Capitalist Quotes - Page 7

• What both the state and the capitalist economy oppose is an understanding of what might be called "the true nature of things" (using the phrase without metaphysical pretensions), especially injustices and exploitative practices.

  Richard A. Falk

  Capitalist Economy, Practice, Understanding

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We do not assert that the capitalist mode of economic calculation guarantees the absolutely best solution of the allocation of factors of production. Such absolutely perfect solutions of any problem are out of reach of mortal men. What the operation of a market not sabotaged by the interference of compulsion and coercion can bring about is merely the best solution accessible to the human mind under the given state of technological knowledge and the intellectual abilities of the age's shrewdest men.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Men, Perfect, Mind

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• You can be a very charitable capitalist. Like [Nicola] Sarkozy was saying, we have to 'moralise capitalism', which for me is a contradiction in terms.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Contradiction, Term, Charitable

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

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• A second variety concentrated on presumed major transformations of the capitalist system as of some recent point in time, in which the whole earlier point of time served as a mythologized foil against which to treat the empirical reality of the present.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Reality, Transformation, Treats

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.7, Verso

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• Beethoven and Michelangelo, who sold their artworks for profit, were entrepreneurs and capitalists.

  Tyler Cowen

  Entrepreneur, Artwork, Profit

  Tyler COWEN, Tyler Cowen (2009). “In Praise of Commercial Culture”, p.3, Harvard University Press

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• I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Heart, Fighting

  "In What War Shall I Take Up Arms and Fight?" by Eugene V. Debs, www.marxists.org. September 1915.

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• The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money.

  Karl Marx

  Mean, Smell, Looks

  Karl Marx, Jon Elster (1986). “Karl Marx: A Reader”, p.89, Cambridge University Press

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• Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principle moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Names, Interesting, Political

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• Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds - some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists - some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!

  Malcolm X

  Christian, Atheist, Buddhist

  "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". Book by Malcolm X, Alex Haley, p. 375, 1965.

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• The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.

  George Soros

  Believe, Enemy, Laissez Faire Capitalism

  "The Capitalist Threat" by George Soros, www.theatlantic.com. February 1997.

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• Nothing-was more degrading than for a woman to have to marry for a home. Love should be the sole reason. Surely those with a brain-to think, eyes to see and a mind-to reason must realise that the capitalist system must cease and a co-operative system prevail in its place.

  Vida Goldstein

  Love, Marriage, Women

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• There also exists another alliance - at first glance a strange one, a surprising one - but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Thinking, Communist Leaders, Support

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• In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people capable of doing nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organising talent, which I would not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a lot from the capitalists. But if you mean people who are prepared to reconstruct the world, of course you will not be able to find them in the ranks of those who faithfully serve the cause of profit. ..The capitalist is riveted in profit and nothing can tear him away from it.

  Joseph Stalin

  Dream, Mean, People

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• Capitalist exploitation and cartels and monopolies are the enemies of underdeveloped countries. On the other hand a regime which is completely oriented towards the people as a whole and based on the principle that man is the most precious of all possessions, will allow us to go forward more quickly and more harmoniously, and thus make impossible that caricature of society where all economic and political power is held in the hands of a few who regard the nation as a whole with scorn and contempt.

  Frantz Fanon

  Country, Men, Hands

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• A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism.

  Saul Alinsky

  Order, Evil, Political

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.10, Vintage

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• If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.

  Evo Morales

  Earth, Want, Ends

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• Competition permits the capitalist to deduct from the price of labour power that which the family earns from its own little garden or field; the workers are compelled to accept any piece wages offered to them, because otherwise they would get nothing at all, and they could not live from the products of their small-scale agriculture alone, and because, on the other hand, it is just this agriculture and landownership which chains them to the spot and prevents them from looking around for other employment.

  Friedrich Engels

  Garden, Hands, Agriculture

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• The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic carrying innumerable passengers in a way analogous to our modern steam ships. . . it seems safe to say that such ideas are wholly visionary and even if the machine could get across with one or two passengers the expense would be prohibitive to any but the capitalist who could use his own yacht.

  William Henry Pickering

  Ideas, Two, Flying

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• The only problem with capitalism is the capitalists.

  Herbert Hoover

  Problem, Capitalism

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• You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions.

  Frans de Waal

  Order, People, Empathy

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• It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.

  Michael Parenti

  Mean, People, Political

  "Democracy for the Few". Book by Michael Parenti, 1974.

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• But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S. leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people.

  Philip Agee

  America, Class, People

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• Feminist pedagogy can only be liberatory if it is truly revolutionary because the mechanisms of appropriation within white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy are able to co-opt with tremendous ease that which merely appears radical or subversive

  Bell Hooks

  White, Feminist, Ease

  bell hooks (2014). “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black”, p.63, Routledge

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• Can the level of wealth enjoyed by members of capitalist culture (remembering that it is 25 times greater, on average, than that enjoyed by citizens of two centures ago) be attained by all but a very few? And if it can be attained, what is the cost for everything else that we must sacrifice?

  Richard Robbins

  Sacrifice, Two, Average

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• Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Government, Sight, Important

  John Maynard Keynes (2011). “Essays in Persuasion”, p.77, W. W. Norton & Company

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