not to make idols of our things. I wasn't so sure about that. Jesus doesn't tell the man to be a better steward, or to treat his workers fairly, or not to make money an idol. He tells this highly educated and devoutly religious young man that he lacks one thing: giving up everything he owns to give the poor.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution (2006), p. 103

Money, Education

“I am writing this preliminary statement of my reasons for not paying taxes ahead of time, as I was recently informed by your office that I would be imprisoned for my constant refusal to pay taxes. Upon my arrest I will give you the correct report of my earnings to date in 1948. My belief in the iniquity of government, which exists primarily to wage war, has been stated this last six years in my statement to your department when I refused to pay any tax, and also in articles in the Catholic Worker.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

"Tax Statement (1949)"

War, Time

“Those humble but indomitable workers, to whom later generations referred by the collective name of Baale Masorah, Masters of Tradition, performed in obscurity their Herculean task of guarding the Biblical Text against loss or variation.”

Robert Gordis (1908–1992) American rabbi and theologian

"The Biblical Text in the Making", p. 1

Loss

“The canon of the Sharia and the Church, closely linked with the laws of the bourgeosie, treated women as a commodity, a thing to be bought and sold by the male… Just as the bourgeosie had made the worker into its proletarian, so had the savage ancient canons of the [shariah], the Church, feudalism and the bourgeosie, reduced woman to the proletariat of the man.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Writings, The Artful Albanian

Women, Law

“The resettlement of populations scattered by war and by enemy occupation is one of the problems with which Europe will be most urgently faced when the occupied countries are set free. Since hostilities began, millions of people have left homes destroyed or threatened with destruction; millions more have been transplanted, deported, or expelled to make room for foreign newcomers who have taken over their property; millions of others again have been taken prisoner or individually recruited as workers and sent away from their countries to serve the occupying power.”

Eugene M. Kulischer (1881–1956) American sociologist

Prefatory note
The Displacement Of Population In Europe, 1943

Hostility, War, People, Home

“The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government.”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

Labor and the Nation speech (September 3, 1937)

Life, Home

“Never till now, in the history of an Earth which to this hour nowhere refuses to grow corn if you will plough it, to yield shirts if you will spin and weave in it, did the mere manual two-handed worker (however it might fare with other workers) cry in vain for such "wages" as he means by "fair wages," namely food and warmth!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Food, History, Cry

“We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity. The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production. We must do this, in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into less work for us.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

“The inhuman character of Stalinism was demonstrated by the repressions of prisoners of war who survived fascist camps and then were thrown into Stalinist camps, the anti-worker "decrees," the criminal exile of entire peoples condemned to slow death, the unenlightened zoological kind of anti-Semitism that was characteristic of Stalin bureaucracy and the NKVD (and Stalin personally), the Ukrainophobia characteristic of Stalin, and the draconian laws for the protection of socialist property (five years' imprisonment for stealing some grain from the fields and so forth) that served mainly as a means of fulfilling the demands of the "slave market."”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships

Death, War, People, Law

“The ingenuity of the average worker is sufficient to outwit any system of controls devised by management.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 12 (in 2006 edition)

“The IWW's affirm as a fundamental principle that the creators of wealth are entitled to all they create. Thus they find themselves pitted against the whole profit-making system. They declare that there can be no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want while the master class lives in luxury. They insist that there can be no peace until the workers organize as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution and abolish the wage system. In other words, the workers in their collectivity must own and operate all the essential industrial institutions and secure to each laborer the full value of his product.
It is for these principles, this declaration of class solidarity, that the IWWs are being persecuted, beaten, imprisoned, murdered. If the capitalist class had the sense it is reputed to have, it would know that violence is the worst weapon that can be used against men who have nothing to lose and the world to gain.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

What is the IWW? (1918)

Men, World, Peace, Sense

“Knowledge workers have high degrees of expertise, education, or experience, and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution or application of knowledge.”

Thomas H. Davenport (1954) American academic

Source: Thinking for a Living, 2005, p. 9

Education, Knowledge

“Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below? When I see the temporal suffering of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied all the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all. The Enemy, true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalize and torment us — to mock the incessant hunger, which, during this present phase of great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Letter V
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Hunger, War, Fear, Feeling

“The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to the management.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Source: Out Of The Crisis (1982), p. 134

World, Dreams, Way, Problem

“The declared object of deflation was the restoration of the gold standard at pre-war parity. Its actual effect has been to create unemployment by the restriction of industrial credit. By the lever of unemployment it has forced down wages and has thus facilitated the return to gold through the reduction of prices. An incidental effect has been to transfer purchasing power from the workers, whose wages have been reduced, to the bondholders, whose interest has remained the same. It has also doubled the real burden of Debt since 1920, and was largely responsible for the mining lock-out last year, by the reduction in terms of sterling of the money which we receive for coal sold abroad. Deflation, in fact, has been responsible for a sinister catalogue of disasters which can be substantiated in detailed argument that has never yet been rebutted.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

New Leader (20 September 1927), quoted in Robert Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (Papermacs, 1981), pp. 152-153.

Money, War

“We foreign journalists in Moscow used to amuse ourselves, as a matter of fact, by competing with one another as to who could wish upon one of these intelligentsia visitors to the USSR the most outrageous fantasy…One story I floated myself, for which I received considerable acclaim, was that the huge queues outside food shops came about because the Soviet workers were so ardent in building Socialism that they just wouldn't rest, and the only way the government could get them to rest for even two or three hours was organizing a queue for them to stand in. I laugh at it all now, but at the time you can imagine what a shock it was to someone like myself, who had been brought up to regard liberal intellectuals as the samurai, the absolute elite, of the human race, to find that they could be taken in by deceptions which a half-witted boy would see through in an instant…I could never henceforth regard the intelligentsia as other than credulous fools who nonetheless became the media's prophetic voices, their heirs and successors remaining so still.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

The Great Liberal Death Wish, lecture at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA, March 1979. Transcript in Imprimis http://imprimisarchives.hillsdale.edu/file/archives/pdf/1979_05_Imprimis.pdf May 1979 (pdf).

