The Pyramid of Capitalist System is a common name of a 1911 American cartoon caricature critical of capitalism, copied from a Russian flyer of c. 1901. The graphic focus is on stratification by social class and economic inequality. The work has been described as "famous", "well-known and widely reproduced". A number of derivative works exist.
It was published in 1911 by the Industrial Worker (The International Publishing Co., Cleveland, Ohio), a newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World, and attributed to "Nedeljkovich, Brashich, & Kuharich".
The work is based on older similar pictures. In 1900, the Belgian Labour Party used a picture called "Pyramide à renverser" (lit. 'a pyramid that has to be overthrown') during its electoral campaign. A year later Nicolas Lokhoff's 1901 caricature of Imperial Russian society by the Union of Russian Socialists was published. The original picture showed workers supporting the pyramid on their backs, with the stanza: "The time will come when the people in their fury will...
Merlin Mann
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