“Gold is required in large quantities only in a society which produces a very large economic surplus and can afford to transform part of that surplus into gold for prestige purposes (as in India) or into coinage and money to promote capitalism”

—  Walter Rodney , book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

as in Western Europe
Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 106.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Gold is required in large quantities only in a society which produces a very large economic surplus and can afford to t…" by Walter Rodney?
Walter Rodney photo
Walter Rodney 50
Guyanese politician, activist and historian 1942–1980

Related quotes

G. K. Chesterton photo

“Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is, in large quantities.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Queer Feet
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Karl Marx photo

“In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 2, pg. 430.
(Buch I) (1867)

Henri Lefebvre photo

“Just as economic pressure from the base … is able to modify the production of surplus value, so pressure grounded in spatial practice is alone capable of modifying the apportionment of that surplus value — i. e. the distribution of the portion of social surplus production allotted to society's collective 'interests', to so-called social services. Such grass-roots pressure, if it is to be effective in this regard, cannot be confined to attacking the state qua guardian of the 'general interest'. For this state, born of the hegemony of a class, has as one of its functions — and a more and more significant function — the organization of space, the regularization of its flows, the control of its networks. It devotes to these purposes a considerable part of global surplus value, of the surplus production assigned to the running of society.”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

Henri Lefebvre (1974) The Production of Space. Translated to English in 1991 by Donald Nicholson-Smith; As cited in: "Henri Lefebvre on Governance and Space" on thepolisblog.org 2012.10
Other quotes

Aneurin Bevan photo

“Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

In Place of Fear (William Heinemann Ltd, 1952), p. 39
1950s

“The alarm must be sounded because it is the economic and social system of capitalism and imperialism that prevents the urgently needed full mobilization of the potential economic surplus and the attainment of rates of economic advancement that can be secured with its help.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Seven, Towards A Morphology Of Backwardness, II, p. 244

“The Arabs had acquired Africans as slaves for centuries, but they were exploited in a feudal context. African slaves in Arab hands became domestics, soldiers, and agricultural serfs. Whatever surplus they produced was not for reinvestment and multiplication of capital, as in the West Indian or North American slave systems but for consumption by the feudal elite. Indeed, slaves were often maintained more for social prestige than for economic benefit.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 225.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Such a condition will likewise give opportunity to devote our surplus wealth, not to the payment of high taxes, but to the financing of the needs of other nations. Our country has already through private sources recognized the requirements in this direction and has made large advances to foreign governments and foreign enterprises for the purpose of reestablishing their public credit and their private industry.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Erik Naggum photo

“"Code sharing" is an economic surplus phenomenon. It works only when none of the people involved in it are in any form of need.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: realistic but short and simple LISP examples? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/29f678c98842ea2d (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Abdullah Öcalan photo

“A realistic definition of capitalism should not present it as a constant, created and characterized by unicentral thought and action. It is , in essence, the result of the actions of opportunist individuals and groups who established themselves into openings and cracks within society a the potential for surplus product developed; these actions became systemaised as they nibbled away at the surplus product.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, pp. 82

Adam Smith photo

“It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 470.

Related topics