The following passage is from Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy:

"You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however much they work they can't escape from their position as beasts of burden. All the profits of labor, on which they might improve their position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education, all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists. And society's so constituted that the harder the laborers work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while the laborers themselves stay beasts of burden to the end. "

and it was written in 1873. In Russia.

Perhaps we're not as advanced or unique as we like to think we are.

We're having arguments — fierce, government-stopping, I'm-going-to-take-my-ball-and-go-home-if-I-don't-get-my-way arguments — about simply asking the very wealthiest among us to pay as much in taxes as the laborers do?

It's a cryin' shame.