Quotessence
Home / Topics / Capital Quotes

Capital Quotes

Browse 241 quotes about Capital.

Capital Quotes

“We also understand, therefore, that wages and private property are identical. Indeed, where the product, as the object of labor, pays for labor itself, there the wage is but a necessary consequence of labor’s estrangement. Likewise, in the wage of labor, labor does not appear as an end in itself but as the servant of the wage... An enforced increase of wages (disregarding all other difficulties, including the fact that it would only be by force, too, that such an increase, being an anomaly, could be maintained) would therefore be nothing but better payment for the slave, and would not win either for the worker or for labor their human status and dignity. Indeed, even the equality of wages, as demanded by Proudhon, only transforms the relationship of the present-day worker to his labor into the relationship of all men to labor. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist. Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labor, and estranged labor is the direct cause of private property. The downfall of the one must therefore involve the downfall of the other.”

CommunismPrivate PropertyCapitalMarxWage LaborCommoditiesAlienated LaborEstranged LaborParis Manuscripts
Book:Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844
Create image

“The subject of theory can no longer affect to stand outside the process it describes: it is integrated as an immanent machine part in an open ended experimentation that is inextricable from capital’s continuous scrambling of its own limits—which operates via the reprocessing of the actual through its virtual futures, dissolving all bulwarks that would preserve the past.”

TheoryCapitalAccelerationism
Book:#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader
Create image

“The sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as "substance" and "essence of man," and what they have deified and attacked: a real basis which is not in the least disturbed, in its effect and influence on the development of men, by the fact that these philosophers revolt against it as "self-consciousness" and the "Unique.”

CommunismMaterialismCapitalSelf ConsciousnessHegelIdealMeans Of ProductionRelations Of Production
Book:The German Ideology / Theses on Feuerbach / Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy
Create image

“We have seen in detail above that the ultimate earnings of factors go to the owners of labor and of ground land and, as interest, to capitalists. If land can be capitalized, does this not mean that land and capital goods are “really the same thing” after all? The answer to the latter question is No.25It is still emphatically true that the earnings of basic land factors are ultimate and irreducible, as are labor earnings, while capital goods have to be constantly produced and reproduced, and therefore their earnings are always reducible to the earnings of ground land, labor, and time.”

LandLaborCapitalRentTime Preference
Book:Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market: Government and Economy
Create image

“If capital is what produces a stream of income - and that is a definition no one seems to quarrel with - then it follows that software is a form of capital. It has always been difficult to measure any form of knowledge capital, but in the past the problem was not as urgent, since the ratio of difficult-to-quantify knowledge capital to more tangible capital was not as high or growing as rapidly as it is today.”

KnowledgeInformationCapital
Author:Walter B. Wriston
Create image

“Pakistanis often recount how civil servants in Pakistan’s early days worked out of makeshift offices, lived in tents and ran the government with limited stationery supplies. While the account is generally accurate, and the sacrifice of the officials admirable, it is equally important to understand that the difficulty was the result of a poor choice. Pakistan’s founder had selected the country’s capital to be located in a city lacking adequate facilities, preferring it over another provincial capital with a better establishment.”

PakistanCapitalPoor Selection
Book:Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State
Create image

“Man's nature, he postulated, was to be a "free conscious producer," but so far he had not been able to express himself freely in productive activity. He had been driven to produce by need and greed, by a passion for accumulation which in the modern bourgeois age becomes accumulation of capital. His productive activity had always, therefore, been involuntary; it had been "labour.”

CapitalismLaborCommunismBourgeoisCapitalHegelEstrangementMarxAlienated LaborEntfremdungsgeschichteFree Conscious Producer
Book:The Marx-Engels reader
Create image

“It is noteworthy that the Muslim League had campaigned for Pakistan for seven years without deciding what its capital might be. The Bengalis proposed Dhaka while others suggested Lahore and even Multan, a historic city in the south of Punjab. But the subject was never seriously discussed while rallying Muslims to the cause of Pakistan. After belatedly deciding on Karachi as the capital, Muslim League leaders expected the British Indian Army to resolve the problems they might encounter in accommodating the government of their new country. This was one of the earliest manifestations of Pakistan’s tendency to rely on the military as the solution to problems normally falling in the civilian domain.”

PakistanCapital
Book:Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State
Create image

“We have thus seen that even the most favorable situation for the working class, namely, the most rapid growth of capital, however much it may improve the material life of the worker, does not abolish the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the capitalist. Profit and wages remain as before, in inverse proportion.”

