“If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant.”
"Conserving Forest Communities".
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)
Context: By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere. Its failure as a way of dealing with the natural world and human society can no longer be sanely denied. That this economic system persists and grows larger and stronger in spite of its evident failure has nothing to do with rationality or, for that matter, with evidence. It persists because, embodied now in multinational corporations, it has discovered a terrifying truth: If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Wendell Berry 189
author 1934Related quotes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib8YG-WDZtM: 6 minutes 08 seconds into the video

Address to the 2005 G8 climate change summit in London, as reported by David Adam, "Blair signals shift over climate change", http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/nov/02/greenpolitics.frontpagenews The Guardian, 1 November 2005.
2000s

"The Revolution That Didn't Happen" in The New York Review of Books (1998) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/735

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), p. 14 (Quote is from Marx, Early Writings (1964), p. 148).

“That’s a political decision. Finland has full control of its borders”
Norway has adopted firmer methods than Finland to deal with the arrival of asylum seekers via its Arctic border with Russia. The country has effectively sealed the border to prevent further arrivals. Reporters asked Soini why Finland doesn’t do the same, quoted on Yle.Fi, "Foreign Minister Soini: Organised crime behind Russian border crossings" http://yle.fi/uutiset/foreign_minister_soini_organised_crime_behind_russian_border_crossings/8618228, February 22, 2016

“Three reasons why young people don't have to worry about their future: education, politics and me.”
Source: Presidential Election Campaign 2012

On Joycelyn Elders and Clinton's firing of her
Playboy interview (May 1995)