Quotes about capitalism (1674 quotes, page 2)

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , Men , People , Age

“Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternatives (2009).

Children , School , Star , Universe

“It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations.”

Fredric Jameson (1934) American academic

Source: The Seeds of Time (1994), p. xii

Imagination , Nature

“The decline of narrative can be seen as an effect of the blossoming of techniques and technologies since the Second World War, Which has shifted emphasis from the ends of action to this means; it can also be seen as an effect of the redeployment of advanced liberal capitalism after its retreat under the protection of Keynesianism during the period of 1930-1960, a renewal that has eliminated the communist alternative and valorized the individual enjoyment of goods and services.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.38

War , World

“More than 20 years earlier a small band of Hindu students and thoughtful gentlemen used to meet secretly to discuss the effects of British rule in India. The home charges and the transfer of capital from India to England in various shapes, and the exclusion of the children of the country from any share or voice in the administration of their own country, formed the chief burden of their complaint.”

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) Indian politician

As the theoretician of the "Drain Theory", he explained in his lecture delivered at the East Indian Association, London on 2 May 1867 in Forerunners of Dadabhai Naoroji’s Drain Theory, 3 December 2013, Jstor Organization http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4411389?uid=3738256&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21103047963541,
Drain Theory

Children , Home , Country

“Capitalism is the immoral distribution of capital… Germany will become free at that moment when the thirty millions on the left and the thirty millions on the right make common cause. Only one movement is capable of doing this: National Socialism, embodied in one Führer – Adolf Hitler.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Goebbels’ “Lenin or Hitler” speech first delivered on September 17, 1925
1920s

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely….”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

March 1965, p. 199
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

World , Strong , Time

“Although usury is itself a form of credit in its bourgeoisified form, the form adapted to capital, in its pre-bourgeois form it is rather the expression of the lack of credit.”

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

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 455.

“In its beginnings, the credit system sneaks in as a modest helper of accumulation and draws by invisible threads the money resources scattered all over the surface of society into the hands of individual or associated capitalists. But soon it becomes a new and formidable weapon in the competitive struggle, and finally it transforms itself into an immense social mechanism for the centralisation of capitals.”

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

Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 2, pg. 687.
(Buch I) (1867)

Money , Drawing

“I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918), Ch. VI: International relations, p. 99

World , Peace

“Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States (1980), Chapter 24. The Coming Revolt of the Guards, Ch. 24

Failure

“We have just seen that, apart from money-capital, circulating capital is only another name for commodity-capital. But to the extent that labour power circulates in the market, it is not capital, no form of commodity-capital. It is not capital at all; the labourer is not a capitalist, although he brings a commodity to market, namely his own skin.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Source: Das Kapital (Buch II) (1893), Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 211.

Money

“What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech at The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I. (December 1926) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/SEP26.html
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

People , Communication , Country

“Once socialism replaces capitalism, reason will determine the policies of states.”

Kenneth N. Waltz book Man, the State, and War

Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter V, Some Implications Of The Second Image, p. 150

“As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a "criminal" so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.
On the other hand, there were certain crimes where requests for leniency merely made me angry. Such crimes were, for instance, rape, or the circulation of indecent literature, or anything connected with what would now be called the "white slave" traffic, or wife murder, or gross cruelty to women or children, or seduction and abandonment, or the action of some man in getting a girl whom he seduced to commit abortion. In an astonishing number of these cases men of high standing signed petitions or wrote letters asking me to show leniency to the criminal. In two or three of the cases — one where some young roughs had committed rape on a helpless immigrant girl, and another in which a physician of wealth and high standing had seduced a girl and then induced her to commit abortion — I rather lost my temper, and wrote to the individuals who had asked for the pardon, saying that I extremely regretted that it was not in my power to increase the sentence. I then let the facts be made public, for I thought that my petitioners deserved public censure. Whether they received this public censure or not I did not know, but that my action made them very angry I do know, and their anger gave me real satisfaction.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. VIII : The New York Governorship

Death , Women , Men , Fate

“The factors we have listed (innovation, economies of scale, education, capital accumulation, etc.) are not causes of growth; they are growth.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: The rise of the western world, 1973, p. 2

Education

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940) United States Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor recipient and activist

War is a racket (1935)
Source: Common Sense, Vol. 4, No. 11 (November, 1935), p. 8. Quoted in 'I Might Have Given Al Capone a Few Hints' https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/10/opinion/l-i-might-have-given-al-capone-a-few-hints-023587.html, The New York Times, September 10, 1987.

