Keaton

“To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labor aristocrats, or the “workers who have become completely bourgeois”.”
― Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder: A Popular Essay in Marxian Strategy and Tactics

“The treacherous practice of pushing subprime mortgages onto working class and poor people in no way represents a departure for banks… and they have gotten away with imposing the highest interest rates on workers, the poor, and people of color… thus subprime mortgages have joined overdraft fees, high-interest rate credit cards complete with astronomical fees and penalties, and payday loans in a long list of predatory products, which are designed to sap income from the poor… as anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko once remarked, “It is very expensive to be poor.”
― Hadas Thier, A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics

“Modern-day exploitation, however, is designed by the appearance of a fair deal. It seems that workers are paid a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, as the saying goes. But we are not paid for our work, we are paid for our labor-power, and therein lies the rub.”
― Hadas Thier, A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics

“Parliamentarism, of course, is “politically obsolete” for the Communists in Germany; but—and that is the whole point—we must not regard what is obsolete for us as being obsolete for the class, as being obsolete for the masses. Here again we find that the “Lefts” do not know how to reason, do not know how to act as the party of the class, as the party of the masses. You must not sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the backward strata of the class. That is incontestable. You must tell them the bitter truth. You must call their bourgeois democratic and parliamentary prejudices prejudices. But at the same time you must soberly follow the actual state of class consciousness and preparedness of the whole class (not only of its Communist vanguard), of all the toiling masses (not only of their advanced elements).”
― Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder: A Popular Essay in Marxian Strategy and Tactics