Capitalist Quotes - Page 10

• Prison, with its daily rhythm, with the transfer and the defense, does not leave any time; prison dissolves time: This is the principal form of punishment in a capitalist society.

  Antonio Negri

  Punishment, Doe, Defense

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• We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists 'of conspiring to teach [us] to do,' but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.

  Dorothy Day

  New York, Government, Suffering

  "On Pilgrimage". "Catholic Worker", September 1956.

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• We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms? Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Book, Men

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• We shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we will smash them with our clenched fist.

  Dmitry Manuilsky

  Country, Stupid, Communication

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• While it might surprise many ecologists to hear, capitalism is itself the ultimate form of conservationism. Capitalists seek to conserve resources, not because of sentimental feelings about nature or the earth or whales or worry about the well-being of future generations, but simply because every drop of oil, every ton of ore, every shipment of wood saved is a cost reduction and money in the pocket.

  Steven Plaut

  Funny, Animal, Oil

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• The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw him into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to death. When any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him, and take off his cap and address him as 'Sir'

  George Orwell

  Jobs, Land, House

  George Orwell (2004). “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.83, Penguin UK

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• If only more of today's military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite's as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad.

  Smedley Butler

  Military, Squad, Today

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• By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Country, Victory, Towns

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• Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities; it is all they have to insure their places in the world.

  Cyril Connolly

  Funny, Beauty, Beautiful

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• Britain, the first industrial nation, had offered the world a remarkable public experiment in liberal, capitalist democracy whose success was premised upon free trade and world peace. Tuesday, 4 August 1914 brought that experiment to an abrupt halt.

  Kenneth O. Morgan

  August, Tuesday, History

  Kenneth O. Morgan (1984). “The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain”, p.522, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The capitalist class rules but does not govern: it contents itself with ruling the government.

  Karl Kautsky

  Government, Class, Doe

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• The more propaganda . . . conservatives spread for capitalist economics while at the same time preaching collectivism morally and philosophically , the more nails they’ll drive into capitalism’s coffin.

  Ayn Rand

  Nails, Coffins, Economics

  Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.281, Penguin

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• All systems are capitalist. It's just a matter of who owns and controls the capital -- ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations.

  Ronald Reagan

  Kings, Government, Matter

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• Capitalist agricultural production prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer.

  Karl Marx

  Men, Intellectual, Fertility

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of Karl Marx (Illustrated)”, p.1529, Delphi Classics

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• Wages are determined by the bitter struggle between capitalist and worker.

  Karl Marx

  Business, Struggle, Wages

  Karl Marx (1964). “Early writings”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• Banks and churches and courtrooms all depend on the appurtenances of theatre. On illusion. Banks, the illusion of stability and honourable dealings to the rot and corruption of capitalist exploitation. Churches the illusion of sacred sanctuary of purposes of pacifying social discontent. Courtrooms of course designed to promote the illusion of solemn justice. If there was true justice why would such trappings be necessary? Wouldn't a table and chairs and an ordinary room serve just as well?

  E. L. Doctorow

  Tables And Chairs, Justice, Church

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• Under communism, prices were not allowed to reflect economic reality. Under capitalism, prices don't reflect ecological reality. In the long run, the capitalist flaw -- if uncorrected -- may prove to be the more catastrophic.

  Denis Hayes

  Running, Reality, Long

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• It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.

  Mary McCarthy

  Hippie, Law, Marketing

  Mary McCarthy (1968). “Hanoi”, George Weidenfeld & Nicholson

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• It is indeed paradoxical that, while the apologists of capitalism usually consider the 'price mechanism' to be the great advantage of the capitalist system, price flexibility proves to be a characteristic feature of the socialist economy.

  Michal Kalecki

  Socialist Economy, Advantage, Characteristics

  Michal Kalecki (1971). “Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist Economy 1933-1970”, p.97, CUP Archive

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• The primary social goal of both systems of political economy is for middle-aged men to attract good-looking younger women. Democratic capitalists believe that good-looking younger women are attracted mainly by money. Social democratic capitalists believe that they are attracted mainly by power.

  Gary North

  Believe, Men, Goal

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• But in the years since the neoliberal project really has been stripped down to what was always its essence: not an economic project at all, but a political project, designed to devastate the imagination, and willing - with it's cumbersome securitization and insane military projects - to destroy the capitalist order itself if that's what it took to make it seem inevitable.

  David Graeber

  Military, Order, Years

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• The degeneration of the revolution in Russia does not pass from the revolution for communism to the revolution for a developed kind of capitalism, but to a pure capitalist revo­lution. It runs in parallel with world-wide capitalist domination which, by successive steps, eliminates old feudal and Asiatic forms in various zones. While the historical situation in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused the capitalist revolution to take liberal forms, in the twentieth century it must have totalitarian and bureaucratic ones.

  Amadeo Bordiga

  Running, Russia, Historical

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• I paint inspired by my father, a well known character of the nightlife; a clandestine gambling capitalist and owner of three brothels in Argentina. I develop my work in a time that, from my point of view, is much more romantic than the present day.

  Fabian Perez

  Father, Character, Gambling

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• Profit is proof that the capitalist has given something to society that it cherishes more than the material wealth it has given to the businessman.

  Johan Norberg

  Wealth, Cherish, Proof

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• Communists are frustrated capitalists.

  Eric Hoffer

  Frustrated, Communism, Communist

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