“The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational.”

— Robert Gilpin

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Two, Three Ideologies Of Political Economy, p. 37

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Robert Gilpin 41

Political scientist 1930–2018

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“Capitalism is commodity production at the highest stage of development, when labor power itself becomes a commodity. The growth of internal exchange, and particularly of international exchange, is a special feature of capitalism. The uneven and spasmodic character of the development of individual enterprises, of individual branches of industry and individual countries, is inevitable under the capitalist system.”

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Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Four, "The Export of Capital"

“Individual capitalists, in short, necessarily act in such a way as to de-stabilize capitalism.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Variant: Individual capitalists, in short, behave in such a way as to threaten the conditions that permit the reproduction of the capitalist class.
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“Capital, explaining the origins of the capitalist mode of production, points towards the inevitable historical decline and fall of this same social system. An economic theory based upon the historical relativity of every economic system, its strict limitation in time, tactlessly reminds Messrs the capitalists, their hangers-on and their apologists that capitalism itself is a product of history. It will perish in due course as it once was born. A new social form of economic organization will then take the place of the capitalist one: it will function according to other laws than those which govern the capitalist economy.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

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“You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

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“In this strictly Marxist sense, the capitalistic system continues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Preface to the Third Edition (August 1942)
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Context: In the strictly Marxist sense, there is not even in Soviet Russia a state socialism but a state capitalism. According to Marx, the social condition "capitalism" does not consist in the existence of individual capitalists, but in the existence of the specific "capitalist mode of production", that is, in the production of exchange values instead of use values, in wage work of the masses and in the production of surplus value, which is appropriated by the state or the private owners, and not by the society of working people. In this strictly Marxist sense, the capitalistic system continues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority.

“We live in the capitalist system, so-called because its dominated b the capitalist class. In this system the capitalists are the rulers and the workers the subjects. The capitalists are in a decided minority and yet they rule because of the ignorance of the working class.”

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Working Class Politics (1910)

“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 book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

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“But simultaneously with the development of capitalist production the credit system also develops. The money-capital which the capitalist cannot as yet employ in his own business is employed by others, who pay him interest for its use.”

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

Vol. II, Ch. XVII, p. 325.
(Buch II) (1893)

“Well, they have the education system. They have the media. They have the capitalist system. What do you think the Tides Foundation was? They infiltrate and they saw under Ronald Reagan that capitalists were not for all of this nonsense, so they infiltrated. Now, they are using failing capitalism to destroy it.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

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Matt
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2010-07-23
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http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007230022
on the Tides Center
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“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)

“The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational.”

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Robert Gilpin 41

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