Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  The Deserted Village, l.51^6.

Civilization has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in the long run onlychanged the form of the pack.

-Trotsky, Leon originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein
  History of the Russian Revolution (translated by Max Eastman,1934), vol.3, pt.3.