Skip to content

The proletariat cannot vote for socialism in a bourgeois parliament because the capitalists will not permit themselves to be destroyed by their own instrument. The machinery of the capitalist state has been fashioned by the bourgeoisie to suit the needs of their class; therefore, in the achievement of its ends, the working class must contrive its own institutions.

— Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

Another quote →

Topics

Democracy

More quotes by Oliver Cox

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

"It is remarkable that some of the most precious rights of human welfare are attributed to the advocacy and practice of communists; and yet, in the same breath, we are asked to hate communists."

Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

Much of the sanctimonious abhorrence displayed by the ruling class and its apologists against the use of violence in the class struggle is rooted in the desire to maintain the integrity of its class monopoly of violence.

Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The capitalists cannot conceivably eliminate the proletariat as a class; it could at most only temporarily destroy or drive its leadership underground. On the other hand, the proletariat can eliminate the capitalists completely; it must do this if socialism is to be achieved.

Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The purpose of capitalist democracy is to provide a favorable situation for the exercise of free enterprise and not for the planning of a society that will make business a social service. If the commonality attempts to take the latter view of democracy and to implement it, the capitalist will quickly scrap the institution.

Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

All Oliver Cox quotes →

You may also like

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

Theodor Adorno The Authoritarian Personality (1950)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Oliver Cox (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.