"Owners are the shareholders, living outside the process of production, idling in distant countryhouse and maybe gambling at the exchange. A shareholder has no direct connection with the work. His property does not consist in tools of him to work; with his property consists simply in pieces of paper, in shares of enterprises of which he does not even know the hereabouts. His function in society is that of a parasite. His ownership does not mean that he commands and directs the machines; this is the sole right of the director. It means only that he may claim a certain amount of money without having to work for it. The property in hand, his shares, are certificates showing his right - guaranteed by law and government, by courts and police - to participate in the profits; titles of companionship in that large Society for Exploitation of the World, that is capitalism."
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RevolutionariesAcademics from the NetherlandsAstronomers from the NetherlandsEconomists from the NetherlandsCouncil communists
Original Language: English
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Chapter One, The Task, Section 1.2
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antonie_Pannekoek
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Antonie Pannekoek
Antonie Pannekoek (2 January 1873 – 28 April 1960) was a Dutch astronomer, Marxist theorist, and social revolutionary.
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