Capitalist Quotes - Page 23

• It is sometimes suggested that the [Nazi economic] recovery was a product of a specific fascist economic strategy, which distinguished it from the recovery efforts of other capitalist states. While few would disagree that the Nazi regime had a number of clear ideological preferences when it came to the economy, the policies pursued in 1933 had much in common with those adopted in other countries, and with the policies of the pre-Hitler governments.

  Richard Overy

  Country, Recovery, Numbers

  9 Copy quote

• The Reichswirtschaftsministerium ('Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs') tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. It decrees to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds. Market exchange is merely a sham.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Jobs, History, Ministry

  5 Copy quote

• Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.

  Peter Thiel

  Two, Democracy, Libertarian

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

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Coal, Pits, Alive

  "Khrushchev: A Career". Book by Edward Crankshaw, p. 12, 1966.

  142 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.

  Leon Trotsky

  Fall, Mean, Culture

  Leon Trotsky (1937). “The revolution betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it going?”, Doubleday, Doran

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is only in revolutionary struggle against the capitalists of every country, and only in union with the working women and men of the whole world, that we will achieve a new and brighter future-the socialist brotherhood of the workers.

  Alexandra Kollontai

  Inspirational, Country, Future

  107 Copy quote

• This argument has been codified in the twentieth century as meritocracy, in which those on top in the process of capitalist accumulation have merited their position.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Argument, Century, Process

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.154, Verso

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Communists are great capitalists, so there is no threat anymore.

  Lech Walesa

  Communist, Threat

  8 Copy quote

• While I am a capitalist at heart and I have no problems with commercialization as such, I believe that while it's okay if education becomes a profitable business, it's not okay if it becomes corrupt.

  Chetan Bhagat

  Believe, Heart, Problem

  "Q&A: Chetan Bhagat on His New Book". Interview with Diksha Sahni, blogs.wsj.com. September 19, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't understand, in the hands, that is, of the government, of the clerical party, of the capitalists.

  Cesare Pavese

  Lying, Party, Dark

  "The Moon and the Bonfire". Book by Cesare Pavese. Chapter XXVI, p. 149, 1950.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are different varieties and forms of capitalism. There are priorities within the capitalist society so that you can have countervailing forces come in and empower your working people and your poor people. There are capitalist societies that do not have poverty. America needs to understand that.

  Cornel West

  America, People, Priorities

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you're wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you.

  Glenn Beck

  Thinking, Play, People

  "The Glenn Beck Program", October 10, 2011.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society?... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time?

  Fernand Braudel

  Cutting, Past, Keys

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce”, p.248, Univ of California Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.

  Karl Marx

  Joints, Common, Individual

  Karl Marx, Samuel Moore, Edward Bibbins Aveling, Friedrich Engels (1961). “Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries. The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems. Socialism and market economy are not incompatible. We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations.

  Deng Xiaoping

  Country, Essence, Wings

  "Pela China Dentro". Book by António Caeiro. Published by Dom Quixote, Lisboa, 2004.

  98 Copy quote

  Show source

• In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Odds, Play

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us.

  Karl Marx

  Rope, Sells

  22 Copy quote

• Well look, no one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others, but that is a function of capitalist markets.

  George Osborne

  People, Looks, Misery

  " Osborne has the potential to leave Labour floundering" by Jonathan Freedland, www.theguardian.com. September 26, 2008.

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.

  Karl Marx

  Hunting, Discovery, America

  Karl Marx (2007). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production”, p.823, Cosimo, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We do not hear the term compassionate applied to business executives or entrepreneurs, certainly not when they are engaged in their normal work. Yet in terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of compassion.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Jobs, Compassion, Self

  7 Copy quote

• Do I have a problem with Larry Ellison buying Sun? No, that's part of the capitalist system. As soon as we go public we're for sale, that's part of the deal. And do I have a problem with him exercising his intellectual property rights? No, I don't have a problem with that. Would it be how we necessarily ran and operated? Obviously not.

  Scott McNealy

  Exercise, Rights, Intellectual

  19 Copy quote

• The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Character, Russia, People

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" by Wilhelm Reich, (Preface to the Third Edition), August 1942.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we call a capitalist society a consumers democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers ballot, held daily in the marketplace.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Mean, Entrepreneur, Liberty

  16 Copy quote

• The American capitalists are richer and stronger than their counterparts in other lands. They are also younger and more ignorant, and therefore more inclined to seek a rough settlement of difficulties without diplomatic subtlety and finesse. All that does not change the fact that American capitalism operates according to the same laws as the others, is confronted with the same fundamental problems, and is headed toward the same catastrophe.

  James P. Cannon

  Law, Land, Ignorant

  "Fascism and The Workers’ Movement". The Militant, www.marxists.org. March-April 1954.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lack of outlets, excess capacity, complete deadlock, in the end regular recurrence of national bankruptcies and other disasters-perhaps world wars from sheer capitalist despair-may confidently be anticipated. History is as simple a that.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  War, Simple, Despair

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.51, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source