Quotes About Capitalism

People think what's in the US today is capitalism. It's not even close to capitalism. Capitalism doesn't have a central bank, capitalism doesn't have taxes, it doesn't have regulations; capitalism is just voluntary transactions. What they have in the US today I call crapitalism. But it's sad that so many people are confused and they think, 'Oh that's free markets in the US', when it's one of the least free market countries on earth.

There's a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism we like. Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that he's going to have to face up to this at some time or another, and South Carolina is as good a place to draw that line in the sand as any.

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good.' It is true that capitalism does -- if that catch-phrase has any meaning -- but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice

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.

You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We're not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism. We’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism. Socialism is the people. If you’re afraid of socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.

Capitalism improves the quality of life for the working class not just because it leads to improved wages but also because it produces new, better, and cheaper goods.... Indeed, with capitalism, the emphasis shifted to producing goods as cheaply as possible for the masses--the working class--whereas artisans had previously produced their goods and wares mostly for the aristocracy. Under capitalism every business wants to cater to the masses, for that is where the money is.

Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.

The slave states of Western world are an outgrowth of monopolistic capitalism - an economic system which is opposed to the wide distribution of private property in many hands. Instead, monopolistic capitalism concentrates productive wealth among a few men, allowing the rest to become a vast proletariat.

It all looks American because America, the country that invented mass capitalism and consumerism, got there first. the impact of mass capitalism is now universal.

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.

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

Sooner or later we will reach a point where communitarian socialism turns global because capitalism is not even the solution to capitalism itself.

Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery . Capitalism is but the gentlemen's method of slavery.

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

Capitalism is not a Ponzi scheme. Capitalism is a scheme of free markets.

The only factor that poses a genuine challenge to the current order is the willingness of human beings to reject the injustice and irrationality of this economy, and stand up for something better. Capitalism will not fall-rather, it must be pushed.

The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment-or at least much handicap-to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.

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.

Creative capitalism takes this interest in the fortunes of others and ties it to our interest in our own fortunes in ways that help advance both. This hybrid engine of self-interest and concern for others can serve a much wider circle of people than can be reached by self-interest or caring alone.

It's not difficult in South Africa for the ordinary person to see the link between capitalism and racist exploitation, and when one sees the link one immediately thinks in terms of a socialist alternative.

We had one or another form of state capitalism during an extremely brief period of human history, which tells us essentially nothing about human nature. If you look at human societies and human interactions, you can find anything. You find selfishness, you find altruism, you find sympathy.

Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.

Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others - I don['t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.

What I have learned about corporate capitalism, roughly, is that it is an act of theft, by and large, through which a very few live very high off the work, invention, and creativity of very many others. It is the Grand Larceny of our particular time in history, the Grand Larceny in which a future of freedom which could have followed the collapse of feudalism was stolen from under our noses by a new bunch of bosses doing the same old things

The weeds of socialism are better than the crops of capitalism.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future.

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

Creativity is the foundation of wealth. All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defining characteristic of which is surprise. If it were not surprising, we could plan it, and socialism would work.

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.

The challenge of our generation, whether it's young lawyers, young investment bankers, is to make capitalism work for people not just around the corner, but for people all around the world.

The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years.

People are actually very good at being communists in the sense that they instantly abandon capitalism, that they love these relationships of mutual aid, because the astonishing thing about disasters is that people are often weirdly joyous in them, because they've recovered a sense of agency, a sense of power, etc.

Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.

...one of the most inventive forms of creative capitalism involves someone we all know very well. A few years ago, I was sitting in a bar here in Davos with Bono. Late at night, after a few drinks, he was on fire, talking about how we could get a percentage of each purchase from civic-minded companies to help change the world. He kept calling people, waking them up, and handing me the phone to show me the interest.

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

The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat.

I live my life through the prism of capitalism and physiological limits and eventualities.

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.

We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.

Capitalism is the only engine credible enough to generate mass wealth. I think it's imperfect, but we're stuck with it. And thank God we have that in the toolbox. But if you don't manage it in some way that incorporates all of society, if everybody's not benefiting on some level and you don't have a sense of shared purpose, national purpose, then it's just a pyramid scheme.

Following the rise of the Labour Party it seemed reasonable, in 1927, to expect, or at least hope, that co-operation for the common good might gradually replace the competitiveness of capitalism.

Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, non-sustainable aberration in human development.

Self-dealing, essentially, occurs when managers run companies to line their own pockets instead of those of the companies' owners. It's been a perennial problem in American capitalism and became a real dilemma when America moved toward a model in which corporations would be run by professional managers who had only small ownership stakes.

The most powerful single force in the world today is neither Communism nor Capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile -- it is man's eternal desire to be free and independent.

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

If you like capitalism, you will positively love depressions, because they are one and the same, like manic-depressives and their cycles, like spouse-abusers and their storms of violence.

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

Socialism and capitalism are both essentially materialist, just different ways of approaching the lifeless world of matter and deciding how to share the spoils.