Proletariat Quotes

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. (John Steinbeck)
Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat. View quote
Gene Kelly
The fact that Communism and Fascism assigned contradictory roles to history and reason-the emancipation of the proletariat versus the domination of the Aryan race-mattered little. View quote
Francois Furet
Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws. View quote
Vladimir Lenin
When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class. View quote
Vladimir Lenin
Art is a spiritual function of man, which aims at freeing him from life's chaos. Art is free in the use of its means in any way it likes, but is bound to its laws and to its laws alone. The minute it becomes art, it becomes much more sublime than a class distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie. View quote
Kurt Schwitters
Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he wanted to create for that cause not a flimsy platform of rhetorical invective or wishful thinking, but the rock-like foundation of scientific truth. View quote
Ernest Mandel
We thought that the proletariat would eventually run the world. But it is the Americans who have assumed that position... The American people have changed. View quote
Mengistu Haile Mariam
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. View quote
Friedrich Engels
How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected? The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution. View quote
Friedrich Engels
By "Revolution", we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized and a world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and misery of imperial wars. (Bhagat Singh)
Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose. View quote
H. L. Mencken
This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world. View quote
H. L. Mencken
As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality, must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia. View quote
Joseph Stalin
Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society. View quote
Joseph Stalin
China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx's class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable. View quote
Sun Yat-sen
The most disastrous phenomenon of the current situation is the factor that imperialism is employing for its own ends all the powers of the proletariat, all of its institutions and weapons, which its fighting vanguard has created for its war of liberation. View quote
Clara Zetkin
My personal influence in the Revolutionary Governing Council is such that the dictatorship of the proletariat is firmly established, since the masses are backing me. View quote
Bela Kun
What does it mean with regard to tactics, this fact that the proletariat of Western Europe stands all alone: that it has no prospect of any help whatsoever from any other class? View quote
Herman Gorter
If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation. View quote
Johann Most
After 1929 it was the sturdy middle classes, and not just the lumpen proletariat, who were down and out. It was not all that unfashionable or disreputable to be bankrupt. By the last Hoover years, the states and localities had run out of money for relief. In middle-class neighborhoods like mine, you constantly had children at the door, asking by mouth or with a note for a dime, a quarter, or a potato: saying, in a believable fashion, we are starving. (Paul Samuelson)
Marxism-Leninism is an explanation of historical events; Marxism-Leninism is a guide for action, Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the proletariat, which must guide, make its action conscious to overthrow exploiters, to establish a classless society. View quote
Fidel Castro
In examining any dictatorship, there are two good tests. Firstly, what is the relation between the rulers and the proletariat or common people? Are the rulers members of the proletariat, as they would have you believe? Do they even identify their interests with those of ordinary citizens? The truth seems to be that, no matter where you find them, the so-called proletarian dictatorships are actually controlled by a small elite who ordinarily lose little sleep in worrying about the rights of the common man. Secondly, have the proletariat any effective say in what the rulers do? In the proletarian dictatorships I am familiar with, ordinary people enjoy little or no control over their Government or over their own lives and futures. View quote
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing. View quote
Graham Greene
The Social-Democrat's ideal should not be a trade union secretary. but a tribune of the people, able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it takes place, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; he must be able to group all these manifestations into a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; he must be able to take advantage of every petty event in order to explain his socialistic convictions and his Social-Democratic demands to all, in order to explain to all and every the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat. View quote
Vladimir Lenin