"# Information theory, introducing the concept of information as a quantity measurable by an expression isomorphic to negative entropy in physics, and developing the principles of its transmission."

"# Cybernetics, based upon the principle of feedback or circular causal trains providing mechanisms for goal-seeking and self-controlling behavior."

"There are quite a number of novel developments intended to meet the needs of a general theory of systems. We may enumerate them in brief survey:"

""Interactive Decision Theory" would perhaps be a more descriptive name for the discipline usually called Game Theory"

"... The first law of capital allocation – whether the money is slated for acquisitions or share repurchases – is that what is smart at one price is dumb at another. (One CEO who always stresses the price/value factor in repurchase decisions is Jamie Dimon at J.P. Morgan; I recommend that you read his annual letter.)"

"Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor."

"It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it."

"No can yield any revenue but by means of a ."

"His capital is continually going from him in one shape, and returning to him in another, and it is only by means of such circulation, or successive exchanges, that it can yield him any profit. Such capitals, therefore, may very properly be called circulating capitals."

"With artists and virtuosi of every kind, … what they earn should become their capital, whereas they recklessly regard it as mere interest and thus end in ruin. On the other hand, those who possess inherited wealth at least know at once and quite correctly what is capital and what is interest."

"People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist."

"Capital seeks domination. It grows and spreads and seeks to get hold of everything in sight. The exploitation of Africa gave European monopoly capital full opportunities to indulge in its tendencies for expansion and domination."

"Population regulates itself by the funds which are to employ it, and therefore always increases or diminishes with the increase or the diminution of capital. Every reduction of capital is therefore necessarily followed by a less effective demand for corn, by a fall in price, and by diminished cultivation."

"The produce of the earth - all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and capital, is divided among three classes of the community, namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers by whose industry it is cultivated."

"Capitalism is the condition of possessing capital; the position of a capitalist; a system which favours the existence of capitalists."

"The primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity"

"Capitals accumulate faster than population."

"Kapital ist tote Arbeit, die, vampirgleich, nur durch das Einsaugen lebendiger Arbeit lebt und die um so mehr lebt, je mehr lebendige Arbeit sie einsaugt."

"Capital is money, capital is commodities. … By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs."

"Capital is money: Capital is commodities. In truth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs. Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process, and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means of which its identity may at any time be established. And this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It is under the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began by being £100, it is now £110, and so on. But the money itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, between the money and commodities. 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."

"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

"If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists."

"In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand."

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

"When times are good, capital can extract huge profits from labor with little risk. For instance, after the last economic crisis, the (thanks in large part to government bailouts) not only managed to recover all of its losses by 2013, it then proceeded to almost double its value in the seven years that followed — an average rate of growth equal to about 14 percent per year. By contrast, average hourly wages for working people, which rose less than three percent per year for most of that same period, recovered much more slowly, and many workers actually saw their wages fall or remain flat when adjusted for inflation. When times are bad, however, in moments of crisis, when profits are low, or when there is little or no demand — such as we are seeing in many industries today — corporations and companies can protect themselves and their by simply letting workers go. Workers, on the other hand usually must continue to pay for food, rent, healthcare, and basic utilities in order to survive. As a consequence, while capital can often weather the storm of such economic crises, they can severely weaken the power of the working class by creating what Marx called a vast . And since unemployment insurance compensations are rarely available to all and always only for a short period of time, workers — whether laid off or only threatened with the prospect of layoffs—will eventually be pressured to work much harder for less wages. And this is precisely why the future of worker’s power depends on how we respond to this crisis now. While capitalists and their paid politicians will scoff at these demands, claiming they are economically infeasible or impossible, this is because they only understand the language of profit and cannot imagine a world run for the benefit of all. Nonetheless, the fact remains that capital has significant resources that could and must be made available to all working people."

"The geographical movement of money and commodities as capital is not the same as the movements of products and of precious metals. Capital is, after all, money used in a certain way, and is by no means identical with all money uses."

"Capital consists of money, goods and resources that are invested in production. Wealth, on the other hand, is buried in the ground or wasted on unproductive activities."

"Massive concentration of financial power, accompanied by the machinations of finance capital, can as easily de-stabilize as stabilize capitalism."

"As we have repeatedly seen over the last decade, capital frequently seizes moments of crisis as a moment of opportunity — a chance to implement radical change that was previously blocked or appeared impossible."

