Capitalist Quotes - Page 20

• But when reason and the study of history began revealing the irrationality, the limitations, and the merely transitory nature of the capitalist order, bourgeois ideology as a whole and with it bourgeois economics began abandoning both reason and history.

  Paul A. Baran

  Order, Study, Reason

  Paul A. Baran (1968). “Political Econ of Growth”, p.4, NYU Press

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• Nothing a housewife does is of value in capitalist terms because it does not take place on the market and therefore does not contribute to the Gross National Product.

  Hilda Scott

  Doe, Housewife, Term

  Hilda Scott (1984). “Working your way to the bottom: the feminization of poverty”, Pandora Pr

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• At a basic level venture capitalists are arbitrageurs: they have access to more information than those with the capital, and access to more capital than those with information, and they profit by exploiting the mismatch.

  Ben Thompson

  Venture Capitalists, Levels, Information

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• Generally speaking, experience counts for something. So you'd expect entrepreneurs who've been through the ups and downs of a tech startup to have an advantage over the newcomers. Or at least have an equal chance at success. But in fact the opposite may be true. A number of venture capitalists I've spoken with have said that too many "old guard" entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it's hurting their startups.

  Michael Arrington

  Hurt, Opposites, Numbers

  "The Twice Shy Entrepreneur". techcrunch.com. December 9, 2007.

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• Only capitalists get photographers.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Photographer

  Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman (1992). “Assassins: libretto/vocal book”

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• This capitalist society has not lasted forever; it's only a few hundred years old.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Years, Forever, Hundred

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• The clergy, no less than the capitalist class, lives on the backs of the people, profits from the degradation, the ignorance and the oppression of the people.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Ignorance, Class, People

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• Confidence, not paper or digital money, is the key currency in a capitalist system.

  Mal Fletcher

  Keys, Paper, Digital

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• He (Aneurin Bevan) enjoys prophesying the imminent fall of the capitalist system, and is prepared to play a part, any part, in its burial, except that of mute.

  Harold MacMillan

  Fall, Play, Mute

  In Michael Foot 'Aneurin Bevan' (1962) pt. 1, ch. 5

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• By means of the banking system the distribution of capital as a special business, a social function, is taken out of the hands of the private capitalists and usurers. But at the same time, banking and credit become the most effective means of driving captialist production beyond its own limits and one of the most effective vehicles of crises and swindle.

  Karl Marx

  Taken, Mean, Hands

  Karl Marx (1975). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Karl Marx: Capital, Vol. 3”, International Pub

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• Most of Marx's predictions have failed to materialize, and his labor theory of value and other ideas have been proven wrong. Marx failed to recognize the incentive system built into the capitalist model - consumer choice and the profit motive of the entrepreneur. The irony is that capitalism, not socialism or Marxism, that has liberated the worker from the chains of poverty, monopoly, war, and oppression, and has better achieved Marx's vision of a millennium of hope, peace, abundance, leisure, and aesthetic expression for the 'full' human being.

  Mark Skousen

  War, Expression, Ideas

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• The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy...Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must.

  Joseph Goebbels

  War, Hate, Class

  "Those Damned Nazis" by Joseph Goebbels, Mjölnir, 1932.

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• Just as it is important in Latin America to discuss ideas that come from North America, I think it is interesting for North Americans to discuss ideas that come from Latin America or Africa and do not insert themselves into capitalist interests.

  Paulo Freire

  Latin, Thinking, Ideas

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• Work, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in order that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become miserable. Such is the inexorable law of capitalist production.

  Paul Lafargue

  Order, Law, May

  Paul Lafargue (2016). “The Right to be Lazy and Other Studies”, p.12, Library of Alexandria

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• Confronted with this double madness of the labourers killing themselves with over-production and vegetating in abstinence, the great problem of capitalist production is no longer to find producers and to multiply their powers but to discover consumers, to excite their appetites and create in them fictitious needs.

  Paul Lafargue

  Needs, Madness, Problem

  Paul Lafargue (1984). “Selected Marxist Writings of Paul Lafargue”

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• 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.

  Alex Tabarrok

  Art, Hard Work, Want

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• Hollywood wants its heroes to be virtuous, but it defines virtue in a way that excludes any action that is self-interested. If virtue means putting others ahead of self, then it's clear that most people, let alone most capitalists, aren't very virtuous.

  Alex Tabarrok

  Hero, Mean, Self

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• Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.

  Robert Waterman McChesney

  Media, Effort, Reform

  "STEVE FORBES: Could a Chavez-Style Media Crackdown Be Coming Our Way?" by Steve Forbes, www.foxnews.com. March 24, 2010.

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• The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stocking for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for a steadily decreasing amount of effort.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Girl, Queens, Achievement

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.67, Routledge

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• Ecology's implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. The plutocrats are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity. The present ecological crisis has been created by the few at the expense of the many.

  Michael Parenti

  Fate, Political, Humanity

  Michael Parenti (2007). “Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader”, p.97, City Lights Books

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• Surely, nothing can be more plain or even more trite common sense than the proposition that innovation [...] is at the center of practically all the phenomena, difficulties, and problems of economic life in capitalist society.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Common Sense, Innovation, Problem

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• Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading name of progressive taxation of income and inheritance is not a mode of taxation. It is rather a mode of disguised expropriation of the successful capitalists and entrepreneurs.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Successful, Progressive Taxation, Names

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• The capitalist system, in spite of all obstacles put in its way by governments and politicians, has raised the standard of living of the masses in an unprecedented way.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Government, Way, Obstacles

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• Public opinion takes no offense at the endeavors of farmers, workers, clerks, teachers, doctors, ministers, and people from many other callings to earn as much as they can. But it censures the capitalists and entrepreneurs for their greed.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Teacher, Doctors, People

  Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Newton Rothbard (1980). “Planning for freedom, and sixteen other essays and addresses”, Libertarian Press, Incorporated

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• If you have technological progress, that will encourage more capitalist system. On the other hand, if you don't, if things are stalled, you end up with much more of a zero sum type thing, where there's no progress and basically everybody's gain is somebody else's loss.

  Peter Thiel

  Zero, Loss, Hands

  Interviewed with Victoria Brown, bigthink.com. November 15, 2010.

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