Food, Fools, Way, Imagination

“for this also we will honour the poor Manchester Insurrection, and augur well of it. A deep unspoken sense lies in these strong men,— inconsiderable, almost stupid, as all they can articulate of it is. Amid all violent stupidity of speech, a right noble instinct of what is doable and what is not doable never forsakes them: the strong inarticulate men and workers, whom Fact patronises; of whom, in all difficulty and work whatsoever, there is good augury!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men, Stupidity, Sense, Strong

“Now let us gather into one bouquet, from the King's garden, these seven fragrant flowers: Jesus the Son of God; Jesus our sin-bearer; Jesus the giver of eternal life; Jesus the keeper of our undying souls; Jesus the hearer of our prayers; Jesus the chastener who can turn crosses into crowns; and Jesus the wonder-worker who changes us into eternal likeness unto Himself! These flowers will keep sweet till heaven dawns.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 102.

Life, God, Soul, Flowers

“The interests of the working class and of its struggle against capitalism demand complete solidarity and the closest unity of the workers of all nations; they demand resistance to the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie of every nationalist.”

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

"Right of Nations to Self-Determination", (1904), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“They are the working class ‘sublated’ – improved upon and replaced. They may be as clueless as to strategy as the workers of the early nineteenth century were, but they are no longer in thrall to the system. They are enormously dissatisfied with it. They are a group whose diverse interests converge on the need to make postcapitalism happen, to force the info-tech revolution to create a new kind of economy, where as much as possible is produced free, for collaborative common use, reversing the tide of inequality. Neoliberalism can offer them only a world of stagnant growth and state-level bankruptcy: austerity until death, but with an upgraded version of the iPhone every few years. And the freedom they cherish is perennially hemmed in by the neoliberal state – from the NSA’s mass surveillance techniques to those of the Chinese internet police. Above their heads, politics in many countries has become infested by a kleptocratic mafia, whose strategy is to deliver growth at the price of suppressing freedom and expanding inequality.”

Paul Mason (journalist) book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)

Death, World, Freedom, Country

“Acting in collaboration with the National Research Council, the Western Electric Company had for three years been engaged upon an attempt to assess the effect of illumination upon the worker and his work.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation, (1933), p. 55, chapter 3: The Hawthorne experiment Western Electric Company

“Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions — beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement — near tomato fields in San Diego County, tomato fields which use the most modern farm technology.
Vicious rats gnaw on them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices. And they carry in water from irrigation pumps.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

What the Future Holds (1984)

Food, Sleep, Tree, Water

“I would say that in order to reach the people you must feel as if you are part of the people. You must know what the people want, what they need, and what they feel. You must do a little self-analysis, study the university's statistics, and ask how many workers, how many peasants, how many men who make their living by their sweat eight hours a day are here in this university.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Speech at the University of Las Villas (1959)

Men, People, Feeling, Study

“The sound education of the workers and their thorough organization, both economic and political, on the bassis of the class struggle, must precede their emancipation. Without such education and organization they can mke no substantial progress, and they will be robbed of the fruits of any temporary victory they may achieve, as they have been through all the centuries of the past.”

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

Sound Socialist Tactics (1912)

Education, Past, Victory

“There is no such thing as the universal ‘Man’ never has been, never will be, there is the worker and there is the one who exploits the worker and those who abet him.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

P 219
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

Universe

“This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers…. the most striking growth will be in “knowledge technologists:” computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals…. They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as “professionals.” Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—-and perhaps also political—-force over the next decades.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

"The next society" Economist.com http://www.economist.com/ (November 2001) <br class="br">1990s and later

Knowledge

“The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge. This transformation was signalled by McGregor, but we must go further.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

(2006; 366) Section "Beyond McGregor's Theory Y," by Thomas A. Kochan. Prepared for the Sloan School 50th Anniversary Session on October 11 (2002).
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)

People, Nature, Knowledge

“. The central theme of contemporary autonomist Marxism is a shift from giant organizations and insurrectional seizure to gradualism and Exodus. The rapid transformation of the working class, the blurring of the lines between work and the rest of life, and the shift in meeting a growing share of our needs into the informal and social economy, mean that the Old Left’s workerism (and like Harry Cleaver, I include syndicalism and council communism in the Old Left), its focus on the production process as the center of society, and its treatment of the industrial proletariat as the subject of history, have become obsolete. In this regard, read Toni Negri’s contrast of the Multitude to previous Old Left ideas of the proletariat. Mostly, I call it a heroic fantasy because any model that envisions a post-capitalist transition based on the universal adoption of any monolithic, schematized social model is as ridiculous as Socrates and Glaucon discussing what musical instruments and poetic metres will be permitted in the perfect state. The real world version of the post-capitalist transition — just as with the transition to capitalism five centuries earlier — isn’t a matter of any single cohesive social class, as the subject of history, systematically remaking the world guided by some single, comprehensive ideology, and organized around a uniform institutional model. It’s a matter of a wide variety of prefigurative institutions and technological building blocks that already exist in the present society, continuing to grow and coalesce together until they reach sufficient critical mass for a phase transition — a phase transition whose outlines can only be guessed at in the most general terms. This is the model advocated by Michel Bauwens, by Paul Mason, by John Holloway, by Peter Frase, and by a lot of other people who can hardly be fitted into any American individualist ghetto.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

