And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 19. This is one of the great passages in the novel, where Steinbeck sounds a timeless warning about the destructiveness of complacent and unbridled capitalism. He suggests that the great landowners are blind to the lessons of history. With too much land owned by too few, the resulting dispossessions and inhumanity will inevitably lead to revolution. Cold and hungry people left without dignity and honor will take what they need by force and the owners will lose their land, he warns.