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Capitalism Quotes

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Capitalism Quotes

“There was another reason why the dollar's hegemony grew: the intentional impoverishment of America's working class. A cynic will tell you quite accurately that large quantities of money are attracted to countries where the profit rate is higher. For Wall Street to exercise fully its magnetic powers over foreign capital, profit margins in the United States had to catch up with profit rates in Germany and Japan. A quick and dirty way to do this was to suppress American wages. Cheaper labour makes for lower costs, makes for larger margins. It is no coincidence that, to this day, American working class earnings languish below their 1974 level. It is also no coincidence that union-busting became a thing in the 1970s, culminating in Ronald Reagan's dismissal of every single unionised air traffic controller. A move emulated by Margaret Thatcher in Britain who pulverised whole industries in order to eliminate the trade unions that inhabited them. And faced with the Minotaur's sucking most of the world's capital into America, the European ruling classes reckoned that they had no alternative but to do the same. Reagan had set the pace. Thatcher had shown the way. But it was in Germany and later across continental Europe that the new class war - you might call it universal austerity - was waged most effectively.”

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Book:Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
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“This revolution of values must go beyond traditional capitalism and Communism. We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encourage smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless so that, like Dives before Lazarus, they are unmoved by suffering, poverty-stricken humanity. The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than thou-centered. Equally, Communism reduces men to a cog in the wheel of the state. The Communist may object, saying that in Marxian theory the state is an “interim reality” that will “wither away” when the classless society emerges. True—in theory; but it is also true that, while the state lasts, it is an end in itself. Man is a means to that end. He has no inalienable rights. His only rights are derived from, and conferred by, the state. Under such a system the fountain of freedom runs dry. Restricted are man’s liberties of press and assembly, his freedom to vote and his freedom to listen and to read. Truth is found neither in traditional capitalism nor in classical Communism. Each represents a partial truth. Capitalism fails to see the truth in collectivism. Communism fails to see the truth in individualism. Capitalism fails to realize that life is social. Communism fails to realize that life is personal. The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of Communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.”

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Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“There is a huge shift to rewiring people from working class families to pursue education that is cheap, but profitable for corporations and corporatized educational institutions, and that is just enough for them to be trained as malleable workers at the service of the ruling class and their needs. We are in a country in which the few rich and privileged get quality education, while everyone else gets cheap training and acquire mediocre skills in the form of certificates of completion. The children of the rich go to Yale and Harvard and other big names, while those from poor working-class families get certificates in this or that skill that they can add to their resumes to be desired by employers. [From “On the Great Resignation” published on CounterPunch on February 24, 2023]”

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Author:Louis Yako
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“Economic growth doesn't mean the growth of disparity, it means the end of disparity. And we can never end disparity from our society unless we cut off all ties with luxury, preferably by individual accountability, if not, then by means of policy.”

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Book:Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None
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“Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state’s monopoly of armed violence. What is a policeman? He is the active servant of the commodity, the man in complete submission to the commodity, whose job it is to ensure that a given product of human labor remains a commodity, with the magical property of having to be paid for, instead of becoming a mere refrigerator or rifle — a passive, inanimate object, subject to anyone who comes along to make use of it. In rejecting the humiliation of being subject to police, black people are at the same time rejecting the humiliation of being subject to commodities.”

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Book:Internationale situationniste
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“Of course clergymen and other paid teachers and moralists admonished us to be upright and unselfish, and for people with good incomes it was easy to condemn those living on the edge of poverty as inferior, impractical, shiftless, and lacking respect for the social code. It was easy to shout thief at the other fellow when you had no temptation to steal-I mean steal in a petty way. But stealing in a big way was often accepted as good business judgment.”

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Book:Art Young: His Life and Times
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“I am on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and both my children are in school. . . . I have graduated from college with distinction, 128th in a class of over 1000, with a B.A. in English and sociology. I have experience in library work, child care, social work and counseling. I have been to the CETA office. They have nothing for me. . . . I also go every week to the library to scour the newspaper Help Wanted ads. I have kept a copy of every cover letter that I have sent out with my resume; the stack is inches thick. I have applied for jobs paying as little as $8000 a year. I work part-time in a library for $3.50 an hour, welfare reduces my allotment to compensate. . . . It appears we have employment offices that can’t employ, governments that can’t govern and an economic systemthat can’t produce jobs for people ready to work. . . . Last week I sold my bed to pay for the insurance on my car, which, in the absence of mass transportation, I need to go job hunting. I sleep on a piece of rubber foamsomebody gave me. So this is the great American dream my parents came to this country for: Work hard, get a good education, follow the rules, and you will be rich. I don’t want to be rich. I just want to be able to feed my children and live with some semblance of dignity. . . .”

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Book:A People's History of the United States: American Beginnings to Reconstruction
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“The spectacle is a permanent opium war designed to force people to equate goods with commodities and to equate satisfaction with a survival that expands according to its own laws. Consumable survival must constantly expand because it never ceases to include privation. If augmented survival never comes to a resolution, if there is no point where it might stop expanding this is because it is itself stuck in the realm of privation. It may gild poverty, but it cannot transcend it.”