'In Which the Anarcho-Syndicalists Discover C4SS' (2016)
Other Writing

Life, People, World, Music

“In the first stages of the industrial revolution, animals were used as machines. As also were children. Later, in the so-called post-industrial societies, they are treated as raw material. Animals required for food are processed like manufactured commodities. … This reduction of the animal … is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units. Indeed, during this period an approach to animals often prefigured an approach to man. The mechanical view of the animal’s work capacity was later applied to that of workers. F. W. Taylor who developed the “Taylorism” of timemotion studies and “scientific” management of industry proposed that work must be “so stupid” and so phlegmatic that he (the worker) “more nearly resembles in his mental makeup the ox than any other type.” Nearly all modern techniques of social conditioning were first established with animal experiments. As were also the methods of so-called intelligence testing. Today behaviourists like Skinner imprison the very concept of man within the limits of what they conclude from their artificial tests with animals.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: About Looking (1980), Chapter "Why Look at Animals?"

Men, Children, Stupidity, Food

“If Korzybski cannot be said to have established an empirical science, what then has he done? He has pointed a way toward the establishment of such a science. He was a precursor of an intellectual revolution which is just now beginning and which promises to match that of the Renaissance. If Korzybski is seen in this role, then the question of his originality or erudition is not important. He might have something of a dilettante in him. He might have pretended to have more specialized knowledge than he actually had. Great portions of his outlook might be found in the works of more modest and more meticulous workers, That is not important. He was a man of vision and an apostle. Such men are all too rare in our age of specialization.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1950s, "What is Semantics?", 1950, p. 6 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962;95)

Men, Age, Way, Question

“Under the leadership of their democratic governments, all the anti-Japanese people in the Liberated Areas of China are called upon to join organizations of workers, peasants, youth and women, and cultural, professional and other organizations, which will wholeheartedly perform various tasks in support of the armed forces. Those tasks are not limited to rallying the people to join the army, transporting grain for it, caring for soldiers' families and helping the troops in meeting their material needs. They also include mobilizing the guerrilla units, militia and self-defence corps to make widespread raids and lay land mines against the enemy, gather intelligence about him, comb out traitors and spies, transport and protect the wounded and take direct part in the army's operations.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

Women, People, Youth, Family

“I will not eat food from restaurants while campaigning. My party workers know my diet and keep ragi mudde (ragi balls and sambar ready before I reach the villages.”

H. D. Deve Gowda (1933) Indian politician

Source: Shyam Sundar Vattam "Gowda Lives on Ragi Mudde on the Campaign Trail".

Food

“More important than these two considerations was the fact that Russia was at no time concerned with the two policies ‑ the forcing of opium on China and the trade in human flesh ‑ which both the people and Government of China resented and which brought her untold humiliation. … In the `pig trade' ‑ that is, the forcible transportation of Chinese workers to plantations and mines again, in defiance of the orders of Government and of the protests of the people ‑ in this new slave trade, where sometimes forty per cent of those transported died on the way, all Western Powers including America were deeply involved. Russia, for whatever reason, was no party to it. It was these two, the `poison trade' and the `pig trade', that made the iron enter the soul of the Chinese and made them bitterly anti‑foreign.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

People, Way, Soul, Time

“I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Money, Happiness, Pleasure

“The resourcefulness of West African market women is well known, but it was put to petty purposes. The problem posed to capitalists and workers in Europe while making insecticide from African pyrethrum was one requiring that resourcefulness be expressed in a technical direction. But the problem posed to an African market woman by the necessity to make a penny more profit on every tin of imported sardines was resolved sometimes by a little more vigor, sometimes by a touch of dishonesty, and sometimes by resort to “juju."”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 365.

Women, Problem

“Does a social worker have an obligation to preserve confidentiality if an HIV positive client refuses to inform his/ her sexual partner of the infection (while persisting in behavior that puts the person at risk), or does the social worker have an obligation to warn the partner of the peril?”

Charles Zastrow (1942) American sociologist

Source: The practice of social work. (1995), p. 70

Behavior, Personality

“The real reason for withholding taxes is the unwillingness of workers to share their incomes with the government and the consequent difficulties of collection. To overcome this handicap, the government has simply impressed employers into its service as involuntary and unpaid tax collectors. It is a form of conscription. Disregarding the right of privacy, which is an essential of liberty, the government’s agents may, under the law, invade the employer’s office, demand his accounts, and punish him for any infraction which they believe he has committed; they can impound his property and inflict a penalty for not having collected taxes for the government.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 43

Law, Penalty

“I've extended my hospitality to one of my friends, a former student of Gleyre's, who lacks a studio at the moment. Renoir, that's his name, is a real worker, he takes advantage of my models and helps me pay for them.”

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) French painter

In a letter to his parents, c. 1868; as quoted in Frédéric Bazille, Prophet of Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn & Dixon Gallery, Memphis, 1992-93, p. 38
Renoir would move in with Bazille around 1868, and Bazille's letter is only one example of his charitable nature
1866 - 1870

Help

“The civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants.”

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

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 379–383.
Collected Works

War, People, Way, History

“Less than a century ago the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren…. American industry organized misery into sweatshops and proclaimed the right of capital to act without restraints and without conscience. The inspiring answer to this intolerable and dehumanizing existence was economic organization through trade unions. The worker became determined not to wait for charitable impulses to grow in his employer. He constructed the means by which fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him or the wheels of industry, which he alone turned, would halt and wealth for no one would be available…”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to AFL–CIO (1961)

Life, Waiting, Wealth

“If I may again refer to the different political concepts, there is, I think rather unfortunately, running through all the speeches and writings of our Soviet friends the theory that they alone represent the workers — that they alone are democratic.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 423, col. 1827.
Speech in the House of Commons, 4 June 1946.