Way , Boy , Business , Light

“For capitalism is abolished root and branch by the bare assumption that it is personal consumption and not enrichment that works as the compelling motive.”

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

Denn der Kapitalismus ist schon in der Grundlage aufgehoben durch die Voraussetzung, daß der Genuß als treibendes Motiv wirkt, nicht die Bereicherung selbst.
Vol. II, Ch. IV, p. 123.
(Buch II) (1893)

Motivation , Personality

“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)

Money , Business

“Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another place been lost by many. This is centralisation proper, as distinct from accumulation and concentration.”

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

Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 2, pg. 686.
(Buch I) (1867)

“I would guess that most MIT Ph. D.’s since 1980 might deem themselves not to be “Keynesians.” But they, and modern economists everywhere, do use models like those of Samuelson, Modigliani, Solow, and Tobin. Professor Martin Feldstein, my Harvard neighbor, complained at the 350th Anniversary of Harvard that Keynesians had tried to poison his sophomore mind against saving. Tobin and I on the same panel took this amiss, since both of us since 1955 had been favoring a “neoclassical synthesis,” in which full employment with an austere fiscal budget would add to capital formation in preparation for a coming demographic turnaround.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

New millennium, An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson, 2003

“International specialization and division of labor requires institutions and organizations to safeguard property rights across international boundaries so that capital markets as well as other kinds of exchange can take place with credible commitment on the part of the players.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: Institutions (1990), p. 121

Parting

“The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. […] All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be made to correct these evils. There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This […] is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Men , People , World , Fear

“Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it.”

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

Die Natur baut keine Maschinen, keine Lokomotiven, Eisenbahnen, electric telegraphs, selfacting mules etc. Sie sind Produkte der menschlichen Industrie; natürliches Material, verwandelt in Organe des menschlichen Willens über die Natur oder seiner Betätigung in der Natur. Sie sind von der menschlichen Hand geschaffene Organe des menschlichen Hirns; vergegenständliche Wissenskraft. Die Entwicklung des capital fixe zeigt an, bis zu welchem Grade das allgemeine gesellschaftliche Wissen, knowledge, zur unmittelbaren Produktivkraft geworden ist und daher die Bedingungen des gesellschaftlichen Lebensprozesses selbst unter die Kontrolle des general intellect gekommen, und ihm gemäß umgeschaffen sind.
(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, p. 626.

Life , Nature , Knowledge

“Like its progenitor, capitalism, fascism is totally opposed to socialism. Fascist Germany and Italy attacked both the other capitalist states and the Soviet Union, which was still the only socialist state in the world by 1939. The defeat of fascism was therefore a victory for socialism, and at the same time it preserved the other capitalist nations from having to take the historically retrograde step of fascism.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 310.

World , Time , Victory

“During my youth I rather leaned toward the prognosis that the Jews of different countries would be assimilated and that the Jewish question would thus disappear, as it were, automatically. The historical development of the last quarter of a century has not confirmed this view. Decaying capitalism has everywhere swung over to an intensified nationalism, one aspect of which is anti-Semitism. The Jewish question has loomed largest in the most highly developed capitalist country of Europe, Germany. […]
The Jews of different countries have created their press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument adapted to modern culture. One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come. […]
We must bear in mind that the Jewish people will exist a long time. The nation cannot normally exist without common territory. Zionism springs from this very idea. But the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism. […]
Socialism will open the possibility of great migrations on the basis of the most developed technique and culture. It goes without saying that what is here involved is not compulsory displacements, that is, the creation of new ghettos for certain nationalities, but displacements freely consented to, or rather demanded, by certain nationalities or parts of nationalities. The dispersed Jews who would want to be reassembled in the same community will find a sufficiently extensive and rich spot under the sun. The same possibility will be opened for the Arabs, as for all other scattered nations. National topography will become a part of the planned economy. This is the great historic perspective as I see it. To work for international Socialism means to work also for the solution of the Jewish question.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Excerpts of Trotsky’s interview with Jewish Telegraphic Agency (18 January 1937); as quoted in Trotsky and the Jews (1972) by Joseph Nedava, p. 204

People , Youth , Spring , Communication

“Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Anarchism or Socialism (1906)

