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

— Mikhail Gorbachev

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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 2, 2022. History

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Mikhail Gorbachev 65

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1931

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 137

“Bearing in mind that “the market” is not an invention of capitalism but that it has existed for thousands of years in many different societies, social justice logically requires that the profits resulting from the operation of markets and infrastructures created by society be equitably shared within societies and in a larger context within the human family.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred Maurice de Zayas http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A.67.277_en.pdf.
2012

“The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century"

“If a 19th century capitalist Machiavelli had wished to cripple the socialist intelligentsia of the 20th century, he could have invented no more cogent weapon than the labour theory of value. Yet this theory was the invention, not of a defender of capitalism, but of its greatest critic: Karl Marx.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 13, Nothing To Lose But Their Minds, p. 270–271 (See also: Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VI, p. 58)

“Nationalism, then Islamism, both twentieth-century inventions, destroyed the Greek civilization in Egypt that had endured for three thousand years.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 5, §1 (p. 158)

“While [European] national cultures were concocted to distinguish one economic unit of capital from another, civilizational thinking was invented to unify these cultures against their colonial consequences. Islamic, Indian, or African civilizations were invented contrapuntally by Orientalism…in order to match, balance and thus authenticate ‘Western Civilization’.”

Hamid Dabashi (1951) American academic

For the Last Time Civilization. http://iss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/3/361

“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 (1951) journalist and author

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)

“The production of wealth by private enterprise is called Capitalism. It is hard to call Capitalism one of the isms, because Capitalism is not a creed at all. Capitalism was not ‘invented’ by any sociologist or philosopher. Capitalists never called themselves that. The word was invented by socialists to describe what they hated.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 25

“It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.”

Orson Scott Card book The Folk of the Fringe

Source: The Folk of the Fringe

“Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 8

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

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Mikhail Gorbachev 65

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