Thinking

“If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into a prolonged recession. … As Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Family, Country

“In this country, we believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children, and we're all Americans. We believe -- we believe in low taxes, spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk-takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

God, Children, People, Boy

“A multitude is irreducible multiplicity; the singular social differences that constitute the multitude must always be expressed and can never be flattened into sameness, unity, identity, or indifference. … the compact identities of factory workers in the dominant countries have been undermined with the rise of short-term contracts and forced mobility of new forms of work; how migration has challenged traditional notions of national identity; how familiy identity has changed and so forth.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

105
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Change, Country, Indifference

“When five men were captured in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee early in the morning on Saturday June 17, 1972 I had just completed a three-year stint as an assistant United States Attorney in Nashville. Ironically I had resigned the day before the break-in. I was about to become an unpaid political worker- the middle Tennessee director for the reelection campaign of Sen. Howard Baker.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 3
At That Point in Time, Initial involvement

Men

“Many workers in the biological sciences — physiologists, psychologists, sociologists — are interested in cybernetics and would like to apply its methods and techniques to their own specialty. Many have, however, been prevented from taking up the subject by an impression that its use must be preceded by a long study of electronics and advanced pure mathematics; for they have formed the impression that cybernetics and these subjects are inseparable.
The author is convinced, however, that this impression is false. The basic ideas of cybernetics can be treated without reference to electronics, and they are fundamentally simple; so although advanced techniques may be necessary for advanced applications, a great deal can be done, especially in the biological sciences, by the use of quite simple techniques, provided they are used with a clear and deep understanding of the principles involved. It is the author’s belief that if the subject is founded in the common-place and well understood, and is then built up carefully, step by step, there is no reason why the worker with only elementary mathematical knowledge should not achieve a complete understanding of its basic principles. With such an understanding he will then be able to see exactly what further techniques he will have to learn if he is to proceed further; and, what is particularly useful, he will be able to see what techniques he can safely ignore as being irrelevant to his purpose.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Preface
An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956)

Mathematics, Idea, Understanding, Knowledge

“The Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns.”

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

Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 213–63.
Collected Works

“The managers - these administrators, experts, directing engineers, production executives, propaganda specialists, technocrats - are the only social group among almost all of whose members we find an attitude of self-confidence. Bankers, capitalist owners, liberal politicians, workers, farmers, shopkeepers-all these display, in public and private, doubts and fears and worries and gloom. But no one who comes into contact with managers will fail to have noticed a very considerable assurance in their whole bearing. They know that they are indispensable in modern society.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 281, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 13-4

Fear, Confidence, Self-confidence

“Companies should have well-defined procedures for dealing with the planned departure of a valued knowledge worker… Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that most firms are moving in the wrong direction on recruitment and retention issues.”

Thomas H. Davenport (1954) American academic

Source: Thinking for a Living, 2005, p. 197

Departure, Knowledge

“The woman, your sister, has achieved victory. She will share with you, sooner or later, the responsibilities of administration. The peasant, likewise, has achieved victory, and so has the employer. Formerly, the employer used to fear for his life and for his property. Now, the employer and the worker are brothers working together in both prosperity and adversity to protect the gains of the Iraqi Republic. They work constantly not for any transient selfish interest but for the interest of the people.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

Speech delivered in the gardens of the Shaab Hall (May 1, 1959).
Principles of the 14th July Revolution (1959)

Life, People, Fear, Sister

“• New Special Provision under the Department of Health on the National Health Insurance Program, allocating the sum of P37.060 billion to cover the full premium subsidy of the health insurance premium for the following: a) Indigent Families under the NHTS-PR of the DSWD; b) Existing 2014 Poor and Low Income Enrolees, other than the Indigent Families under the NHTS-PR of DSWD, enrolled under the National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) whose enrolment have been validated and renewed for 2015; c) Indigent Elected and Appointed Barangay Officials, which shall include the Punong Barangay, Members of the Sangguniang Barangay, Barangay Secretary, Barangay Treasurer, Barangay Health Workers and Barangay Tanod; and d) Senior Citizens, again, in accordance with law;”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Health, Family, Law

“Literally everything is based on the capacity to attract, retain, and efficiently use talented workers.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 3, e-Business and the New Economy, p. 91

“If we are to live and grow as a university, one of whose paramount tasks is to not only leaders of thought and action but also workers dedicated to the service of the nation, we cannot sit idle with philosophic concern and let things drift as they may. So far as we are concerned, it is for us to set our house in order. It is for us, and specially the younger generation, Hindus, Moslems and Christians alike, to combine and resolutely stand for the permanent well-being of our province and to rescue her from the deadly stagnation which now seems to envelop her.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Calcutta University Convocation on 2nd March 1935.

Universe, Housing

“Later, I heard my brother ask our father why he’d been so generous. “A man can never be too generous,” said our dad, “when he’s generous to a good, hardworking honest hombre, because that man will then break his back to do all he can for you. But…you be generous to a relative or a lazy, no-good worker, and they then think you’re a fool, lose respect for you, and start thinking you owe them something.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Fools, Thinking

“When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

" The intellectuals and the workers http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no1/kautsky.html," Die Neue Zeit, vol. 22, no. 4 (1903)

Understanding, Science

“One purpose of the USA Freedom Corps will be homeland security. America needs retired doctors and nurses who can be mobilized in major emergencies; volunteers to help police and fire departments; transportation and utility workers well-trained in spotting danger.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Freedom, Help, Training

“It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.”

Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and sexiest man

biographyonline.net http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/alex-fleming.html

Idea

“We ourselves, the workers, will organize large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created; we shall rely on our own experience as workers, we shall establish strict, iron discipline supported by the state power of the armed workers, we shall reduce the role of he state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, moderately paid "managers"( of course, with the aid of technicians of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian revolution”

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

3.3, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)

Support

“In the new version of the law of supply and demand, jobs are so cheap — as measured by the pay — that a worker is encouraged to take on as many of them as she possibly can.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), Ch. 2: Scrubbing in Maine (p. 60)

Law

“The idea is to create a picture among the population that we're all one happy family. We're America, we have a national interest, we're working together. There are us nice workers, the firms in which we work and the government who works for us. We pick them — they're our servants. And that's all there is in the world — no other conflicts, no other categories of people, no further structure to the system beyond that. Certainly nothing like class. Unless you happen to be in the ruling class, in which case you're very well aware of it.”

Noam Chomsky book The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many

"The Unmentionable Five-Letter Word" in How the World Works, p. 121
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, 1993

Happiness, People, World, Family

“[The principal characteristic of this economic epoch is] a sustained increase in per capita or per worker product, most often accompanied by an increase in population and usually sweeping structural changes.”

Simon Kuznets (1901–1985) economist

Source: Modern economic growth,(1966), p. 1, as cited in: Amitava Krishna Dutt, ‎Jaime Ros (2008) International Handbook of Development Economics. p. 48; Definition of "modern economic growth"

Change

“Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations — such is the national programme that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.”

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

Collected Works, Vol. 20, pp. 393–454.
Collected Works

World

“The hangover theory, then, turns out to be intellectually incoherent; nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present. Yet the theory has powerful emotional appeal. Usually that appeal is strongest for conservatives, who can't stand the thought that positive action by governments (let alone—horrors!—printing money) can ever be a good idea. Some libertarians extol the Austrian theory, not because they have really thought that theory through, but because they feel the need for some prestigious alternative to the perceived statist implications of Keynesianism. And some people probably are attracted to Austrianism because they imagine that it devalues the intellectual pretensions of economics professors. But moderates and liberals are not immune to the theory's seductive charms—especially when it gives them a chance to lecture others on their failings.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"The Hangover Theory", Slate (Dec. 4, 1998)

Money, People, Feeling, Imagination

“A note to our enemies. You think you know America, but you only see the tiny, inept, incompetent, cowering political tip of a very big, very capable iceberg. You don't know the Heartland where the people are fiercely independent and willing to defend this nation with their bare hands if that's what it takes. You don't know the steel workers in Pittsburgh with muscles that could break a man's neck like a twig. You don't know the swamp folks in Cajun country that can wrestle a full-grown alligator out of the water. You don't know the mountain folks in Appalachia who can knock a squirrel's eye out from a hundred yards away with a small caliber rifle. You don't know the farmers, the cowboys, the loggers and the seagoing folks. You don't know the truck drivers, the carpenters, the mountain men who live off the land, the hard rock miners or the small town cops who keep the peace in the rowdy border towns. No, you don't know America.”

Charlie Daniels (1936) American singer and musician

2010s, 2016, Letter to America's Enemies (2016)

Men, People, Peace, Mountain

“Deep State' is no conspiracy theory. There's nothing mythical about the Republican and Democratic career government workers, embedded like parasites in the bowels of the bureaucracy, the intelligence community, the military, and a like-minded media, who've risen on their hind legs to protect their turf and protest an agenda that leaves them out in the cold.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Elon Musk, Et al.: The Corporate Arm Of The Deep State," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2017/06/03/elon-musk-et-al-the-corporate-arm-of-the-deepstate-n2335618 Townhall.com, June 3, 2017 <br class="br">2010s, 2017

Intelligence, Communication

“Under central planning neither planners, managers, nor workers had incentives to promote the social economic interest. Nor did impeding markets for final goods to the planning system enfranchise consumers in meaningful ways. But central planning would have been incompatible with economic democracy even if it had overcome its information and incentive liabilities. And the truth is that it survived as long as it did only because it was propped up by unprecedented totalitarian political power.”

Robin Hahnel (1946) American economist

Robin Hahnel, The ABC's of Political Economy, (2002) London: Pluto Press. p. 262.

Truth, Way, Democracy

“Today the percentage of female judges, college professors and detectives seen on television is a pretty good reflection of the actual world. (In the case of judges, I wouldn't be shocked to find out the number on television exceeds the number in real life — what is it about those black robes that makes us think ovaries?)
But merely thrusting more women into more prestigious on-screen jobs doesn't necessarily make the working world a better place for women. If you were to show people images of two real-life professionals, one a man, one a woman, and ask them to rate their competence knowing nothing but job and gender — I bet people still give the guys the edge.
It's not television's fault, exactly. But television can help fix the problem. Not by writing women into better professions, but by more accurately showing them as complex people contending with the sort of snide, generous, ambitious, incompetent, sad and hilarious co-workers who populate real workplaces.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

Life, Women, People, World

“Wickham is not an upwardly mobile community. It's dingy and gray as only a mill town can be. The streets are the color of a shoe bottom, and the only way to tell the difference between the bars and the homes is to look for the neon signs in the windows. The roads and sidewalks are uneven, the tar cracked and pale. Many of the people, especially the workers as they trudge home from the mills in the dying light, have the look of those who've long ago gotten used to the fact that no one remembers them. It's a place where the people are grateful for the seasons, because at least they confirm that time is actually moving on.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Source: A Drink Before the War (1994), Ch. 8.

People, Color, Shoe, Way

“Celebrity has merged human institutions into a “much-of-a-mulchness”, such that the values surrounding political leaders and infamous sex workers are becoming increasingly indistinguisable.”

