Quotes About Capitalism

Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity-thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.

All the talk about the so-called unspeakable horror of early capitalism can be refuted by a single statistic: precisely in these years in which British capitalism developed, precisely in the age called the Industrial Revolution in England, in the years from 1760 to 1830, precisely in those years the population of England doubled.

The prevailing theory of capitalism suffers from one central and disabling flaw, a profound distrust and incomprehension of capitalism.

A short time ago the demagogues blamed capitalism for the poverty of the masses. Today they rather blame capitalism for the "affluence" that it bestows upon the common man.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say that they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.

Thus I came to condemn capitalism, not through any oppression endured by me personally, but through that very deification of efficiency which capitalism had taught me, for its own purposes.

We need to take a close look at the relationship between the economic system of Capitalism and the political system of Democracy. A democracy with high concentrations of private wealth buys votes and interferes with the ability of Capitalism to perform well. It is no longer one citizen, one vote.

Some critics accuse capitalism of being a selfish system, but the selfishness is not in capitalism - it is in human nature.

We are developing in the United States a huge underclass of unwanted people, many of them the descendants of the exploitation of the South American and Latin American countries by American piratical capitalism. Not all capitalism is piratical, but some of it certainly is. And we have a fantastic gap beginning to exist between rich and poor.

The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.

One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose selfishness and callousness toward others made the sins of capitalism pale.

Anybody who knows about capitalism knows that bankruptcy is an essential part of capitalism.

Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.

It is, let me say, at the very least by no means self-evident that there is more liberty, equality, and fraternity in the world today than there was one thousand years ago. One might arguably suggest that the opposite is true. I seek to paint no idyll of the worlds before historical capitalism. They were worlds of little liberty, little equality, and little fraternity. The only question is whether historical capitalism represented progress in these regards, or regression.

Capitalism will continue to eliminate mass poverty in more and more places and to an increasingly marked extent if it is merely permitted to do so.

Inside the boundaries of the old paradigm there's no hope, there's no way out of the box of capitalism, monogamy, consumer fetishism, egoism, money worship, no way out. No way. No way out!

Capitalism rules worldwide, and a society whose economic fabric depends on constant growth requires that its citizens have ever-expanding needs and wants... In the West, it will take one with soul force equal to Gandhi's to change the prevailing dogma of ever increasing GNP. We may be forced to change our profligate ways some day, when the soil is depleted, the aquifers drained, the icecaps melted, and all the oil wells pumped dry. But the crisis will wait another fifty years or so; we'll leave those problems to a generation yet unborn.

Capitalism is what people do if you leave them alone.

In America, we don't, in daily discourse, use the words 'capitalism' or 'socialism.' They've been kind of nonexistent words, I would say, amongst the general public.

The Communist Party is very popular in South Africa, especially among the young people. Never having had a chance to travel, and having suffered so much under capitalism, they still can't believe that the Russian people themselves have rejected it.

Free-market capitalism, in the blink of an eye, was gutted and replaced by an oligopoly.

I regard it as very unfair, but capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.

Global capitalism is simply accepted as a fact that you cannot do anything about. The only question is, Will you accommodate yourself to it, or will you be dismissed and excluded?

Freud also said we choose our own neuroses. Capitalism is the neurosis of humanity.

Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible.

Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling out. Thus, even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has 'sold out' has succeeded, but an artist that has 'sold out' has failed.

Stealing from capitalism is not like stealing out of our own pockets. Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world revolution.

Economics and politics are so intertwined and interlinked that politics now, mainstream politics, extreme center politics, are little else but a version of concentrated economics. And this means that any alternative - alternative capitalism, left Keynesianism, intervention by the state to help the poor, rolling back the privatizations - becomes a huge issue. The entire weight of the extreme center and its media is turned against it, which in reality now is beginning to harm democracy.

Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines.

Racism is very characteristic of imperialism and capitalism. Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth and curly hair. And I'm so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it is African.

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism

Democrats can have a different version of the line, or they can just say, no, we are the party of international peace and activism, and we're the party that's going to have a civilized capitalism.

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.

The fight against capitalism has many aspects, particularly the distinctive economic models that concentrate the capital in few hands.

For a whole historic period after World War II, US capitalism was the strongest in the world and could afford to concede rising living standards.

Maybe it's the Calvinist guilt about capitalism or mercantilism. But, I like the idea of doing things that only exist for as long as they exist, which are not archives, which are not sold or prepared even. It's funny though, because a lot of my unreliable tours were inspired by the docents at the Japan Society, who are mostly these volunteers from the Upper East Side. They basically find positive messages in really nihilist, perverse videos. So they were my inspiration.

Socialism lays an bad egg by killing the capitalism that lays the golden eggs

If capitalism is to remain a healthy, vibrant economic system, corporations must participate in taking care of the society and the environment in which they live.

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

I talked a lot early on in my career about intersectionality and how racism and classism and sexism and homophobia and capitalism are all connected with each other, and they're these crazy systems that are feeding on each other and are also damaging. I can't even go into the whole spectrum of it. But I feel like kids today are so much more savvy about that conversation. And I'm so thrilled when I get to meet younger people who are doing that so much better than I did.

The social problem of the twentieth century is whether civilized nations can restore themselves to sanity after their nineteenth-century aberrations of individualism and capitalism.

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

With the rise of capitalism, it became more obvious that people pursue individual self-interest. The great nationalist in Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini, a wonderful philosopher, said that we need the nation. We need something that people can lean on, from which they can then reach out to the whole world. The idea of all humanity is too vague. It can't motivate human aspiration in a reliable way.

But it [crony capitalism] erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.

Capitalism has been really good to me. I'm very fortunate: I have written books and my books have sold.

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.

There is a cultural norm on the left of being afraid to declare victory, which is related to the binary of reform/revolution. Whereas reformists are winning small gains, revolutionaries don't want people to be satisfied with those small victories because they worry this will lead to acceptance of the bigger picture of capitalism domination, and so they find a way to turn every victory into a defeat. In the book, I call for a culture of declaring victory wherever we can.