ProfitWagesCapitalClass Conflict
Book:Wage-Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit
Create image

“For what is socialism? With the frills removed, it is people collectively running society. Instead of being the prisoners of anarchic capitalist competition and the mad rush for profit at any cost, it is working together for the common good. Our tremendous co-operative power would be controlled, not by a ruling class in the search for ever greater profits, but democratically and for the fulfillment of human need.”

PoliticsProfitSocialismCommon GoodCapital
Book:Revolutionary Road to Socialism
Create image

“I have had so many Dwellings, Nat, that I know these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: I was born in this Nest of Death and Contagion and now, as they say, I have learned to feather it. When first I was with Sir Chris. I found lodgings in Phenix Street off Hogg Lane, close by St Giles and Tottenham Fields, and then in later times I was lodged at the corner of Queen Street and Thames Street, next to the Blew Posts in Cheapside. (It is still there, said Nat stirring up from his Seat, I have passed it!) In the time before the Fire, Nat, most of the buildings in London were made of timber and plaister, and stones were so cheap that a man might have a cart-load of them for six-pence or seven-pence; but now, like the Aegyptians, we are all for Stone. (And Nat broke in, I am for Stone!) The common sort of People gawp at the prodigious Rate of Building and exclaim to each other London is now another City or that House was not there Yesterday or the Situacion of the Streets is quite Changd (I contemn them when they say such things! Nat adds). But this Capital City of the World of Affliction is still the Capitol of Darknesse, or the Dungeon of Man's Desires: still in the Centre are no proper Streets nor Houses but a Wilderness of dirty rotten Sheds, allways tumbling or takeing Fire, with winding crooked passages, lakes of Mire and rills of stinking Mud, as befits the smokey grove of Moloch. (I have heard of that Gentleman, says Nat all a quiver). It is true that in what we call the Out-parts there are numberless ranges of new Buildings: in my old Black-Eagle Street, Nat, tenements have been rais'd and where my Mother and Father stared without understanding at their Destroyer (Death! he cryed) new-built Chambers swarm with life. But what a Chaos and Confusion is there: meer fields of Grass give way to crooked Passages and quiet Lanes to smoking Factors, and these new Houses, commonly built by the London workmen, are often burning and frequently tumbling down (I saw one, says he, I saw one tumbling!). Thus London grows more Monstrous, Straggling and out of all Shape: in this Hive of Noise and Ignorance, Nat, we are tyed to the World as to a sensible Carcasse and as we cross the stinking Body we call out What News? or What's a clock? And thus do I pass my Days a stranger to mankind. I'll not be a Stander-by, but you will not see me pass among them in the World. (You will disquiet your self, Master, says Nat coming towards me). And what a World is it, of Tricking and Bartering, Buying and Selling, Borrowing and Lending, Paying and Receiving; when I walk among the Piss and Sir-reverence of the Streets I hear, Money makes the old Wife trot, Money makes the Mare to go (and Nat adds, What Words won't do, Gold will). What is their God but shineing Dirt and to sing its Devotions come the Westminster-Hall-whores, the Charing-cross whores, the Whitehall whores, the Channel-row whores, the Strand whores, the Fleet Street whores, the Temple-bar whores; and they are followed in the same Catch by the Riband weavers, the Silver-lace makers, the Upholsterers, the Cabinet-makers, Watermen, Carmen, Porters, Plaisterers, Lightemen, Footmen, Shopkeepers, Journey-men... and my Voice grew faint through the Curtain of my Pain.”

MoneyCapitalismLondonCapitalLondon City
Book:Hawksmoor
Create image

“But this city is a world of its own, a country within a country. People are used to taking the old and making it news; and used, too, to taking the new and making it old. Every glass of water from its taps, it is said, has passed six times through the kidneys of another, and every scrap of its land has been trodden on, fought over, dug up and broken down for centuries.”

EnglandLondonDirtyBritainCityCapitalMetropolisUk
Book:Hearts and Minds
Create image

“Never forget,' says Sugar Daddy, 'we are a nation built on sugar. It is our history and it is the source of our prosperity, now and in the future.' This is true. Our entire nation sits on reclaimed land made from sugar. Ours is an island that rose out of the sea, built on a hard core of toffee.”

