Quotes About Capitalism

That so many of us find it entirely plausible that a vast network of researchers and health officials and doctors worldwide would willfully harm children for money is evidence of what capitalism is really taking from us. Capitalism has already impoverished the working people who generate wealth for others. And capitalism has already impoverished us culturally, robbing unmarketable art of its value. But when we begin to see the pressures of capitalism as innate laws of human motivation, when we begin to believe that everyone is owned, then we are truly impoverished.

We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

Capitalism, the ogre of those protesting Wall Street, has suffered a public relations crisis in the wake of the global economic collapse. But any remedy to the systemic corruption that led to the collapse should not displace recognition that capitalism creates wealth. Capitalism, and no other economic system, has raised millions from poverty around the world.

Governments, existing primarily to protect and enhance capitalism, maintain their power through the use of technologies that control the populace - by bread or circuses, by war or schooling, by armies and police, all of which are enabled and empowered by technology. That is what we might call the stick part of capitalism, while the riches-for-the-few is the carrot.

Democratic capitalism: A cooperative enterprise to earn enough money to buy enough Congressional influence to gain control over the government's guns so as to get even more money for your special-interest group.Social democratic capitalism: A cooperative enterprise to promise sufficient government benefits to enough voters to gain control over the government's guns so as to keep any other special-interest group from getting as much power as yours.

I don't put much faith in the political system because it's a question of how are you going to run capitalism, not how are we going to develop a different system to capitalism.

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 proceeds through creative destruction. What is created is capitalism in a 'new and improved' form - and what is destroyed is self-sustaining capacity, livelihood and dignity of its innumerable and multiplied 'host organisms' into which all of us are drawn/seduced one way or another.

We're supposed to live under capitalism, and capitalism is supposed to be competitive so you would expect that capitalists and entrepreneurs would like competition. Well, it turns out that capitalists do everything they can to avoid competition.

Marx is thought of as an implacable foe of capitalism. But go back and read the first section of the Communist Manifesto. Notice how it contains a paean of praise for the way capitalism and the bourgeoisie have both enriched the human powers of production and also enabled us to see with clear vision the nature of human society and human history.

Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women.

To be sure, the use of force by one party in a market transaction in order to improve his price was no invention of capitalism. Unequal exchange is an ancient practice. What was remarkable about capitalism as a historical system was the way in which this unequal exchange could be hidden; indeed, hidden so well that it is only after five hundred years of the operation of this mechanism that even the avowed opponents of the system have begun to unveil it systematically.

The kind of capitalism we are seeing today under this expansion of property into living resources is a whole, new, different phase of capitalism. It is totally inconsistent with democracy as well as with sustainability. What we have is capital working on a global scale, totally uprooted, with accountability nowhere, with responsibility nowhere, and with rights everywhere. This new capital, with absolute freedom and no accountability, is structurally anti-life, anti-freedom.

Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal.

Capitalism, and capitalism alone, has rescued the human race from degrading poverty, rampant sickness and early death.

Imperialism, in a sense, is the transition stage from capitalism to Socialism. . . . It is capitalism dying, not dead.

As far as Marx's analysis of capitalism, there's a lot of very useful ideas in it, but he's developing an abstract model of 19th century capitalism. It's abstract and it's changed.

I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way.

Capitalism is what people do if you leave them alone.

I think we really made a mistake in separating the Internet from capitalism in a certain way that is bad for our country.

Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature.

[C]apitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich.

I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism.

In America it is the so-called capitalist who is to blame for the fulfillment of Marx's prophecies. Beguiled by the state's siren song of special privilege, the capitalists have abandoned capitalism.

Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.

I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

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

I can fight for something in the name of democratization, although I don't use that word a lot anymore. Come on, man. I hate democratic capitalism.

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it's really let us down.

You just overwhelm the system with so many dependents and so many middle class benefits having to be paid that the money isn't there. It causes a system-wide collapse, capitalism implodes upon itself, and somebody comes into the breach and restructures the government as a socialist utopian paradise - and the guy's dead serious about it.

Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.

If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you'll have zero capitalism, zero competition - it would just be one giant company.

In Cuba we had the most ferocious form of capitalism for 60 years. It dominated every sphere of life.

Gentlemen, a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche.

I think on the efficiency level, not only the distribution level, capitalism is a flawed system. It probably has the same virtues as Churchill attributed to democracy: It's the worst system except for any other. And I think that's right, but it cannot be thought that some unmitigated belief in free markets is a cure even from the efficiency point of view.

No system in history capitalism has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, devouring the resources of whole regions, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, and standardizing the varieties of human experience.

The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times.

This is an incredibly creative time. It is a difficult time. It is a disparaging time. A time of cultural and global transitions based on the realization that the Earth cannot support nonsustainable practices anymore. I believe capitalism will eventually be replaced by a communitarian ethic where the rights and care of all beings will be taken into consideration, not just the greed of a corporate few.

The face of totalitarianism turned out to be a mask - obviously - but the face of Capitalism has no face at all.

I love the way capitalism finds a place - even for its enemies.

There are social democrats and others who are marching more in the direction of equality, whether you call them socialists or communists... Capitalism has only hurt Latin America.

Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible.

There's a sense in which Marx does contribute to the fund of human knowledge, and we can no more dismiss him than we can [George] Hegel or [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau or [Baruch] Spinoza or [Charles] Darwin; you don't have to be a Darwinian to appreciate Darwin's views, and I don't have to be a Marxist to appreciate what is valid in a number of [Karl] Marx's writings-and Marx would call that a form of simple commodity production rather than capitalism.

The truth is not that the problem is the newsroom does not understand capitalism. The problem is that the front office does not understand journalism. The problem is not that the average reporter does not understand what it is that's necessary to make the payroll, to make the good edifice, to make the thing that he wants. It is that in fact those who control too many of the edifices have actually come to believe that Wall Street has wisdom, and that that wisdom should instruct our business.

What got us out of the depression was capitalism, and we would have gotten out a lot quicker had the government not intervened.

Ever since Marx, leftists have known that the simplest way to controlling a country is via education, the news industry, and health care. If you, as a leader or as a member of a leadership organization can succeed in taking over those three things where only kids, young people, only learn what you want them to learn, they learn how horrible freedom is, how unfair capitalism is, how mean-spirited, all of this, how wonderful equality and egalitarian is. Whenever there is a communist invasion or revolution, the news outlets are the first things seized and then the schools and then health care.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.