Daniel De Leon Quotations

Capitalism attacks and destroys all the finer sentiments of the human heart; it ruthlessly sweeps away old traditions and ideas opposed to its progress, and it exploits and corrupts those things once held sacred.

He who stands with his face to the East in the morning will have the sun before him. If he does not change his posture, the Earth in the meantime having changed its, he will have the sun no longer before him, but behind.

Socialism is practical, in the best sense of the term; a living, vital force of inestimable value to society.

Make no mistake: The organization of the working class must be both economic and political. The capitalist is organized upon both lines. You must attack him on both.

Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.

The capitalist class is interested in keeping the workingmen divided among themselves. Hence it foments race and religious animosities that come down from the past.

As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These "humanitarian parts" are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its "antirent and anticapital parts," means to get rid of the poodle.

Poverty breeds lack of self-reliance

The Catholic Church... upheld feudalism, then monarchism, warning of growing evils and possible revolutions. In the same manner, and under the same reservations, she now upholds capitalism; but, above all things and forever, she upholds the Catholic Church.

A being in a bonnet is not therefore a woman, a being with a beard is not therefore a man, nor yet is a wolf in sheepskin a lamb.