Capitalism Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Indeed, I find it illuminating to consider to what extent our "classical conditions" for economic growth are satisfied in the current, monopolistic phase of capitalism.

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way.

Richard Stallman

Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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.

The inner logic that governs the laws of motion of capitalism is cold, ruthless and inexorable, responsive only to the law of value. Yet value is a social relation, a product of a particular historical process. Human beings were organizers, creators and participants in that history. We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation.

Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes — indeed, deletes — the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.

John Kenneth Galbraith

They lived in abysmal misery, yet they had no prospect of a better tomorrow. They existed under capitalism, yet there was no accumulation of capital.

It is only through a devoted attention to the details of objects and faces in the modern urban scene, he argues, that the commodity fetish of capitalism can be effectively dispelled.

I am suggesting that there is, and always has been, a rather high correlation between ethnicity and occupation/economic role throughout the various time-space zones of historical capitalism.

Immanuel Wallerstein

Capitalism brainwashes us through advertising and the skewing of priorities.... We need economies that promote human values, seek to limit suffering, and are committed to democratic principles, rather than ones dependent on global trade and a blind commitment to neo-liberal economic policies.

Sulak Sivaraksa

What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you.

Ludwig von Mises

Fact is Our Lord knew all about the power of money: He gave capitalism a tiny niche in His scheme of things, He gave it a chance, He even provided a first installment of funds. Can you beat that? It's so magnificent. God despises nothing. After all, if the deal had come off, Judas would probably have endowed sanatoriums, hospitals, public libraries or laboratories.

Georges Bernanos

The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.

Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism, or Socialism, means the re-organization of society upon scientific principles and the abolition of causes which produce vice and crime.

The task facing philosophy today is to examine its filiations to its most hallowed concepts and to consider anew their productivity.... The result of this task might be to see old concepts as more productive than new ones, which suffer not merely from the fact that they are inevitably expressions of the general conditions of possibility of the present moment, but also because of the way in which the eternal production of the new is linked more strongly than ever to the basic drive of capitalism.

Communism was a great system for making people equally poor - in fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. Capitalism made people unequally rich.

Thomas L. Friedman

The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.

Some representatives of monopolistic capitalism, sensing this evil in their system, have tried to silence criticism by pointing to the diffused ownership in the great corporations. They advertise, "No one owns more than 4 percent of the stock of this great company." Or they print lists of stockholders, showing that these include farmers, schoolteachers, baseball players, taxi drivers, and even babies.

Fulton J. Sheen

Yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We don't want capitalism. We want a decent society.

Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background... Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value... On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.'

Capitalism needs and must have the prison to protect itself from the criminals it has created.

We will be carrying on the work of all the black sons and daughters who have died in every corner of Africa and the Americas under the whiplash of racism, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. And we shall win without a doubt.

What made the West successful was neither capitalism, nor science, nor an historical accident such as a favourable geography. Instead, political and mental diversity combined to create an ever changing panorama of technologically creative societies.

The long-run historical tendency of capitalism has not only been to increase real incomes more or less proportionately nearly all along the line, but to benefit the masses even more than the rich.

Capitalism is like Japanese Knotweed: nothing kills it off. If there were only two people left on the planet, one of them would find a way of making money out of the other.

Jeanette Winterson