RUR Society and Class Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Act.Paragraph)

Quote #7

HELENA: And then I thought that…if they were like us they would understand us and they wouldn't hate us so—if they were only a little bit human!

DOMIN: Oh, Helena! No one can hate more than man hates man! Transform stones into people and they'll stone us! (2.134-135)

Helena thinks people sympathize with each other; Domin disabuses her. But this is not just about individuals hating each other. It's about class hatred. The robots hate humans because humans treat robots like… well, like slaves. You don't want cars becoming sentient because then they wouldn't take you where you want to go. Then you'd have an underclass of resentful motor vehicles.

Quote #8

He is a Robot. He works with his hands like a Robot. He builds houses. He can work. (2.386)

Radius thinks Alquist is a robot because Alquist is a builder—he's sort of part of the working class.

Quote #9

By seizing the factory we have become the masters of everything. (2.389)

For Marx, workers were supposed to seize the "means of production"—or the factories—and thus become the rulers of the nation. Radius is following the Marxist plot. Though, of course, things don't really work out for him, since seizing the factories gives the robots the means of production but not the means of reproduction—they can't make baby robots. Čapek sets it up so that Communist revolution results in biological confusion and breakdown. (There are reasons to think Communist revolution might not work in real life, but a sudden end to the birth of children isn't really one of them.)