Quotes About Capitalism

Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.

The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited.

Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.

The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted -- or rather tend to be corrupted -- by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people.

The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.

Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations -- all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.

Let the "socialist" snivellers croak, let the bourgeoisie rage and fume, but only people who shut their eyes so as not to see, and stuff their ears so as not to hear, can fail to notice that all over the world the birth pangs of the old, capitalist society, which is pregnant with socialism, have begun.

We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not "in the name of capitalism," but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.

Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a relation between people.

Not for nothing was Smith's first book about moral philosophy. His concern, as Foley says, was the one that has haunted economic thinking ever since: "how to be a good person and live a good and moral life within the antagonistic, impersonal, and self-regarding social relations that capitalism imposes.

The great problem with corporate capitalism is that publicly owned companies have short time horizons. Unlike a privately owned business, the top executives of a publicly owned corporation generally come to their positions late in life. Consequently, they have a few years in which to make their fortune.

Marx was fortunate to have been born eighty years before Walt Disney. Disney also promised a child's paradise and unlike Marx, delivered on his promise.

Unlike the Soviet Communist party, the Chinese Communist party chose to introduce capitalism.

Unlike President Obama, President Nixon was a capitalist who did not believe in 'remaking' the very character of America.

While some people have rejected capitalism gladly and swiftly, I've done so slowly and reluctantly. Part of the reason was that I could see no clear alternative: unlike some anti-capitalists, I have never been an enthusiast for state communism.

At the highest stage of capitalism, the most necessary revolution appears as the most unlikely one.

Tabloid discussion of bad children always blames baby-boomer liberals, careerist mothers and fashion-crazed Nathan Barley types who think it's all enormously funny. But the centre-leftish psycho-thinker Oliver James says it's all down to the Thatcher-and-after culture of turbo-capitalism, making people acquisitive and unsatisfied.

But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.

The more dynamic the capitalistic expansion, the greater the disparity. It is from the disparity that we are going to get all the political upheaval for the next few years.

When you come from a family of communists and you go through your teenage rebellion, what's the best way of rebelling from a family of communists? Well, I put on a suit and tie and became a capitalist... There was nothing I could do to upset my family more than that.

Clearly, for capitalism to work properly we must expect some upward normalisation of interest rates at some future point, to provide greater incentive for savers to save and investors to invest.

For in order for capitalism to work -- in order for it to produce a good and a stable society -- the traditional Christian virtues are essential.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.