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Book:The Society of the Spectacle
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“Private property based on the labour of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy, i.e., all the catchwords with which the capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants- are things of the past. Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries. And this "booty" is shared between two or three powerful world marauders armed to the teeth"..."who involve the whole world in their war over the sharing of their booty.”

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Book:Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
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“For decades, the exploitative capitalist system and neoliberalism have been trying to persuade the world that it is for our best interest to reduce (or even erase) the public sector and give more power to the greedy private sector. They have been pushing -with great success – for the privatization of every service that can benefit the poor and marginalized people. They have and still are trying to get rid of universal healthcare anywhere their hands can reach. Why do they do so? The answer is simpler than we think: it is to keep people at the mercy of the greedy capitalist system that sees individuals as either potential cheap laborers to benefit from or a burden to dispose of when no longer usable. This global pandemic should be a wake-up call to all of us about how duped the world has been all along by this narrative. How many more disasters and pandemics will it take for the world to wake up?”

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Author:Louis Yako
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“Im Kapitalismus wie im Kommunismus läuft alles (...) auf eine falsche Vorstellung hinaus, die wir vor vierzig Jahren beinahe überwunden hätten: auf den Trugschluss, ein Leben ohne Armut sei kein Recht, auf das alle Menschen Anspruch hätten, sondern ein Privileg, für das man arbeiten müsse.”

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Book:Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
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“All men know that by sheer weight of physical force, the mass of men must in the last resort become the arbiters of human action. But reason, skill, wealth, machines and power may for long periods enable the few to control the many. But to what end? The current theory of democracy is that dictatorship is a stopgap pending the work of universal education, equitable income, and strong character. But always the temptation is to use the stopgap for narrower ends, because intelligence, thrift and goodness seem so impossibly distant for most men. We rule by junta; we turn Fascist, because we do not believe in men; yet the basis of fact in this disbelief is incredibly narrow. We know perfectly well that most human beings have never had a decent human chance to be full men. Most of us may be convinced that even with opportunity the number of utter human failures would be vast; and yet remember that this assumption kept the ancestors of present white America long in slavery and degradation. It is then one's moral duty to see that every human being, to the extent of his capacity, escapes ignorance, poverty and crime. With this high ideal held unswervingly in view, monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorships may rule; but the end will be the rule of All, if mayhap All or Most qualify. The only unforgivable sin is dictatorship for the benefit of Fools, Voluptuaries, gilded Satraps, Prostitutes and Idiots. The rule of the famished, unlettered, stinking mob is better than this and the only inevitable, logical and justifiable return. To escape from ultimate democracy is as impossible as it is for ignorant poverty and crime to rule forever.”

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Book:Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
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“Have you ever played Monopoly? It's a board game designed to teach kids capitalism. And what happens in the end? The winner has all the money, and everyone else has nothing. Woohoo! So much fun! That's literally how America works. That's why there are a few super rich people who own almost everything, and tens of millions of dirt poor people who have nothing.”

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Book:How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book
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“I mean, if you accept the framework that says totalitarian command economies have the right to make these decisions, and if the wage levels and working conditions are fixed facts, then we have to make choices within those assumptions. Then you can make an argument that poor people here ought to lose their jobs to even poorer people somewhere else... because that increases the economic pie, and it's the usual story. Why make those assumptions? There are other ways of dealing with the problem. Take, for example rich people here. Take those like me who are in the top few percent of the income ladder. We could cut back our luxurious lifestyles, pay proper taxes, there are all sorts of things. I'm not even talking about Bill Gates, but people who are reasonably privileged. Instead of imposing the burden on poor people here and saying "well, you poor people have to give up your jobs because even poorer people need them over there," we could say "okay, we rich people will give up some small part of our ludicrous luxury and use it to raise living standards and working conditions elsewhere, and to let them have enough capital to develop their own economy, their own means." Then the issue will not arise. But it's much more convenient to say that poor people here ought to pay the burden under the framework of command economies—totalitarianism. But, if you think it through, it makes sense and almost every social issue you think about—real ones, live ones, ones right on the table—has these properties. We don't have to accept and shouldn't accept the framework of domination of thought and attitude that only allows certain choices to be made... and those choices almost invariably come down to how to put the burden on the poor. That's class warfare. Even by real nice people like us who think it's good to help poor workers, but within a framework of class warfare that maintains privilege and transfers the burden to the poor. It's a matter of raising consciousness among very decent people.”

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Book:Chomsky On Anarchism
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“How does a hardworking sixty-four-year-old-woman end up without a house or a permanent place to stay, relying on unpredictable low-wage work to survive? Living in a mile-high alpine wilderness, with intermittent snow and maybe mountain lions in a tiny trailer, scrubbing toilets at the mercy of employers who, on a whim, could cut her hours or even fire her? What does the future look like for someone like that?”

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Book:Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
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“Just like how most if not all poor boys look up to and aspire to someday be rich men, most if not all underdeveloped and developing countries look up to and aspire to someday be developed countries.”

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Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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