Capitalism Quotes - Page 36

• To be free is better than to be unfree – always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Opposites, Conservative, Politician

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• Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the 'gales of creative destruction' still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Hands, Invisible Hand, Creative

  "Rupert Murdoch's inaugural Margaret Thatcher lecture" by Rupert Murdoch, www.theguardian.com. October 21, 2010.

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• The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. ... If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Civilization, People, Dawn

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and - above all - its suicidal power. The belief is now that everything - and everyone - is fair game.

  Gunter Grass

  Suicidal, Games, Rivals

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• Born Losers is a beautiful piece of writing. Scott Sandage is history's Dickens; his bleak house, the late nineteenth century world of almost anonymous American men who failed. With wit and sympathy, Sandage illuminates the grey world of credit evaluation, a little studied smothering arm of capitalism. This is history as it should be, a work of art exploring the social cost of our past.

  William S. McFeely

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

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• In the Europe which was created by the Second World War, divided into two blocks, each in need of a revolution that would end the abuses and injustices of capitalism and the privileges of a bureaucratic caste, collective faith does not exist.

  Juan Goytisolo

  Block, War, Europe

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• Those who condemn the immorality of liberal capitalism do so in comparison with a society of saints that has never existed—and never will

  Martin Wolf

  Saint, Immorality, Comparison

  Martin Wolf (2004). “Why Globalization Works”, p.57, Yale University Press

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• If you lived with a roommate as unstable as this economic system, you would’ve moved out or demanded that your roommate get professional help.

  Richard D. Wolff

  Funny, Fickle, Erratic

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• The man who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at forty he has no head.

  Aristide Briand

  Heart, Men, Twenties

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• Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism

  Benjamin Tucker

  Socialism, Communism, Said

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• To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

  Murray Bookchin

  Nature, Warrior, Breathing

  "Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future". Book by Murray Bookchin, 1990.

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• In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms—from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’ . . . We are in a deadly race between politics and technology. . . . The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.

  Peter Thiel

  Fate, Technology, Our World

  "The Education of a Libertarian". www.cato-unbound.org. April 13, 2009.

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• But it [crony capitalism] erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.

  Charles Koch

  Entrepreneur, Erode, Want

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• The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences.

  Carroll Quigley

  Country, Fashion, Agreement

  Carroll Quigley (1966). “Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time”, G S G & Associates Pub

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• Capitalism will never fall on its own. It will have to be pushed. The accumulation of capital will never cease. It will have to be stopped. The capitalist class will never willingly surrender its power. It will have to be dispossessed.

  David Harvey

  Fall, Class, Surrender

  David Harvey (2010). “The Enigma of Capital: and the Crises of Capitalism”, p.260, Oxford University Press

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• 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.'

  Richard Pipes

  Powerful, War, Party

  "Property and Freedom". Book by Richard Pipes, 1999.

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• Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Judging, Pockets, Defense

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.144, Routledge

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• Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Thinking

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.61, Routledge

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• Prior to the advent of the civilization of the Third Estate (mercantilism, capitalism), the social ethics that was religiously sanctioned in the West consisted in realizing one’s being and in achieving one’s own perfection within the fixed parameters that one’s individual nature and the group to which one belonged clearly defined. Economic activity, work, and profit were justified only in the measure in which they were necessary for sustenance and to ensure the dignity of an existence conformed to one’s own estate, without the lower instinct of self-interest or profit coming first.

  Julius Evola

  Self, Civilization, Perfection

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• Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another. But how? That is the problem for everybody today, but especially for people on the left.

  Eric Hobsbawm

  Believe, Past, People

  "Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next?" by Eric Hobsbawm, www.theguardian.com. April 9, 2009.

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• It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting results of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrow of capitalism, was to save its antagonist, both in war and in peace - that is to say, by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War, and, by establishing the popularity of economic planning, furnishing it with some of the procedures for its reform

  Eric Hobsbawm

  War, October Revolution, Reform

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• Hermeneutics is a way of looking at Being as an inheritance that is never considered as ultimate data. Capitalism has always grown by considering, or forcing another to consider, as a 'natural' possession what is inherited. The great dominating families are really the inheritors of the strongest pirates, thieves, and bandits, and they consider themselves entitled to command through a divine or natural law, when they really are only the result of a forgotten 'violence'.

  Gianni Vattimo

  Law, Data, Pirate

  Gianni Vattimo, Santiago Zabala (2014). “Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx”, p.93, Columbia University Press

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• Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism

  Murray Rothbard

  Expression, Anarchism, Compatible

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• Christian socialism”). This is a difficult concept for modern liberals to grasp because they are used to thinking of the progressives as the people who cleaned up the food supply, pushed through the eight hour workday, and ended child labor. But liberals often forget that the progressives were imperialists, at home and abroad. They were the authors of Prohibition, the Palmer Raids, eugenics, loyalty oaths, and, in its modern incarnation, what many call “state capitalism.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Christian, Loyalty, Children

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• In America it is the so-called capitalist who is to blame for the fulfillment of Marx's prophecies. Beguiled by the state's siren song of special privilege, the capitalists have abandoned capitalism.

  Frank Chodorov

  Song, America, Special

  Frank Chodorov (1980). “Fugitive essays: selected writings of Frank Chodorov”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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