Decision

“Christianity is not satisfied with producing merely the specious guise of virtue. She requires the substantial reality, which may stand the scrutinizing eye of that Being “who searches the heart.” Meaning therefore that the Christian should live and breathe; in an atmosphere, as it were, of benevolence, she forbids whatever can tend to obstruct its diffusion or vitiate its purity. It is on this principle that Emulation is forbidden: for, besides that this passion almost insensibly degenerates into envy, and that it derives its origin chiefly from pride and a desire of self-exaltation; how can we easily love our neighbour as ourselves, if we consider him at the same time our rival, and are intent upon surpassing him in the pursuit of whatever is the subject of our competition?
Christianity, again, teaches us not to set our hearts on earthly possessions and earthly honours; and thereby provides for our really loving, or even cordially forgiving, those who have been more successful than ourselves in the attainment of them, or who have even designedly thwarted us in the pursuit. “Let the rich,” says the Apostle, “rejoice in that he is brought low.” How can he who means to attempt, in any degree, to obey this precept, be irreconcilably hostile towards any one who may have been instrumental in his depression?
Christianity also teaches us not to prize human estimation at a very high rate; and thereby provides for the practice of her injunction, to love from the heart those who, justly or unjustly, may have attacked our reputation, and wounded our character. She commands not the shew, but the reality of meekness and gentleness; and by thus taking away the aliment of anger and the fomenters of discord, she provides for the maintenance of peace, and the restoration of good temper among men, when it may have sustained a temporary interruption.
It is another capital excellence of Christianity, that she values moral attainments at a far higher rate than intellectual acquisitions, and proposes to conduct her followers to the heights of virtue rather than of knowledge. On the contrary, most of the false religious systems which have prevailed in the world, have proposed to reward the labour of their votary, by drawing aside the veil which concealed from the vulgar eye their hidden mysteries, and by introducing him to the knowledge of their deeper and more sacred doctrines.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 257.

Love , Men , Hostility , World

“A class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increase capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.”

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

Section 1, paragraph 30, lines 3-8.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

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

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

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.

“Capitals accumulate faster than the population; thus wages; thus population; thus grain prices; thus the difficulty of production and hence the exchange values.”

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

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 271.

“I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

2011

“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Le mal de prendre une hypallage pour une découverte, une métaphore pour une démonstration, un vomissement de mots pour un torrent de connaissances capitales, et soi-même pour un oracle, ce mal naît avec nous.
Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (1895)

Truth , Spring

“A circuit performed by a capital and meant to be a periodical process, not an individual act, is called its turnover. The duration of this turnover is determined by the sum of its time of production and its time of circulation.”

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

Volume II, Ch. VII, p. 158.
(Buch II) (1893)

Time

“It is rotten and dismal that a world of so many hundred million people should be ruled by a single caste that has the power to lead millions to life or to death, indeed on a whim…This caste has spun its web over the entire earth; capitalism recognizes no national boundaries…Capitalism has learned nothing from recent events and wants to learn nothing, because it places its own interests ahead of those of the other millions. Can one blame those millions for standing up for their own interests, and only for those interests? Can one blame them for striving to forge an international community whose purpose is the struggle against corrupt capitalism? Can one condemn a large segment of the educated Stürmer youth for protesting against the greatest ability? Is it not an abomination that people with the most brilliant intellectual gifts should sink into poverty and disintegrate, while others dissipate, squander, and waste the money that could help them? … You say the old propertied class also worked hard for what it has. Granted, that may be true in many cases. But do you also know about the conditions under which workers were living during the period when capitalism “earned” its fortune?”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Letter to Anka Stalherm (14 April 1920), quoted in Ralph Georg Reuth, Goebbels (Harvest, 1994), pp. 33-34
1920s

Life , Death , Money , People

“Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left — which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right-which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

“The Death of Politics”, Playboy (March, 1969).

“Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favourite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests. (Note: spelling/capitalization likely original.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

http://www.bartleby.com/43/24.html
1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

People , Confidence

“Capital was really safer in Russia than anywhere else. … No true Marxist would allow sentiment to interfere with business.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

During a 1921 meeting with American businessman Armand Hammer, as quoted in Hammer: Witness to History by Hammer and Neil Lyndon (1988), p. 160

Business

“The paper develops a simple macroeconomic framework for the study of exchange rate movements. The purpose is to develop a theory that is suggestive of the observed large fluctuations in exchange rates while at the same time establishing that such exchange rate movements are consistent with rational expectations formation. In developing a formal model we draw on the role of asset markets, capital mobility, and expectations that have been emphasized in recent literature.”