"Capital is money, but money as a process, which reproduces and increases its value. Capital arises only when the owner of the means of production finds workers on the market as sellers of their own labor power."

"To have a great capital is not so necessary as to know how to manage a small one, and never to be without a little."

"The introduction of linotype machinery, the octuple press, the folding machine, color processes, wireless reporting, news photography and photogravure, press associations such as the AP and the UP, telegraph and cable services, special features, syndicated columns, and Sunday supplements, the rising costs of reporting, labor, and transportation, all added enormously to the cost of acquiring and operating a newspaper. In Greeley's day, and Bennett's, it was possible to start a newspaper without capital, and as late as 1878 twenty-year-old Adolph S. Ochs took over the Chattanooga Times for 250 dollars, and Joseph Pulitzer the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a few thousand. Forty years later Munsey paid four million for Bennett's Herald and Scripps a reported six million for the Pittsburgh Press, while by 1930 it cost Cyrus H. K. Curtis eighteen million to acquire the old Philadelphia Inquirer."

"When I was leaving Poland at the end of 1968 (I had not been in any Western country for at least six previous years), I had as somewhat vague idea of what the radical student movement and different leftist groups or parties might be. What I saw and read I found pathetic and disgusting in nearly all (still: not all) cases. I do not shed tears for a few windows smashed in demonstrations, that old bitch, consumer capitalism, will survive it. Neither do I find scandalous the rather natural ignorance of young people. What impressed me was mental degradation of a kind I had never seen before in any leftist movement. I saw young people trying to "reconstitute" universities and to liberate them from horrifying, savage, monstrous, fascist oppression. The list of demands, with variations, was very similar all over the world of campuses. These fascist pigs of the Establishment want us to pass examinations while we are making the revolution; let them give all of us A grades without examinations; curiously enough, the anti-fascist warriors wanted to get their degrees and diplomas in such fields as mathematics, sociology or law, and not in such as carrying posters, distributing leaflets or destroying offices. And sometimes they got what they wanted, the fascist pigs of the establishment gave them grades without examinations. Very often there were demands for abolishing altogether some subjects of teaching as irrelevant, e.g. foreign languages (these fascists want us, internationalist revolutionaries, to waste time in learning languages, why? To prevent us from making world revolution!) In one place revolutionary philosophers went on strike because they got a reading list including Plato, Descartes and other bourgeois idiots, instead of relevant great philosophers like Che Guevara and Mao."

"The horror of unemployment is the final undoing of the worker. When he sees this confronting him he sells himself regardless of the intrinsic worth of his ability. Labor unions and collective bargaining arose to give him some show of power and dignity."

"America has lost more than 12 million jobs in the last six months. An estimated 12 million people have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance during the worst pandemic in a century. Tens of millions report not having enough to eat. But one month ago, tens of millions of unemployed Americans lost... a $600 weekly federal unemployment insurance benefit that Congress failed to renew... How can this happen in a democracy? This is a question that everyone who works for a living... might want to consider on this Labor Day... If the facts of this political disaster were more widely known and understood, Republicans could lose not only the presidency but also the Senate in November. After all, millions of unemployed Republicans lost most of their income as a result of what their political party...did... Republican senators repeatedly expressed worries that the unemployment benefits created a "disincentive to work." But economists have found no evidence of this; on the contrary, millions of workers who were receiving these benefits returned to work in May through July, and there are more than 11 million more workers and there are more than 11 million more workers unemployed than there are job openings."

"If we do not find a way to provide a basic income for people who have no work, or no meaningful work, we’re going to have social unrest that could get people killed."

"We advocate a Universal Basic Income , received by all citizens on an unconditional basis: that is, detached from the labor market. This offers a choice between work and leisure. To offer such a choice is both a fruit of an affluent society and a solution to the problem of technological unemployment."

"If one machine can cut necessary human labor by half, why make half of the workforce redundant, rather than employing the same number for half the time? This would be possible if the gains from automation were not mostly seized by the rich and powerful, but were distributed fairly instead."

