Formerly the master selected the slave; today the slave selects his ma — Wage slavery

"The liberty of the northern wage earner ... amounted to little more than the freedom to sell his labor for a fraction of its value, or to starve."

"Human rights are rooted in human nature, and we violate fundamental human rights when people are forced to be slaves, wage slaves, servants of external power, subjected to systems of authority and domination, manipulated and controlled "for their own good."

"Fifty thousand dollars means, and is, fifty thousand dollars worth of slaves. You can command, without touching on that capital, three thousand dollars worth of labor per annum. You could do no more were you to buy slaves with it, and then you would be cumbered with the cares of governing and providing for them. You are a slaveholder now to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, with all the advantages and none of the cares and responsibilities of a master."

"Man is a slave in so far as between action and its effect, between effort and the finished work, there is the interference of alien wills. This is the case both with the slave and the master today. Never can man deal directly with the conditions of his own action. Society forms a screen between nature and man."

"It is my firm conviction that the day is coming when the individual small merchant will cease to exist. In his place will be millions of persons working for wages and salaries whereas yesterday and today there were and are proprietors. In other words, I believe the time is coming when practically all mercantile and industrial affairs will be conducted by corporations."

"How many of the wage class, as a class, are there who can avoid obeying the commands of the master (employing) class, as a class? Not many, are there? Then are you not slaves to the money power as much as were the black slaves to the Southern slaveholders? Then we ask you again: What are you going to do about it? You had the ballot then. Could you have voted away black slavery? You know you could not because the slaveholders would not hear of such a thing for the same reason you can’t vote yourselves out of wage-slavery."