Yakoub Islam

Intergalactic Fame (29 July 2011).
Captain Jul's Mission Blog (2011 - 2013)

Sex

“The individual effort method of increasing the reward of the wage-earner includes all that is best in other methods, and attempts to exclude all that is objectionable. Its good points are summed up as follows:
# The standard time set is reasonable and one that can be reached without extraordinary effort, is in fact such time as a good foreman would demand.
# An extra reward of one-fifth of the regular wages for the operation is given to whoever makes standard time.
# Extra compensation above the hourly rate is paid even if standard time is not reached, although this extra compensation diminishes in percentage above standard time-and-a-half.
# If longer than time-and-a-half is taken, the regulai day rate is paid. Of this, the wage-earner is also sure.
# Standard time is carefully determined by observation and experiment, and is only changed when conditions change.
# The arrangement is one of mutual benefit to both parties — of increased earning to the worker, of increased saving to the employer.
# The employer loses more than the wage-earner if schedules do not encourage co-operation.
# The wage-earner, working on a schedule, becomes in a large degree his own foreman.
# The wage-earner determines his own earning power, and by co-operating to cut out wastes increases his own value.”

Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) American efficiency engineer and business theorist

Harrison Emerson, " Shop betterment and the individual effort method of profit-sharing http://archive.org/stream/americanengineer80newy#page/64/mode/1up" in: International Railway Journal Vol. 13. p. 61. 1905; Partly cited in Drury (1918, p. 141)

Effort, Change, Time

“Man must be a co-worker with God in making this earth a garden.”

Joseph H. Hertz (1872–1946) British rabbi

Genesis II, 5 (p. 7)
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (one-volume edition, 1937, ISBN 0-900689-21-8

God

“If anyone wants to know why we must conduct ourselves [with commonsense and realism], just remember at all times, with all temptations, how you, each and every one of you sitting in this hall, each and every Labour worker watching this conference, each and every Labour voter, yes, and some others as well, remember how you felt on that dreadful morning of the tenth of June. Just remember how you felt then, and think to yourselves: 'June the ninth, 1983, never ever again will we experience that.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Speech to the Labour Party Conference after winning the 1983 leadership election (October 2, 1983), reported in Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1983, p. 30.

Thinking, Time

“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman was well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Dreams, Art

“Another reason is because industry is the most important field of human activity, and management is the fundamental element in industry. It is now generally recognized that not bankers, not stockholders, but management is the pivot of business success. It is good management that draws credit, that draws workers, that draws customers. Moreover, whatever changes should come, whether industry is owned by individual capitalists, or by the State, or by the workers, it will always have to be managed. Management is a permanent function of business.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xx

Business, Change, Success, Drawing

“Miss Havisham had told me about Generics. They were created here in the Well to populate the books that were to be written. At the point of creation they were simply a human canvas without paint - blank like a coin, ready to be stamped with individualism. They had no history, no conflicts, no foibles - nothing that might make them either readable or interesting in any way. It was up to various institutions to teach them to be useful members of fiction. They were graded, too. A to D, one through ten. Any that were D-graded were like worker bees in crowds and busy streets. Small speaking parts were C-grades; B-grades usually made up the bulk of featured but not leading characters. These parts usually -but not always- went to the A-grades, handpicked for their skills at character projection and multidimensionality.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

The Well of Lost Plots (2003), ch.1, p. 11

Books, Way, History, Business

“Democratically elected worker representatives cannot get away with symbolic or partially diffused innovations; they will be thrown out of office. They will demand that the program be 39 either abandoned or institutionalized and spread to cover more of their constituents”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Source: The mutual gains enterprise, 1994, p. 218

“My friends, the time for action is upon us. The enemies of justice wants you to think of Dr. King as only a civil rights leader, but he had a much broader agenda. He was a tireless crusader for the rights of the poor, for an end to the war in Vietnam long before it was popular to take that stand, and for the rights of workers everywhere.
Many people find it convenient to forget that Martin was murdered while supporting a desperate strike on that tragic day in Memphis, Tennessee. He died while fighting for the rights of sanitation workers.
Dr. King's dedication to the rights of the workers who are so often exploited by the forces of greed has profoundly touched my life and guided my struggle.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990)

Life, War, People, Justice

“Today, I would like to provide the American people with an update on the White House transition and our policy plans for the first 100 days. Our transition team is working very smoothly, efficiently, and effectively. Truly great and talented men and women, patriots indeed are being brought in and many will soon be a part of our government, helping us to Make America Great Again. My agenda will be based on a simple core principle: putting America First. Whether it's producing steel, building cars, or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here, in our great homeland: America – creating wealth and jobs for American workers. As part of this plan, I've asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back our jobs. It's about time. These include the following: On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country. Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores. On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – including shale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs. That's what we want, that's what we've been waiting for. On regulation, I will formulate a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated, it's so important. On national security, I will ask the Department of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a comprehensive plan to protect America's vital infrastructure from cyber-attacks, and all other form of attacks. On immigration, I will direct the Department of Labor to investigate all abuses of visa programs that undercut the American worker. On ethics reform, as part of our plan to Drain the Swamp, we will impose a five-year ban on executive officials becoming lobbyists after they leave the Administration – and a lifetime ban on executive officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. These are just a few of the steps we will take to reform Washington and rebuild our middle class. I will provide more updates in the coming days, as we work together to Make America Great Again for everyone.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

A Message from President-Elect Donald J. Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xX_KaStFT8 (21 November 2016) <br class="br">2010s, 2016, November

Women, Men, People, Disease

“But now, in this century of ideologies, the Gods and Destiny have been given new life. "Miracles in the world are many," Sophocles wrote in the fifth century BC. "There is no greater miracle than man." Suddenly, at the end of the twentieth century, we discover that no, after all, it isn't true. Historical inevitability is a greater miracle than man. As is the dialectic. As is the superiority of various groups according to blood type. As is the genius of an abstract mechanism called the market. As is the leadership of inanimate objects — called technology — which worker bees create and then, inevitably, are led by. These inevitabilities are great leaps backward into the arms of the Gods and Destiny.”