Rudiger Dornbusch (1942–2002) German economist

Rudiger Dornbusch, "Expectations and exchange rate dynamics." The journal of political economy (1976): 1161-1176. p. 1161

Literature , Study , Time , Drawing

“The important Keynesian insight is that a high propensity to save will not generate high national saving unless it goes into investment, into accumulation of real capital. The "paradox of thrift" makes this point in an extreme way. In certain circumstances, when there is no demand for investment around, the economy can be no better off, or even worse off, if a thrifty public cuts consumption.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

"Reflections on Japanese Political Economy" (1999)

Way

“Dacca is now the free capital of a free country.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Address to Parliament announcing the victory of Bangladesh-India Forces over the Pakistan Army, (December 16, 1971) http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/1971/Dec16/index.html.

Country

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

People , World , Peace , Law

“The usurper was seen sixty leagues from the capital.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Le Moniteur Universel, March 18, 1815.
About

“Excellency, please sign. I hate to say it, but my job is not the easiest one. Prague, your capital- I should be terribly sorry if I were compelled to destroy this beautiful city. But I would have to do it, to make the English and French understand that my air force can do all it claims to do. Because they still don't want to believe this is so, and I should like an opportunity of giving them proof.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

Said by Goering to the President of Czechoslovakia Emile Hácha on March 15, 1939, when Hácha, tired and under heavy pressure from Hitler to sign a document effectively handing his country over to Germany, nonetheless tried to resist signing. Hácha eventually gave up, and the combined pressure that Hitler and Goering had put on him caused Hácha to have a heart attack at 4:00 that morning. As quoted in On Borrowed Time: How World War II Began (1969) by Leonard Mosley, p. 167.

Hate , Beauty , Understanding

“It goes without saying that the normal durability of fixed capital is calculated on the supposition that all the conditions under which it can perform its functions normally during that time are fulfilled, just as we assume, in placing a mans life at 30 years on the average, that he will wash himself.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Source: Das Kapital (Buch II) (1893)

Life , Time

“That dense population in extreme distress inhabited an island where there was an established church which was not their church; and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom lived in distant capitals. Thus they had a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That was the Irish question.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1844/feb/16/state-of-ireland-adjourned-debate-fourth in the House of Commons (16 February 1844).
1840s

World , Question , Distant

“Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech at AIPAC Policy Conference (4 June 2008) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91150432&ft=1&f=1102
2008

People

“Gibson: And in each instance, when the [capital gains tax] rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
Obama: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Interview on ABC News (16 April 2008) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/Story?id=4670271&page=3
2008

Money , People , Country

“This is a vicious circle. This is the fishmarket. This is working for survival. This is survival of the fastest. This is the Darwinist capital of the capitalist world. A head afraid is a head haunted. A head haunted is a head hunted. Run for your life. Run from the guillotine to a head hunter who saves your head and raises your salary—so you’ll be caught in the red of the fishmarket buying gadgets to distract your fragile imagination that is cut in the red market of blood—running and escaping—running again—changing your resume to update the fear you feel of being unemployed tomorrow—in the streets—and from there to welfare—and from there to begging.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Life , World , Fear , Feeling

“We must finally understand that of all the precious capital in the world, the most precious capital, the most decisive capital, is human beings […]. Cadres decide everything!”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2495035?uid=3738776&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104844992271
A more accurate translation, with respect to the context, might read: "Cadres are the key to everything"
In Russian: [...] из всех ценных капиталов, имеющихся в мире, самым ценным и самым решающим капиталом являются люди [...]. Кадры решают все!
Address to the Graduates from the Red Army Academies http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/GRA35.html. (4 May 1935); Variant translation: Human resources solve all!
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

World , Understanding , Decision

“This American system of ours … call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Interview with Claud Cockburn, as quoted in “Mr. Capone, Philosopher,” Cockburn Sums Up (1981)

“The Social-Democratic leaders glossed over and concealed from the masses the true class nature of fascism, and did not call them to the struggle against the increasingly reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie. They bear great historical responsibility for the fact that, at the decisive moment of the fascist offensive, a large section of the working people of Germany and of a number of other fascist countries failed to recognize in fascism the most bloodthirsty monster of finance capital, their most vicious enemy, and that these masses were not prepared to resist it.”

Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949) Bulgarian politician

Source: The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism, Ch. 1.

People , Nature , Decision , Country

“The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

‘Demokratie. Der Gott, Der Keiner Ist’ http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe9.html

Error , Democracy , Communication , Wealth

“In the end I have always believed that it would also be necessary to give the National Government complete power over the organization and capitalization of all business concerns engaged in inter-State commerce.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Appendix A
1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)

Business

“As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so the division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.”

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

Vol. I, Ch. 14, Section 5, pg. 396.
(Buch I) (1867)

People

“Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse.”

Len Deighton book Funeral in Berlin

Funeral in Berlin (1964; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966) p. 145
Another Czech joke

“It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion — whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government — at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

The Law (1850)

Justice , Question , Problem

“The labour-power is a commodity, not capital, in the hands of the labourer, and it constitutes for him a revenue so long as he can continuously repeat its sale; it functions as capital after its sale, in the hands of the capitalist, during the process of production itself.”

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

Vol. II, Ch. XIX, p. 384.
(Buch II) (1893)

“All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and allowed to live only so far as the interest to the ruling class requires it.”

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

Section 2, paragraph 20, lines 9-13.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“Regarding social order, Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century." He correctly attributes the modern origins of this argument to F. A. Hayek, whose pioneering contributions to cognitive science, the study of cultural evolution, and the dynamics of social change put him in the forefront of the most creative scholars of the 20th century. But Hayek's views about the "spontaneity" of social order remain controversial. In their extreme form, they imply that all deliberate efforts to manipulate social order — social engineering — are doomed to failure because the complex nature of our cultural heritage makes a complete understanding of the human condition impossible.
Hayek was certainly correct that we have, at best, a very imperfect understanding of the human landscape, but "spontaneous" it is not. What distinguishes human evolution from the Darwinian model is the intentionality of the players. The mechanism of variation in evolutionary theory (mutation) is not informed by beliefs about eventual consequences. In contrast, human evolution is guided by the perceptions of the players; their choices (decisions) are made in the light of the theories the actors have, which provide expectations about outcomes.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Douglass North in "Orders of the Day" in Reason (November 1999) http://reason.com/archives/1999/11/01/orders-of-the-day, a review of The Great Disruption : Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order (1999) by Francis Fukuyama

Fashion , Failure , Understanding , Nature

“In reality, the labourer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital.”

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

Vol. I, Ch. 23, pg. 633.
(Buch I) (1867)

Reality

“It has become entirely clear that we must have government supervision of the capitalization,”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: It has become entirely clear that we must have government supervision of the capitalization, not only of public-service corporations, including, particularly, railways, but of all corporations doing an interstate business. I do not wish to see the nation forced into the ownership of the railways if it can possibly be avoided, and the only alternative is thoroughgoing and effective legislation, which shall be based on a full knowledge of all the facts, including a physical valuation of property. This physical valuation is not needed, or, at least, is very rarely needed, for fixing rates; but it is needed as the basis of honest capitalization.

“There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book
Context: There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing, first seeing the distance timing and the background timing. This is the main thing in strategy. It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain.

Life , Way , Time

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

National Book Awards, November 2014 https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/national-book-awards-ursula-le-guin
Context: I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river.... The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

“People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

"The Death of Me", p. 151
Awareness (1992)
Context: A Jesuit once wrote a note to Father Arrupe, his superior general, asking him about the relative value of communism, socialism and capitalism. Father Arrupe gave him a lovely reply. He said, "A system is about as good or as bad as the people who use it." People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully.

