Capitalism

"Any sensible person right now would join an organisation."

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

"The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.”"

"Bill Clinton and his two treasury secretary enablers, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, instituted a system of unregulated capitalism that has resulted in financial anarchy. This anarchic form of capitalism, where everything, including human beings and the natural world, is a commodity to exploit until exhaustion or collapse, is justified by identity politics. It is sold as “enlightened liberalism” as opposed to the old pro-union class politics that saw the Democrats heed the voices of the working class. Financial anarchy and short-term plunder have destroyed long-term financial and political stability. It has also pushed the human species, along with most other species, closer and closer towards extinction."

"But the rise of capitalism also depended on something else. It needed labour. Lots of it, and cheap. solved this problem too. With subsistence economies destroyed and commons fenced off, people had no choice but to sell their labour for wages - not to earn a bit of extra income, as under the previous regime, nor to satisfy the demands of a lord, as under serfdom, but simply in order to survive. They became, in a word, proletarians."

"Capitalism rose on the back of organized violence, mass impoverishment, and the systematic destruction of self-sufficient subsistence economies. It did not put an end to serfdom; rather, it put an end to the progressive revolution that had ended serfdom. Indeed, by securing virtually total control over the means of production, and rendering peasants and workers dependent on them for survival, capitalists took the principles of serfdom to new extremes. People did not welcome this new system with open arms; on the contrary, they rebelled against it. The period 1500 to the 1800s, right into the Industrial Revolution, was among the bloodiest, most tumultuous times in world history."

"Capitalism relies on maintaining an artificial scarcity of essential goods and services (like housing, healthcare, transport, etc), through processes of enclosure and commodification. We know that enclosure enables monopolists to raise prices and maximize their profits (consider the rental market, the US healthcare system, or the British rail system). But it also has another effect. When essential goods are privatized and expensive, people need more income than they would otherwise require to access them. To get it they are compelled to increase their labour in capitalist markets, working to produce new things that may not be needed (with increased energy use, resource use, and ecological pressure) simply to access things that clearly are needed, and which are quite often already there."

"The rise of socialism in the East inspired socialist movements in the West (most famously in Germany, which came to the brink of a socialist revolution during the and of 1919–20). These revolutionary movements posed a real threat to capitalism in the core. Capitalism survived in part by crushing these movements—quite often violently, but also by making concessions to working-class demands, including wage improvements and some public services, although never conceding to the core demands for decommodification and economic democracy. Thus, the rise of the social democratic welfare state. Capital accumulation requires cheap labor, however, and these concessions would have brought capitalism in the core to its knees were it not for the fact that capitalists were able to obtain cheap labor instead in the periphery, through colonial and neocolonial forms of appropriation, which continue to this day."

"For capital, the primary purpose of production is not to meet specific human needs or to achieve social progress, much less to achieve any concrete ecological goals. Rather, the overriding objective is to maximize and accumulate profit. The result is that the capitalist world-system is characterized by perverse forms of production. Capital directs finance to highly profitable output, like sport utility vehicles, industrial meat, fast fashion, weapons, fossil fuels, and property speculation, while reproducing chronic shortages of necessary goods and services like public transit, public health care, nutritious food, renewable energy, and affordable housing. This dynamic occurs within national economies but also has clear imperialist dimensions. Land, labor, and productive capacities across the Global South are roped into supplying global commodity chains dominated by Northern firms—bananas for Chiquita, cotton for Zara, coffee for Starbucks, smartphones for Apple, and coltan for Tesla, all for the benefit of the core, all at artificially depressed prices—instead of producing food, housing, health care, education, and industrial goods to meet national needs. Capital accumulation in the core depends on draining labor and resources from the periphery."

"As the Marxist movement splintered and mutated into new forms, Left intellectuals and activists began to look for new ways to attack capitalism. Environmental issues, alongside women’s and minorities’ issues, came to be seen as a new weapon in the arsenal against capitalism."