John Ralston Saul book The Unconscious Civilization

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

Life, God, World, Bee

“In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly toward the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story!”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 2. A Busy World (pp. 30-31)

Life, Pain, World

“Gregor Strasser, Hitler's dangerous rival in the party, was out to gain control of the whole of the party formations, the organs of public administration, and those of social and economic life, particularly the trade unions, which he proposed to form into a great and comprehensive force of Workers' Guards of the revolution. This brought him into conflict with Roehm's similar ambitions for the S. A.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 17

Life

“There are as many Scottish roads to Socialism as there are predictions of Britain's economic doom - but most of them demand three things: a coherent plan for an extension of democracy and control in society and industry which sees every reform as a means to creating a socialist society; a harnessing of the forces for industrial and community self-management within a political movement; and a massive programme of education by the Labour Movement as a whole.

Gramsci's relevance to Scotland today is in his emphasis that in a society which is both mature and complex, where the total social and economic processes are geared to maintaining the production of goods and services (and the reproduction of the conditions of production), then the transition to socialism must be made by the majority of the people themselves and a socialist society must be created within the womb of existing society and prefigured in the movements for democracy at the grass roots. Socialists must neither place their faith in an Armageddon or of capitalist collapse nor in nationalisation alone. For the Jacobin notion of a vanguard making revolution on behalf of working people relates to a backward society (and prefigures an authoritarian and bureaucratic state), then the complexity of modern society requires a far reaching movement of people and existing conditions and as a co-ordinator for the assertion of social priorities by people at a community level and control by producers at an industrial level. In such a way political power will become a synthesis of – not a substitute for – community and industrial life.

This requires from the Labour Movement in Scotland today a postive commitment to creating a socialist society, a coherant strategy with rhythm and modality to each reform to cancel the logic of capitalism and a programme of immediate aims which leads out of one social order into another. Such a social reorganisation - a phased extension of public control under workers' sustained and enlarged, would in EP Thompson's words lead to "a crisis not of despair and disintegration but a crisis in which the necessity for a peaceful revolutionary transition to an alternative socialist logic became daily more evident."”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Introduction to "The Red Paper On Scotland", 1975.

Life, People, Education, Peace

“There are men who cry out, 'We must sacrifice'. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor? Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them. But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need. And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great chamber. The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation. First is growth—the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress. I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This nation is flourishing. Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past five years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent. More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of two and a half million jobs. Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past five years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent. Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past five years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Men, Money, Children, People

“Well, I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years.”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

On the April 9, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", when asked to comment on the United States' relationship with China, Cafferty responded in reference to the Chinese Government and the Americans Government's political and business relationship.
2008

War, Food, Thinking, Change

“The most that a working-class party could do, even if its politicians remained honest, would be to form a strong faction in the legislatures which might, by combining its vote with one side or another, win certain political or economic palliatives.
But what the working-class can do, when once they grow into a solidified organization, is to show the possessing class, through a sudden cessation of all work, that the whole social structure rests on them; that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them without the workers' activity; that such protests, such strikes, are inherent in the system of property and will continually recur until the whole thing is abolished — and having shown that effectively, proceed to expropriate.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Direct Action (1912)

Strong

“"Was there fighting after I was shot?"
"Not much. The workers from the Nut turned on the Capitol soldiers. The rebels just sat by and watched," he says. "Actually, the whole country just sat by and watched."
"Well, that’s what they do best," I say.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss and Gale (p. 222)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Fight, Country

“It would seem at first sight as if the rapid expansion of the region of mathematics must be a source of danger to its future progress. Not only does the area widen but the subjects of study increase rapidly in number, and the work of the mathematician tends to become more and more specialized. It is, of course, merely a brilliant exaggeration to say that no mathematician is able to understand the work of any other mathematician, but it is certainly true that it is daily becoming more and more difficult for a mathematician to keep himself acquainted, even in a general way, with the progress of any of the branches of mathematics except those which form the field of his own labours. I believe, however, that the increasing extent of the territory of mathematics will always be counteracted by increased facilities in the means of communication. Additional knowledge opens to us new principles and methods which may conduct us with the greatest ease to results which previously were most difficult of access; and improvements in notation may exercise the most powerful effects both in the simplification and accessibility of a subject. It rests with the worker in mathematics not only to explore new truths, but to devise the language by which they may be discovered and expressed; and the genius of a great mathematician displays itself no less in the notation he invents for deciphering his subject than in the results attained…. I have great faith in the power of well-chosen notation to simplify complicated theories and to bring remote ones near and I think it is safe to predict that the increased knowledge of principles and the resulting improvements in the symbolic language of mathematics will always enable us to grapple satisfactorily with the difficulties arising from the mere extent of the subject”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 466 : On the expansion of the field of mathematics, and on the importance of a well-chosen notation

Truth, Faith, Way, Exercises

“Since the advent of modernism, artists have been seeking to loosen the entanglement of work and subject, because they saw themselves pushed into a role that they did not necessarily want to occupy: one which offered freedom and independence on the upside, but in combination with isolation and powerlessness on the downside. While the workers of the Fordist factory developed collectivist strategies to pursue their goals, the particularities of the artist's existence – cast as productive eccentricity and manic-depressive individualism – made it more difficult for artists to organize to achieve their demands and improve their precarious living and working conditions. It was only with great difficulty that this group, condemned to autonomy, could free itself from the prison of its freedom.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2016/04/14/the-story-of-traceroute-about.html

Freedom

“You know, the average Chinese factory worker must think Americans are insane.”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 45: Respawning, Character: Laney Price
Context: You know, the average Chinese factory worker must think Americans are insane. Picture this: you work at a plant that makes Halloween stuff—you know, like, rubber severed heads. And you're all like: Americans decorate their homes with severed heads? These fuckers are savages, man.

Thinking

“The Chishtiyya school was foisted on India by Muin-ud-din who had settled down in Ajmer before the Second Battle of Tarain. According to the sufi lore, he had made a few converts from among the local Hindus and started issuing orders to Prithivi Raj Chauhan, the Hindu king, for the benefit of these converts. When the king ignored him, he invited Muhammad Ghuri to invade the Chauhan Kingdom. Sir-ul-Awliya, the most famous history of the Chishtiyya school written by Khwaja Amir Khurd, another disciple of Nizam-ud-din Awliya, tells the following story:
“His [Muin-ud-din’s] blessed tongue uttered spontaneously, ‘We have handed over Pithora alive to the army of Islam.’ In those very days, Sultan Muiz-ud-din Sam arrived in Ajmer from Ghazni. Pithora had to face the army of Islam. He was captured alive by Sultan Muiz-ud-din… The Khwaja [Muinud-din] was a worker of great wonders. Before he reached Hindustan, all its cities right upto the point of sunrise were sunk in tumult and infidelity and were involved with idols and idolatry. Everyone among the rabble [Gods] of Hindustan claimed to be the great God and a co-sharer in the divinity of Allah. The people paid homage to stones, sods of clay, trees, quadrupeds, cows and bulls and their dung. The darkness of infidelism had made still more firm the seals on their hearts… Muin-ud-din was indeed the very sun of the true faith. As a result of his arrival, the darkness that had spread over this country was dispelled. It became bright and glowed in the light of Islam… Anyone who has become a Musalman in this country will stay a Musalman till the Day of Dissolution. His progeny will also remain Musalman… The people [of Hindustan] will be brought out of dAr-ul-harb into dAr-ul-IslAm by means of many wars."”

Moinuddin Chishti (1142–1236) Sufi saint

Amir Khurd, Siyar-ul-Awliya, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 111-12. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

God, War, People, School

“Governmental Communism, like theocratic Communism, is repugnant to the worker.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: The uncertainty of Socialists themselves concerning the organization of the society they are wishing for, paralyses their energy up to a certain point.
At the beginning, in the forties, Socialism presented itself as Communism, as a republic one and indivisible, as a governmental and Jacobin dictatorship, in its application to economics. Such was the ideal of that time. Religious and freethinking Socialists were equally ready to submit to any strong government, even an imperial one, if that government would only remodel economic relations to the worker's advantage.
A profound revolution has since been accomplished, especially among Latin and English peoples. Governmental Communism, like theocratic Communism, is repugnant to the worker.

Communication

“There is only one significance, you are a worker.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Last Diaries (1979) edited by Leon Stilman, p. 77
Context: How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?

“The very point of developing regulation around industrial society was that they were not only exploiting the workers to death they were befouling the planet, so regulation came because of that.”

Chip Berlet (1949) American political analyst

Interview (4 November 1994) quoted in Backlash Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement (1996), p. 51
Context: You can go to any major history and see the effect of unregulation. The very point of developing regulation around industrial society was that they were not only exploiting the workers to death they were befouling the planet, so regulation came because of that. What the right wing wants is for the public to have this role in the societal debate over balance of these issues and no power. The public power to confront these errors of industry is government regulation.

Death

“If a Jordanian applies for a job, it will be his or hers. But if Jordanians do not go for certain jobs, the priority will go to Syrians, among the guest workers.”

Abdullah Ensour (1939) prime minister of Jordan

Ensour reading out a paragraph of "Jordan Compact", saying that he has no problems with Syrian refugees coming for jobs, issued at a London donor conference, quoted on Jordan Times, "Gov’t sends messages of assurance over integrating Syrians into labour force" http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/gov%E2%80%99t-sends-messages-assurance-over-integrating-syrians-labour-force, February 11, 2016. <br class="br">Context: Cumulatively, these measures could in the coming years provide 200,000 job opportunities for Syrian refugees while they remain in the country, contributing to the Jordanian economy without competing with Jordanians for jobs. I want to assure all Jordanians. If a Jordanian applies for a job, it will be his or hers. But if Jordanians do not go for certain jobs, the priority will go to Syrians, among the guest workers.

“Workers… rather have used their increased efficiencies and resulting increased disposable income to purchase more material goods. …Indeed, in a cruel irony, the workweek has actually lengthened. …More work is required to pay for more consumption, fueled by more production, in an endless, vicious circle.”

Alan Lightman (1948) Physicist, science writer, essayist, novelist

A Sense of the Mysterious : Science and the Human Spirit (2005), p. 200
Context: In the 1950s, academics forecast that as a result of new technology, by the year 2000 we could have a twenty-hour workweek. Such a development would be a beautiful example of technology at the service of the human being.... According to the Bureau of Statistics, the goods and services produced per hour of work in the United States has indeed more than doubled since 1950.... However, instead of reducing the workweek, the increased efficiencies and productivities have gone into increasing the salaries of workers.... Workers... rather have used their increased efficiencies and resulting increased disposable income to purchase more material goods.... Indeed, in a cruel irony, the workweek has actually lengthened.... More work is required to pay for more consumption, fueled by more production, in an endless, vicious circle.

Quotes about worker page 9

Quotes about worker
page 9