People , Communication , Heart

“He seeks an economic order, alternative to the capitalist and communist, and finds this in sarvodaya based on nonviolence (ahimsa).
He rejects Darwin's survival of the fittest, Adam Smith's laissez-faire and Karl Marx's thesis of a natural antagonism between capital and labor, and focuses on the interdependence between the two.
He believes in the human capacity to change and wages Satyagraha against the oppressor, not to destroy him but to transform him, that he cease his oppression and join the oppressed in the pursuit of Truth.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)
Context: He stepped down from his comfortable life to join the masses on their level to seek equality with them. "I can't hope to bring about economic equality... I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor."
From his understanding of wealth and poverty came his understanding of labor and capital, which led him to the solution of trusteeship based on the belief that there is no private ownership of capital; it is given in trust for redistribution and equalization. Similarly, while recognizing differential aptitudes and talents, he holds that these are gifts from God to be used for the collective good.
He seeks an economic order, alternative to the capitalist and communist, and finds this in sarvodaya based on nonviolence (ahimsa).
He rejects Darwin's survival of the fittest, Adam Smith's laissez-faire and Karl Marx's thesis of a natural antagonism between capital and labor, and focuses on the interdependence between the two.
He believes in the human capacity to change and wages Satyagraha against the oppressor, not to destroy him but to transform him, that he cease his oppression and join the oppressed in the pursuit of Truth.
We in South Africa brought about our new democracy relatively peacefully on the foundations of such thinking, regardless of whether we were directly influenced by Gandhi or not.

Truth , Nature , Change

“The most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings;”

Alfred Marshall book Principles of Economics

Source: Principles of Economics, (1890), p. 468 (9th ed. 2009).
Context: If we compare one country of the civilized world with another, or one part of England with another, or one trade in England with another, we find that the degradation of the working-classes varies almost uniformly with the amount of rough work done by women. The most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings; and of that capital the most precious part is the result of the care and influence of the mother, so long as she retains her tender and unselfish instincts, and has not been hardened by the strain and stress of unfeminine work.

“I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: One of the reasons why I am opposed to Slavery is just here. What is the true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat — just what might happen to any poor man's son! I want every man to have the chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it — in which he can better his condition — when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.

Life , War , Law , Chance

“Generally speaking, yes, greed and capital. In other words, banking”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2012
Context: On world economy: "I see the crisis like a theatrical play that concerns the world – not just Greece... But, I am afraid that it is not easy for any country today to decide their own future... Corruption is another way for just a few to benefit... It's a game. What you read is not what's happening. The whole planet is in trouble for the same reason... Generally speaking, yes, greed and capital. In other words, banking".

“Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital”

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

Early Writings, translated and ed. by , p. 159. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/3rd.htm
Context: Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital or when we directly possess, eat, drink, wear, inhabit it, etc., in short, when we use it. Although private property conceives all these immediate realizations of possession only as means of life; and the life they serve is the life of private property, labor, and capitalization. Therefore all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by the simple estrangement of all these senses – the sense of having. So that it might give birth to its inner wealth, human nature had to be reduced to this absolute poverty.

Stupidity

“We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with , but we’re going to fight it with socialism.”

Fred Hampton (1948–1969) African-American activist

Excerpt from Fred Hampton - "Political Prisoner" video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy1gveC3GVs.
Context: We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.

Fight

“The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital…”

Karl Marx book Grundrisse

Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, pp. 628–629.
Grundrisse (1857/58)
Context: The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital…
The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i. e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour...
The mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.

Wealth

“The better distribution of property is desirable, but it is not to be brought about by the anarchic form of Socialism which would destroy all private capital and tend to destroy all private wealth. It represents not progress, but retrogression, to propose to destroy capital because the power of unrestrained capital is abused.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: To my mind the failure resolutely to follow progressive policies is the negation of democracy as well of progress, and spells disaster. But for this very reason I feel concern when progressives act with heedless violence, or go so far and so fast as to invite reaction. The experience of John Brown illustrates the evil of the revolutionary short-cut to ultimate good ends. The liberty of the slave was desirable, but it was not to be brought about by a slave insurrection. The better distribution of property is desirable, but it is not to be brought about by the anarchic form of Socialism which would destroy all private capital and tend to destroy all private wealth. It represents not progress, but retrogression, to propose to destroy capital because the power of unrestrained capital is abused. John Brown rendered a great service to the cause of liberty in the earlier Kansas days; but his notion that the evils of slavery could be cured by a slave insurrection was a delusion analogous to the delusions of those who expect to cure the evils of plutocracy by arousing the baser passions of workingmen against the rich in an endeavor at violent industrial revolution. And, on the other hand, the brutal and shortsighted greed of those who proﬁt by what is wrong in the present system, and the attitude of those who oppose all effort to do away with this wrong, serve in their turn as incitements to such revolution; just as the insolence of the ultra pro-slavery men ﬁnally precipitated the violent destruction of slavery.

Wealth

“For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.8-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

Love

“Capitalism is but the gentleman's method of slavery”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Quoted in The Jewel of Africa, Vol. 1 (1968), p. 22.
Context: Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism just as feudalism is a development by refinement from slavery. Capitalism is but the gentleman's method of slavery.

“The author is quite aware of the monstrous relations in human and international affairs brought forth by the egotistical principle of capital when it is not under pressure from socialist and progressive forces.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships
Context: The author is quite aware of the monstrous relations in human and international affairs brought forth by the egotistical principle of capital when it is not under pressure from socialist and progressive forces. He also thinks, however, that progressives in the West understand this better than he does and are waging a struggle against these manifestations. The author is concentrating his attention on what is before his eyes and on what is obstructing, from his point of view, a worldwide overcoming of estrangement, obstructing the struggle for democracy, social progress, and intellectual freedom.
Our country has started on the path of cleansing away the foulness of Stalinism. "We are squeezing the slave out of ourselves drop by drop" (an expression of Anton Chekhov). We are learning to express our opinions, without taking the lead from the bosses and without fearing for our lives.

“The conditions of recovery which have been stated do indeed involve the restoration of what has been called capitalism. But the slump was not due to these conditions. On the contrary, it was due to their negation. It was due to monetary mismanagement and State intervention operating in a milieu in which the essential strength of capitalism had already been sapped by war and by policy.”

Lionel Robbins (1898–1984) British economist

"Conditions of Recovery," ch. 8 of The Great Depression https://mises.org/library/great-depression-0 (Freeport, N. Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971; orig. 1934), pp. 193–194.
Context: It has been the object…to show that if recovery is to be maintained and future progress assured, there must be a more or less complete reversal of contemporary tendencies of governmental regulation of enterprise. The aim of governmental policy in regard to industry must be to create a field in which the forces of enterprise and the disposal of resources are once more allowed to be governed by the market.But what is this but the restoration of capitalism? And is not the restoration of capitalism the restoration of the causes of depression?If the analysis of this essay is correct, the answer is unequivocal. The conditions of recovery which have been stated do indeed involve the restoration of what has been called capitalism. But the slump was not due to these conditions. On the contrary, it was due to their negation. It was due to monetary mismanagement and State intervention operating in a milieu in which the essential strength of capitalism had already been sapped by war and by policy. Ever since the outbreak of war in 1914, the whole tendency of policy has been away from that system, which in spite of the persistence of feudal obstacles and the unprecedented multiplication of the people, produced that enormous increase of wealth per head…. Whether that increase will be resumed, or whether, after perhaps some recovery, we shall be plunged anew into depression and the chaos of planning and restrictionism—that is the issue which depends on our willingness to reverse this tendency.

War

“Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian. Without society, without education and powerful assistance which it gives, the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary capacities even in the rare as where it ought to shine.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch.IV

Education , Nature

“And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation’s capital, under the shadow of the Great Emancipator -- to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress, and to awaken America’s long-slumbering conscience. We rightly and best remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions; how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Age , Summer , Hope , Time

“Capitalism without socialism is like a great shark in the waters that will eat up everything in sight, and has no group sense or social responsibility. We need to take the best of both systems and bring them together…. a fusion of the best aspects of both. Both are necessary. The sense of justice, brotherhood and social caring… is necessary for the West, but the sense of freedom of the individual in movement, expression and thought is necessary in the East. That is something which will… gradually become the norm in Europe and eventually throughout the world…. not capitalism or communism, but social democracy or democratic socialism with full participation of all peoples in their own government.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993)

Democracy , Justice , Freedom , People

“The Soviet Union in Europe and Asia stands today a continuing challenge to the tottering capitalism of the western world. While trade depression and slump and unemployment and repeated crises paralyse capitalism, and the old order gasps for breath, the Soviet Union is a land full of hope and energy and enthusiasm, feverishly building away and establishing the socialist order. And this abounding youth and life, and the success the Soviet Union has already achieved, are impressing and attracting thinking people all over the world.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Success , People , Hope , Thinking

“The conflict between capitalism and democracy is inherent and continuous; it is often hidden by misleading propaganda and by the outward forms of democracy, such as parliaments, and the sops that the owning classes throw to the other classes to keep them more or less contented. A time comes when there are no more sops left to be thrown, and then the conflict between the two groups comes to a head, for now the struggle is for the real thing, economic power in the State. When that stage comes, all the supporters of capitalism, who had so far played with different parties, band themselves together to face the danger to their vested interests. Liberals and such-like groups disappear, and the forms of democracy are put aside. This stage bas now arrived in Europe and America, and fascism, which is dominant in some form or other in mast countries, represents that stage. Labour is everywhere on the defensive, not strong enough to face this new and powerful consolidation of the forces of capitalism. And yet, strangely enough, the capitalist system itself totters and cannot adjust itself to the new world. It seems certain that even if it succeeds in surviving, it will be but another stage in the long conflict. For modern industry and modern life itself, under any form of capitalism, are battlefields where armies are continually clashing against each other.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Democracy , Time , Country , Support

“This Five Year Plan had been drawn up after the most careful thought and investigation. The whole country had been surveyed by scientists and engineers, and numerous experts had discussed the problem of fitting in one part of the programme into another. For, the real difficulty came in this fitting in… But Russia had one great advantage over the capitalist countries. Under capitalism all these activities are left to individual initiative and chance, and owing to competition there is waste of effort. There is no co-ordination between different producers or different sets of workers, except the chance co-ordination which arises in the buyers and sellers coming to the same market… The Soviet Government had the advantage of controlling all the different industries and activities in the whole Union, and so it could draw up and try to work a single co-ordinated plan in which every activity found its proper place. There would be no waste in this, except such waste as might come from errors of calculation or working, and even such errors could be rectified far sooner with a unified control than otherwise.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Drawing , Chance , Country , Problem

“But the conflict has not ended and the fight between the two rival forces-capitalism and socialism-goes on. There can be no permanent compromise between the two although there have been, and there may be in the future, temporary arrangements and treaties between the two. Russia and communism stand at one pole, and the great capitalist countries of Western Europe and America stand at the other. Between the two, the liberals, the moderates, and the centre parties are disappearing everywhere.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Fight , Future , Country , Communication

“I used to be a hide-bound Tory simply for traditional and antiquarian reasons—and because I had never done any real thinking on civics and industry and the future. The depression—and its concomitant publicisation of industrial, financial, and governmental problems—jolted me out of my lethargy and led me to reëxamine the facts of history in the light of unsentimental scientific analysis; and it was not long before I realised what an ass I had been. The liberals at whom I used to laugh were the ones who were right—for they were living in the present while I had been living in the past. They had been using science while I had been using romantic antiquarianism. At last I began to recognise something of the way in which capitalism works—always piling up concentrated wealth and impoverishing the bulk of the population until the strain becomes so intolerable as to force artificial reform.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Jennie K. Plaiser (8 July 1936), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 564
Non-Fiction, Letters

History , Light , Past , Future

“The parties which assumed the names of liberals were, or became in due course, simple guardians of capitalism.”

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) German politician

Source: "Evolutionary Socialism" (1899) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/index.htm, Chapter III, The Tasks and Possibilities of Social Democracy

“The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital…
The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i.e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour...
The mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.”

Karl Marx book Grundrisse

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, pp. 628–629.

Time , Wealth , Art , Appearance

“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.”

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Democracy , Imagination , People

“If you make the mistake of capitalism, you should not be criticized. But we should have self-criticism.”

Hu Yaobang (1915–1989) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

In 1980, during his inspection tour in Tibet, as quoted in Southern Mongolia: Self-Determination Activist Tortured in Prison and Kept Under House Arrest https://unpo.org/article/19652?id=19652

“Capital is money: Capital is commodities. […] For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Source: Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867), Vol. I, Ch. 2, pg. 171.

Money

“The Princes of this house of abandoned their capital. Not like soldiers of Honor who cede to the circumstances and set backs of the war, but like the perjured, who are persued by their own remorse.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Andrew Roberts.

Housing , War

“Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

“Imperialism: The final stage of Capitalism.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven
Context: We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly.

“Capital T-truth is about life before death.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Life , Death , Truth

“If I didn't care about doing right and didn't feel uncomfortable doing wrong, I should get on capitally.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Feeling

“The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Men , War , Home , Fight

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons (October 22, 1945) "Demobilisation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/oct/22/demobilisation#column_1703
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Variant: The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.