"The enormous dynamic and creative, as well as destructive energy of capitalism... is written up with more praise and more respect by Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto than probably by anyone since. I don't think anyone has ever said so precisely and with such awed admiration how great capitalism is, how inventive, how innovative, how dynamic, how much force of creativity it unleashes."

"The use of the term 'capitalism' is itself a Marxist way of thinking. The idea that what we live under is an 'ism' conditions the belief that there is another 'ism' under which we can live. Whereas in fact capitalism is just a way of describing the economic system as it will invariably function in one form or another."

"It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment."

"Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world."

"There are no good aspects of monopoly capital, so no reservations need be recognized in its destruction. Monopoly capital is the enemy. It crushes the life force of all of the people. It must be completely destroyed, as quickly as possible, utterly, totally, ruthlessly, relentlessly destroyed."

"The essence of a U.S.A. totalitarian socio-political capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of a mass participatory society. We must rip away its mask. Then the debate can end, and we can enter a new phase of struggle based on the development of an armed revolutionary culture that will triumph."

"We are quite obviously faced with a need to organize some small defenses to the more flagrant abuses of the system now. ... While we await the precise moment when all of capitalism's victims will indignantly rise to destroy the system, we are being devoured. ... Some of us are going to have to take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for selective retaliatory violence."

"Most of the fascist functionaries live as unguarded as I do. I could slip a knife between Max Rafferty's ribs. The Agnews and Du Ponts, the Rockefellers and Morgans, all of the Getty, Hunt, and Hughes types who sneak around in armored cars and jets are just as reachable. ... Hell will be their reward."

"When you are poor you don’t have any social respect or social worth because everything is defined in terms of money and how much of it you have. This is what capitalism does. It turns all values into commercial values, even the value of life itself."

"Capitalism, which the ex-communist countries are beginning to experience, does not set out to eliminate poverty but, as far as possible, to make it bearable, to keep it, at the lowest cost, below the threshold where it would inevitably explode and threaten the well-being of the privileged."

"Gone is the communist scarecrow, so useful for relativising the phenomena of poverty in the West; liberal capitalism has lost its best alibi. From now on, the zones of poverty in the European Community and in North America, the overwhelming misery of underdeveloped countries, the social disarray of countries finally emerging from communism – all of these will be attributable to the only economic system still in place, which is unable to find a new lease of life."

"The failure of capitalism is still much better than the success of socialism."

"an assumption deeply integral to capitalism has been absorbed by all of us, since it is reflected in so much of what we see. I have called this the Scarcity Theory, not enough to go around: not enough love, not enough time, not enough appointments at the foodstamps office, not enough food stamps, not enough money, not enough seats on the subway. It's pervasive. We learn mistrust of each other, bone deep: everything is skin off somebody's nose."

"The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the War, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous - and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed."

"I worked at a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever the nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that kept me alive. So I became a communist."

"The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism."

"I understand that you have an economic system in America known as Capitalism. Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders. You have become the richest nation in the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity."

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just.""

"I am conviced that capitalism has seen its best days in American, and not only in America, but in the entire world. It is a well known fact that no social institut can survive when it has outlived its usefullness. This, capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses."

"We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. ... We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. ... It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s."

"My claim is that we do not have a market economy, but a capitalist economy. Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy. Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonable equal in their buying and selling of economic power. It is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands, using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way. … This is not a market, and definitely not a democracy. The basic principle of democracy is "one person one vote" and in the capitalistic society, we have "one dollar one vote.""

"In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy."

"Although liberal capitalism has generated many social, political, and environmental challenges, it has freed hundreds of millions from the widespread servility, entrenched cruelty, and capricious regimes that have dominated most of history. The material conditions of life have improved dramatically, not only in Europe and America, but throughout much of the world. In the five hundred years up to around 1700, economic output per capita was flat, which means that a person of median income in 1700 was no better off, economically speaking, than the average person in 1200. By the mid-1800s, particularly in the West, economic output had increased markedly; the growth accelerated after 1940 and spread to the rest of the world."