"Throughout the Keynesian and post-Keynesian era, the inexorable laws of economics have not changed. Unemployment still is, and always has been, a cost phenomenon. A worker whose employ ment adds valuable output and is profitable to his employer can always find a job. A worker whose employment inflicts losses is destined to be unemployed. As long as the earth is no paradise, there is an infinite amount of work to be done. But if a worker produces only $2 per hour, while the government decrees a minimum wage of $2.30 an hour plus sizable fringe costs, he cannot be employed. For a businessman to hire him would mean capital loss and waste. In other words, any compulsion, be it by government or union, to raise labor costs above those determined by the marginal productivity of labor, creates institutional unemployment."

"When alone, I have never known what it is to feel weary, even when I am entirely unemployed; my imagination fills up every void, and is alone sufficient to occupy me. It is only the idle gossip of a room, when people sit opposite each other, moving nothing but their tongues, that I have never been able to endure. When walking or moving, I can put up with it; the feet and eyes are at least employed; but, to remain with folded arms, talking about the weather and the flies buzzing round, or, what is worse, exchanging compliments, that is to me unendurable torture."

"The more education, the less unemployment of women; this relationship is as strong as it is in the male labor force. The channel through which this relation arises is also the same, namely, labor turnover, almost half of which involves unemployment. However, the relation between education and turnover is mediated largely by educational differences in on-the-job training among men, while educational differences in labor force attachment are the main source of turnover differences among women. This is because levels of educational differences in on-the-job (in-house) training are small among women, while nonparticipation in the labor market and educational differences in it are quite small among men. Educational differences in the duration of unemployment are negligible among women, though they are observable, if small, among men. Recent growth in women's work attachment has reduced their inter-labor force turnover and their unemployment rate to the point of eliminating the sex differential. On-the-job training of women appears to have increased, though it still remains skimpy"

"But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams; and, in those Manchesters and Birminghams, hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test."

"The sources of mass unemployment in the are multiple and often cited: a high birthrate, widespread corruption, a large shadow economy, and instability; but in addition, Marina Liptshits says, there is another: Moscow benefits from this situation and isn’t doing anything to change it."

"In 1970 Clarke addressed a conference based on the futuristic theme of life in the year 2000, and he envisioned a society of full unemployment: The world is heading toward “full unemployment,” Clarke said, as 99 per cent of the current human activity will be eliminated through machines, the “slaves of tomorrow.”"

"It was the phenomenon of industrial unemployment that shocked contemporaries most. 'Next to war,' remarked The Times in an editorial ten years after the nadir of the downturn, 'unemployment has been the most widespread, the most insidious, and the most corroding malady of our generation: it is the specific social disease of Western civilisation in our time.' As a percentage of the civilian labour force, unemployment in the United States rose from 3.2 per cent on the eve of the Depression to a peak of 25 per cent in 1933. It remained above 15 per cent for the remainder of the decade. In Germany, which used a somewhat different definition, unemployment exceeded 50 per cent of trade union members in 1932."

"[Capitalism] requires a certain level of unemployment to function. If there were enough work to go round, no worker would worry about losing their job, and all workers could demand higher wages and better conditions. The ever-present spectre of unemployment, on the other hand, enables employers to dictate conditions. Equally, in times of severe crisis this ‘reserve army’ of unemployed people can be called into employment as and when the economy requires it. This system of deliberate unemployment needs ways to mark who will work and who will be left unemployed. In our society this is principally achieved through race, class, gender and disability."

"In this paper we examine whether unemployment has a differential impact on the expression of psychological distress among men and women. Based on the traditional centrality of the work role to men and the family role to women, we defined several key domains that might affect unemployed men and women differentially: family circumstances, concerns and worries about children and family; coping responses; social support and social integration; and the centrality of the work role. While the study population either were or hoped to be in the labor force and had dependent children, they varied in their marital status and whether they were the custodial parent. Using data collected in Baltimore from those who had been unemployed but had returned to work, those who had remained continuously unemployed for a year, and those who had been continuously employed, we compared the patterns of men's and women's reactions to unemployment. The important differences in psychological symptoms in this population were related to employment status, problems with parenting, financial difficulties, perceived lack of social support, hostility, and feelings about unemployment. By and large, the patterns of these relationships were similar for men and women. These findings suggest that when gender differences in psychological distress are found they may be due to differences in role configurations of men and women rather than intrinsic gender differences."

"Unemployment is viewed as one of the more stressful of life events that an adult can experience. Job loss leads to decreased social status, disrupts family and social roles, produces financial strain, and loss of self esteem, all of which have detrimental consequences for mental health."

"Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals."