" When one brushed aside the reformers’ verbiage, the situation was perfectly clear. I was not witnessing a “revolt of the masses” against an alien power; nor yet a war between labour and capital; nor yet a struggle to break up big business; nor yet an attempt to abolish capitalism. What I was looking at was simply a tussle between two groups of mass-men, one large and poor, the other small and rich, and as judged by the standards of a civilised society, neither of them any more meritorious or promising than the other. The object of the tussle was the material gains accruing from control of the State’s machinery. It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it; and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalised privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on. "

― Albert Jay Nock , Memoirs of a Superfluous Man