BooksFutureProsperityAustraliaSatireSugarAsiaNationShort StoriesCapitalMisfitsCollectionSugar DaddyToffeeSingapore LiteratureIreadbooksactuallySugar Coated
Book:Capital Misfits
Create image

“C'est donc la proportion existante entre la somme des capitaux et celle des revenus qui détermine partout la proportion dans laquelle se trouveront l'industrie et la fainéantise ; partout où les capitaux l'emportent, c'est l'industrie qui domine ; partout où ce sont les revenus, la fainéantise prévaut. Ainsi, toute augmentation ou diminution dans la masse des capitaux tend naturellement à augmenter ou à diminuer réellement la somme de l'industrie, le nombre des gens productifs et, par conséquent, la valeur échangeable du produit annuel des terres et du travail du pays, la richesse et le revenu réel de tous ses habitants. Les capitaux augmentent par l'économie ; ils diminuent par la prodigalité et la mauvaise conduite.”

CapitalTravailIndustrie
Book:An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations
Create image

“How many troops do we embark?' inquired Philip. 'Two hundred and forty-five rank and file, and six officers. Poor fellows! There are but few of them will ever return; nay, more than one-half will not see another birthday. It is a dreadful climate. I have landed three hundred men at that horrid hole, and in six months, even before I had sailed, there were not one hundred left alive.' 'It is almost murder to send them there,' observed Philip. 'Pshaw! They must die somewhere, and if they die a little sooner, what matter? Life is a commodity to be bought and sold like any other. We send out so much manufactured goods and so much money to barter for Indian commodities. We also send out so much life, and it gives a good return to the Company.' 'But not to the poor soldiers, I am afraid.' 'No; the Company buy it cheap and sell it dear,' replied the captain, who walked forward. True, thought Philip, they do purchase human life cheap, and make a rare profit of it, for without these poor fellows how could they hold their possessions in spite of native and foreign enemies? For what a paltry and cheap annuity do these men sell their lives? For what a miserable pittance do they dare all the horrors of a most deadly climate, without a chance, a hope of return to their native land, where they might happily repair their exhausted energies, and take a new lease of life!”

LifeProfitSoldiersCapital
Book:The Phantom Ship
Create image

“Si pensamos, siguiendo a Marx, que «la fuerza de trabajo no es el trabajo realmente realizado, sino la simple potencia de trabajar», entonces habrá que decir que cualquier cuerpo, humano o animal, real o virtual, femenino o masculino posee esta potencia maturbatoria, potencia de hacer eyacular, potentia gaudendi, por tanto, potencia productora de capital fijo —puesto que participa en el proceso productivo sin consumirse en el proceso mismo—.”

CapitalMarxPotencia Masturbatoria
Book:Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era
Create image

“La classe des ouvriers modernes, qui ne vivent qu'à la condition de trouver du travail, et qui n'en trouvent plus dès que leur travail cesse d'agrandir le capital. Les ouvriers, contraints de se vendre au jour le jour, sont une marchandise comme tout autre article de commerce ; ils subissent, par conséquent, toutes les vicissitudes de la concurrence, toutes fluctuations du marché.”

CommerceCapitalTravailConcurrenceMarchéMarchandiseOuvriers
Book:The Communist Manifesto
Create image

“Cependant, pour les pays les plus avancés, les mesures suivantes pourront assez généralement être applicables : 1 ̊Expropriation de la propriété foncière et confiscation de la rente foncière au profit de l’Etat. 2 ̊Impôt fortement progressif. 3 ̊Abolition de l’héritage. 4 ̊Confiscation de la propriété de tous les émigrants et de tous les rebelles. 5 ̊Centralisation du crédit dans les mains de l’Etat au moyen d’une banque nationale, avec capital de l’Etat, et avec le monopole exclusif. 6 ̊Centralisation dans les mains de l’Etat de tous les moyens de transport. 7 ̊Augmentation des manufactures nationales et des instruments de production, défrichement des terrains incultes et amélioration des terres cultivées d’après un système général. 8 ̊Travail obligatoire pour tous, organisation d’armées industrielles, particulièrement pour l’agriculture. 9 ̊Combinaison du travail agricole et industriel, ; mesures tendant à faire disparaître la distinction entre ville et campagne. 10 ̊Education publique et gratuite de tous les enfants, abolition du travail des enfants dans les fabriques tel qu’il est pratiqué aujourd’hui. Combinaison de l’éducation avec la production matérielle, etc., etc.”

CapitalProductionTravailéDucationImpôtPropriétéConfiscation
Book:The Communist Manifesto
Create image