Quotes About Capitalism

Despite the miracles of capitalism, it doesn't do well in popularity polls. One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the non-existent, non-realizable utopias of socialism or communism. Any earthly system, when compared to a Utopia, will pale in comparison. But for the ordinary person, capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday needs and desires.

There is a contradiction between market liberalism and political liberalism. The market liberals (e.g., social conservatives) of today want family values, less government, and maintain the traditions of society (at least in America's case). However, we must face the cultural contradiction of capitalism: the progress of capitalism, which necessitates a consumer culture, undermines the values which render capitalism possible

Capitalism has been fully restored in Yugoslavia, as is well-known, but this capitalism knows how to disguise. Yugoslavia portrays itself as a socialist state, but of a special kind, as the world has never seen it before! The Titoites even boast that their state has nothing in common with the first socialist state which emerged from the socialist October Revolution and which was founded by Lenin and Stalin on the basis of the scientific theory of Marx and Engels.

We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States - that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population.

Capitalism is supposedly free enterprise. Supposedly about the free individual. But capitalism itself is so massive that the guy on the street gets caught in paying rent, taxes, and he doesn't own himself at all.

Not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use. For this is the only means that capitalism has at its disposal to achieve the level of devaluation now required. The idea is dreadful in its implications. What better reason could there be to declare that it is time for capitalism to be gone, to give way to some saner mode of production?

There are different ways to organise capitalism. Free-market capitalism is only one of them-and not a very good one at that.

One of the problems with traditional anti-capitalist thought is that it defines capitalism as a totality, which encourages us to imagine another totality, socialism, which we can try to replace it with. This totalizing perspective has colonized the imagination of anti-capitalism and left us waiting for a revolution we can never have.

The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism.

A person without an Apple watch is perfectly content with his present watch but when he sees his friends buying the watch, he will hanker for an Apple watch. The endless cycle of wanting, getting, and wanting again is part of the plot of Capitalism. It is the way Capitalism creates jobs. The only antidote is Buddhism that holds that people might be happier by renouncing desire rather than by striving to satisfy desire. But then how can the economy create enough jobs in a Buddhist society of "less is more."

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

I invested in many companies, and I'm happy this one worked. This is capitalism. You invest in stock, it goes up, it goes down. You know, if you don't like capitalism, you don't like making money with stock, move to Cuba or China.

When I think about capitalism, I think about all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in America for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families. And I don't think we should confuse what we have to do every so often in America, which is save capitalism from itself.

For it is no railways, roads, and power stations that give rise to industrial capitalism: it is the emergence of industrial capitalism that leads to the building of railways, to the construction of roads, and to the establishment of power stations.

For nearly two centuries, scholars and politicians have debated the future of capitalism. Its critics, most prominent among them Karl Marx, have seen capitalism as intrinsically unstable, full of contradictions that will lead eventually to its collapse. Its supporters see it as the best way to allocate resources and rewards. Some even hint that the democratic capitalistic society is not just a phase in the historical evolution of economic systems but its ultimate end.

If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor.

Basically, global capitalism, basically to support it, or is it to be opposed? Is international order to be supported, or is it to be opposed? Republicans have taken a very clear line.

Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress.

If all money capital invests in appropriation and none in actual production, then capitalism is not long for this world.

The government may change faces from time to time, but it's not like we fight wars for democracy - we fight wars for capitalism and for oil.

The pope once again ripped - I mean, really ripped - capitalism and Americans' immigration policy at the Mexican border, before he boarded the plane and returned to Italy.

The system of capitalism, of the market economy, is a system of freedom, of justice, of productivity. But these three virtues cannot be separated. Each flows out of the other.

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.

It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family.

Yes it is true that pro-capitalist forces have a lot of power. But so did slave-holding racists. We give ourselves hope when we conceptualize capitalism as a set of practices that can be challenged by fighting the piece of the puzzle we feel most compelled to fight.

Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation... But the "children of darkness" were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the "ideology" of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.

Capitalism, communism ... it's all garbage.

The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. ... If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.

Complex regulation in place of simple-rules capitalism disrupts market processes and corrupts business incentives.

We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism

From the point of view of physics, it is a miracle that [seven million New Yorkers are fed each day] without any control mechanism other than sheer capitalism.

Schumpter's daring and dashing entrepreneur is now a legendary figure from the distant past - if not from the mythology of capitalism - or is to be found only in the demimonde of business, founding new ice cream parlors or "deep freeze subscription clubs".

Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.

Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.

It is largely dissynchronous timing standards that have kept human beings off-balance and alienated from the natural cycles of the Earth they inhabit. The worst culprit is the Gregorian calendar, and by extension the "12:60 frequency" that it fosters - together these have become, in essence, the inescapable time clock of globalist capitalism.

Why would anyone be able to make $21 million not showing up for work for a single day? That is vulgar capitalism. That is not good for the nation.

Capitalism is going to deal itself out of existence, but before it does that, you're gonna pay $50 for a latte, because inflation is going impoverish all of us before people get pissed off enough to realize that all of the last hundred years of economic progress was actually a shell game to create billionaires, while the great masses of people saw their standard of living eroded and destroyed.

Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere.

While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.

Individual capitalists, in short, necessarily act in such a way as to de-stabilize capitalism.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

I think, at some level, we see young people all over the country mobilizing around different issues, in which they're doing something that I haven't seen for a long time. And that is, they're linking issues together. You can't talk about police violence without talking about the militarization of society in general. You can't talk about the assault on public education unless you talk about the way in which capitalism defunds all public goods. You can't talk about the prison system without talking about widespread racism. You can't do that. They're making those connections.

It seems to me self-evident that we cannot have capitalism without capital and, very importantly, that the ultimate source of all economic capital is Nature's capital

We have to accept that capitalism is coming to an end. We can't provide paid employment for people, all the industries with technology are counter-intuitive to profit, and we have to have a transition to the conceptualist society. The only way to do it fairly is as a social democracy, a radical social democracy, which isn't compromised by neo-liberalism and isn't compromised by the rich, and isn't compromised by hegemonic, authoritarian interests: to have that balance between the government, the private sector, and then the individual citizens again.

A term like capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there's such a range of different kinds of market economies.

In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness.

We've got to get rid of the fear of failure in this country. In America, people start things, fail and shake themselves down and start things again. The animal spirit of capitalism is stronger there.

Wherever the Industrial system has reached its second generation it is threatened by two mortal perils. The first is the demand by an organized proletariat for sustenance without relation to the product of its labor; a demand which threatens the very existence of PROFIT (on the necessary presumption of which Capitalism reposes). The second, and immediately graver danger is that of a revolt for the confiscation of the means of production.