“Not only has capitalism failed to bring us to the brink of a scarcity-free world, but in a sense, you could say that capitalism invented scarcity”

—  Linda McQuaig

at least as a deliberate method of economic organization.... The flipside of this bounty, this endless feast, is scarcity.
All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

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Linda McQuaig21
journalist and author 1951

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Linda McQuaig photo

“Not only has capitalism failed to bring us to the brink of a scarcity-free world, but in a sense, you could say that capitalism invented scarcity - at least as a deliberate method of economic organization…. The flipside of this bounty, this endless feast, is scarcity.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

Joan Robinson photo

“Modern technique, as Marx pointed out, fosters the concentration of capital, and the levels of profits is supported by a scarcity of enterprise which is not due to the real cost of risk-bearing, but to the scarcity of individuals who have anything to risk.”

Joan Robinson book An Essay on Marxian Economics

Source: An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966), Chapter VII, The Orthodox Theory of Profit, p. 57-58

“Economic logic requires that we maximize the productivity of the limiting factor in the short run, and invest in increasing its supply in the long run. When the limiting factor changes, then behavior that used to be economic becomes uneconomic. Economic logic remains the same, but the pattern of scarcity in the world changes, with the result that behavior must change if it is to remain economic. Instead of maximizing returns to and investing in man-made capital (as was appropriate in an empty world), we must now maximize returns to and invest in natural capital (as is appropriate in a full world). This is not “new economics,” but new behavior consistent with “old economics” in a world with a new pattern of scarcity.”

Herman E. Daly (1938) American economist

Herman E. Daly (1994) in: AnnMari Jansson. Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach To Sustainability. 1994. p. 24

Terry Eagleton photo

“We face a probable future of nuclear-armed states warring over a scarcity of resources; and that scarcity is largely the consequence of capitalism itself. For the first time in history, our prevailing form of life has the power not simply to breed racism and spread cultural cretinism, drive us into war or herd us into labour camps, but to wipe us from the planet. Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism. The traditional leftist slogan ‘‘Socialism or barbarism’’ was never more grimly apposite.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 2010s, Why Marx Was Right (2011), Chapter 1, p. 8

Henry George photo

“In any country, however new and vast, it would be possible to change "scarcity of labor" into "scarcity of employment" by increasing the price put on the use of land.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Source: How to Help the Unemployed (1894), p. 182
Context: In any country, however new and vast, it would be possible to change "scarcity of labor" into "scarcity of employment" by increasing the price put on the use of land. If three families settled a virgin continent, one family could command the services of the others as laborers for hire just as fully as though they were its chattel slaves, if it was accorded the ownership of the land and could put its own price on its use. Wakefield proposed only that land should be held at what he called "a sufficient price "— that is, a price high enough to keep wages in new colonies only a little higher than wages in the mother-country, and to produce not actual inability to get employment on the part of laborers, but only such difficulty as would keep them tractable, and ready to accept what from his standpoint were reasonable wages. Yet it is evident that it would only require a somewhat greater increase in the price of land to go beyond this point and to bring about in the midst of abundant natural opportunities for the employment of labor, the phenomena of laborers vainly seeking employment. Now, in the United States we have not attempted to create "scarcity of employment" by Wakefield's plan. But we have made haste by sale and gift to put the public domain in the hands of private owners, and thus allowed speculation to bring about more quickly and effectually than he could have anticipated, more than Wakefield aimed at. The public domain is now practically gone; land is rising to European prices, and we are at last face to face with social difficulties which in the youth of men of my time we were wont to associate with "the effete monarchies of the Old World."

Mikhail Gorbachev photo

“The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Statement (8 June 1990), as quoted in The Economics of the Environment and Natural Resources (2004) by R. Quentin Grafton, p. 277
As quoted in The Guardian [London] (21 June 1990)
1990s
Variant: 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.

Milton Friedman photo

“I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that it has survived at all. (…) I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Interview with Parker in Randall E. Parker(ed.), Reflection on the Great Depression (2002)

Malcolm X photo

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely….”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

March 1965, p. 199
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

Ian Bremmer photo

“In the last 21 months, if you've learnt anything, it's that the state is back. If the free market fails, it's not because it's been defeated by state capitalism; the only people that can defeat the free market is us, we're the only ones who can destroy it.”

Ian Bremmer (1969) American political scientist

"The West Should Fear the Growth of State Capitalism," http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7883061/The-West-should-fear-the-growth-of-state-capitalism-Ian-Bremmer.html The Daily Telegraph (July 10, 2010).

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