“Medieval corporations owned property, and they often engaged in complex financial arrangements, but in no case were they profit-seeking enterprises in the modern sense.”

— David Graeber

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Ten, "The Middle Ages", p. 305

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 25, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Medieval corporations owned property, and they often engaged in complex financial arrangements, but in no case were the…" by David Graeber?

David Graeber 55

American anthropologist and anarchist 1961

Related quotes

“IN a free‐enterprise, private‐property system, a corporate executive is an employe of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different objective. A group of persons might establish a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose—for example, a hospital or school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objective but the rendering of certain services. In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation or establish the eleemosynary institution, and his primary responsibility is to them.”

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

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

“While people are allowed to elect a Government or Corporation, they are deprived of any real power, as there exists a financial dictatorship that causes high rents, excessive prices and profits.”

Timothy Quill (1901–1960) Early Dáil member, cooperative organiser, agriculturalist

Irish Press (1940)
By Quill:, 1940s

“We know that most of the wealth and income of the country is owned by a few large corporations, that these corporations in turn are owned by an infinitesimally small number of people and that the profits from the operation of these corporations go to a very small group with the result that the new opportunities for new enterprise, whether corporate or individual, are constantly being restricted. The committee therefore recommends the vigorous and vigilant enforcement of the antitrust laws, confident that an awakening business conscience will realize the necessity of complete cooperation in the elimination of monopolistic practice.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 166

“The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Roosevelt here slightly misquotes Thomas Babington Macaulay, who in a speech on parliamentary reform (2 March 1831) asserted: "The voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve."
1930s, Address at the Democratic State Convention, Syracuse, New York (1936)
Context: The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.
Never has a Nation made greater strides in the safeguarding of democracy than we have made during the past three years. Wise and prudent men — intelligent conservatives — have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time. In the words of the great essayist, "The voice of great events is proclaiming to us. Reform if you would preserve." I am that kind of conservative because I am that kind of liberal.

“The State is always, whatever be its form — primitive, ancient, medieval, modern — an invitation issued by one group of men to other human groups to carry out some enterprise in common.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Context: The State is always, whatever be its form — primitive, ancient, medieval, modern — an invitation issued by one group of men to other human groups to carry out some enterprise in common. That enterprise, be its intermediate processes what they may, consists in the long run in the organisation of a certain type of common life. … [As Renan says, ] "To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to wish to do greater; these are the essential conditions which make up a people.… In the past, an inheritance of glories and regrets; in the future, one and the same programme to carry out.… The existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite."

“In order to create the appropriate material conditions, Lenin was prepared to make recourse not only to market arrangements, but to international capitalism as well. Not only was private property, private enterprise, and private profit largely restored in Lenin’s Russia, but Lenin appealed to international capitalism for assistance as well. He was prepared to offer generous concessions to foreign capitalism.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Marxism, Fascism & Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, (2008), p. 55

“Most corporate mission statements are worthless…. [Corporations] often formulate necessities as objectives: For example, 'to achieve sufficient profit.' This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Russel L. Ackoff, (1987) "Mission statements", in: Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 15 Iss: 4, pp.30 - 31.
1980s

“The alphabet, when pushed to a high degree of abstract visual intensity, became typography. The printed word with its specialist intensity burst the bonds of medieval corporate guilds and monasteries, created extreme individualist patterns of enterprise and monopoly.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Understanding Media (1964), p. 23

“The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstracts away its essence.”

Fred Brooks No Silver Bullet

Page 183.
No Silver Bullet (1986)

“The majority of US agrees on need to address healthcare, climate change, corruption, etc. Divisions that lead to civil war are the fault of partisan pols seeking votes and a corporate-owned media establishment that pushes a war agenda and profits off controversy & divisiveness.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter, https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1103277298562842625 (6 March 2019)
Twitter account, March 2019

“Medieval corporations owned property, and they often engaged in complex financial arrangements, but in no case were they profit-seeking enterprises in the modern sense.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

David Graeber 55

Related quotes

Related topics