Researchers have found no match in Lenin’s writings. The earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator ↗ is a 1955 filler item in The Commonwealth, where Major George Racey Jordan claimed “Lenin wrote” that capitalists would “vie with each other for the rope contract.” Jordan gave no documentary source, and QI calls the evidence linking the line to Lenin weak.
“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them” commonly attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but not found in his writings. The earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator is a 1955 filler in The Commonwealth credited to Maj. George Racey Jordan, with no source. (Quotle.info)
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Vladimir Lenin. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the themes of power and wisdom. Theme: "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The earliest strong match
Periodical
The Commonwealth: Official Journal of the Commonwealth Club of California
Date
31 October 1955 (vol. 31, no. 44, p. 268), as cited by Quote Investigator
Credited by
Major George Racey Jordan, a U.S. officer and anti-communist; no source given
In Lenin’s works?
No match found by researchers
Lenin wrote, “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” —Major George Racey Jordan
1955 filler item
This is the wording as Quote Investigator transcribes it from the 1955 filler. The familiar form, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” is a later variant. Neither form has been found in anything Lenin wrote.
1920 — Lenin’s real rope line, in chapter 9 of “Left-Wing” Communism: he would support Henderson “in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man.” Capitalists and selling are not mentioned. Marxists Internet Archive ↗
1955 — The earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator: a filler in The Commonwealth crediting Lenin through Major George Racey Jordan, with no documentary source. Quote Investigator ↗
1959 — Congressman Walter H. Judd tells a House committee that Lenin said the capitalists “will bid against each other for the sale of the rope.” Quote Investigator ↗
Today — Wikiquote lists “We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us” under Lenin’s Misattributed section. Wikiquote ↗
The popular wording has no identifiable author or first publication, so no rights status is claimed for it. Lenin’s genuine 1920 rope passage is quoted here from Julius Katzer’s English translation in the Progress Publishers Collected Works, vol. 31 (1964), a post-1931 translation, as listed by the Marxists Internet Archive ↗.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Who gets the credit, and why it fails
Quote Investigator notes that this saying about short-sighted greed has been pinned on three famous communists. None of the three credits holds up.
✕
Most common creditVladimir Lenin No source
Multiple researchers have found no match in Lenin’s writings. The first strong match that Quote Investigator ↗ could find dates from 1955, “many years after Lenin’s death in 1924,” and that item names no documentary source.
✕
Also creditedJoseph Stalin Unsupported
Senator Barry Goldwater credited Stalin in his 1979 memoir With No Apologies. Quote Investigator ↗ finds no substantive evidence for this.
✕
Also creditedKarl Marx Unsupported
In 2007 an investment fund manager credited “Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin” in testimony to a U.S. Senate committee. Quote Investigator ↗ finds no substantive evidence for Marx.
✕
A possible rootLenin’s own 1920 rope image Different meaning
Wikiquote suggests the saying may be a confused paraphrase of chapter 9 of “Left-Wing” Communism ↗. There Lenin backs Henderson “as the rope supports a hanged man.” Nobody sells anything in that passage, and it is about British Labour politicians, not capitalists.
✕
Later anecdoteAleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1975) Source unknown
In a 1975 Washington speech, Solzhenitsyn told a story in which Karl Radek asks where the rope will come from and Lenin answers, “They’ll supply us with it.” Quote Investigator ↗ says it does not know where Solzhenitsyn got the story.
✓The line’s true originator is unknown. It first appears in American print in 1955, already credited to Lenin and with no source, and it has not been found in his works. The closest match in meaning that Quote Investigator ↗ found is a 1931 profile of Maxim Litvinov, which says millionaires who funded a 1905 Bolshevik newspaper “helped weave the rope from which many of them should hang later on.”
Context
Why it caught on
The saying spread during Cold War arguments about trade with the Soviet bloc. It turned an abstract worry, that Western firms would sell the Soviets what they needed to win, into a joke that sticks. Quote Investigator traces it through a 1959 syndicated column by Victor Riesel, where a Soviet diplomat supposedly recalled that capitalists would “outbid each other for the sale of the hemp.” Two weeks later Congressman Walter H. Judd repeated it before a House committee.
The nearest documented idea is a passage reported by I. U. Annenkov in a 1961 Novyi Zhurnal article, “Remembrances of Lenin.” Annenkov said capitalists would furnish credits and materials and “work on the preparation of their own suicide.” Quote Investigator notes it matches the meaning but uses no rope metaphor, and it comes from a memoir published decades after the fact, not from Lenin’s published works.
Lenin’s real rope supported a hanged man. It was never for sale.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1870–1924 · Russian revolutionary, founding head of Soviet Russia and the USSR
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin led the Bolshevik Revolution and was the first head of government of Soviet Russia (1917–1924) and of the Soviet Union (1922–1924). He left a very large body of published work, and the rope saying appears nowhere in it. His own best-known rope image, from “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920), is about backing British Labour leaders “in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man.” It is not about capitalists selling anything.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest strong match (per Quote Investigator)
Earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator: Maj. George Racey Jordan, freestanding quotation, The Commonwealth: Official Journal of the Commonwealth Club of California 31, no. 44 (October 31, 1955): 268. Not found in Lenin’s writings. See “Quote Origin: The Capitalists Will Sell Us the Rope with Which We Will Hang Them,” Quote Investigator, February 22, 2018, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-capitalists-will-sell-us-the-rope-with-which-we-will/