"No doubt, free enterprise is a harsh system; it demands real men. But socialism, which appeals to envious people craving for security and afraid to decide for themselves, impairs human dignity and crushes man utterly."

"For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not 'trade' but democratic governance."

"The Speech... “Let’s face it...it’s a dog-eat-dog world... Every man for himself. For all your ideas about making the world a better place, when it comes down to it, everyone’s just interested in their own skin. It’s a rat race. That’s the way all of nature works... The survival of the fittest... People like you want to change the world. But when you’ve had the experience I’ve had, you’ll know better. Our society is structured this way simply because that’s what works best... This type of conversation...channels the themes we hear every day from those in a position of authority — from talking heads on TV, from successful businesspeople, from teachers, from school textbooks... its ideas seep into our daily thoughts... They infuse much of what is accepted as indisputably true in most conversations that take place about world affairs. They are so pervasive that most of us never question them... In fact, every one of those building blocks is flawed. ...This worldview has accomplished a lot. It wrested intellectual control from the hidebound superstitions of traditional Christian theology, and laid the foundation for modern science — one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It has also been an underlying cause of the horrendous devastation suffered by non-European peoples and cultures, and boundless destruction of the natural world. And the fundamental flaws in its construction have now become so gaping that they threaten the very survival of our civilization—and much of the living Earth...Many people across the globe are realizing that there is something terribly wrong with the direction our world is headed."

"Like fish that don’t realize they’re swimming in water because it’s all they know, we tend to assume that our worldview simply describes the world the way it is—rather than recognizing it’s a constructed lens that shapes our thoughts and ideas into certain preconditioned patterns... The reason a worldview is so important is that it imbues virtually every aspect of the way people think, what they value, and how they act—without them even realizing it. Worldviews lead different cultures to respond to their reality in fundamentally different ways. If you believe that all living beings are family, you will treat them in a different way than if you think the natural world is a resource to be exploited. If you think other humans are inherently cooperative, you’ll approach a person differently than if you think that, ultimately, everyone is selfish and competitive. If you presume that technology can fix our biggest problems, you won’t feel the need to consider the underlying systems that caused those problems to arise in the first place."

"Capitalism attacks and destroys all the finer sentiments of the human heart; it ruthlessly sweeps away old traditions and ideas opposed to its progress, and it exploits and corrupts those things once held sacred."

"As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These “humanitarian parts” are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its “antirent and anticapital parts,” means to get rid of the poodle."

"So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay."

"It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat, just what might happen to any poor man's son! I want every man to have the chance, and I believe a black man is entitled to it, in which he can better his condition. When he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system."

"The widespread assumption that big business and big government are fundamentally at odds, and that big business supports a free market, serves to maintain the ruling partnership in power. ... The establishment left disguises its government intervention on behalf of the rich as government intervention on behalf of the poor, while the right disguises its government intervention on behalf of the rich as an opposition to government intervention per se – and each side has an interest in maintaining the myth propagated by its nominal opponent. For those who are repelled by the realities of corporate capitalism are lured into becoming opponents of the free market and foot soldiers for the left wing of the ruling class, while those who are attracted by free-market ideals are lured into becoming defenders of corporate capitalism and foot soldiers for the right wing of the ruling class. Either way, the partnership as a whole has its power reinforced."

"Under a capitalist economy such as that of the United States, employers profit by working their employees as hard as they can for as many hours as possible and for as little pay as they can get away with. Their goal is to exploit us. Our lives reflect that reality. Many of us don't enjoy our work. We don't get paid enough. We have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet if we have a job at all. Our bosses treat us like garbage and we don't feel like their is anything we can do about it. We face the threat that machines will replace us. Our jobs are moved overseas, where employers can generate even higher profits. Sometimes a job at Wal-Mart is the only option we have."

"Thus every Part was full of Vice,"

"Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits."

"[Capitalism is] a system of wage-labour and commodity production for sale, exchange, and profit, rather than for the immediate need of the producers."

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

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."

"In bourgeois society... the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

"Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor; And lives more by the labor it sucks."