Pyramid of the Capitalist System (1911) – The Public Domain Review

In 1911, the image of enslaved workers building monumental pyramids for their ruling pharaohs was again used to visualize the stratification of the capitalist system. Published in Industrial worker – a Cleveland, Ohio newspaper funded by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – the image is a veneer of oppression. At the top is the system itself, capitalism, a giant bag embroidered with $$$. Below are the politicians and princes (“we rule you”), standing on the shoulders of the priestly caste, who ideologically uphold the status quo (“we are fooling you”). And among the priests is the repressive apparatus of the state – army and police – who discipline bodies (“we are shooting at you”) in the way that religion seizes the mind and spirit. And among them are the rich who drunkenly enjoy the surplus value that the capitalist system has stolen from the workers (“we eat for you”). And finally, the cornerstone of the system itself, the class on which the entire pyramid depends (“we work for everyone”, “we feed everyone”). Some workers take the form of telemons and, like Atlas, carry the weight of the economic world on their shoulders. Others have begun to break free from this crushing exploitation, waving the red flag of socialism and communism, and protesting with shovels and hammers in hand.