Quotes About Capitalism

But real adults — people who are masters of their own lives — are in fact nowhere to be found. And a youthful transformation of what exists is in no way characteristic of those who are now young; it is present solely in the economic system, in the dynamism of capitalism. It is things that rule and that are young, vying with each other and constantly replacing each other.

The spectacle is a permanent opium war designed to force people to equate goods with commodities and to equate satisfaction with a survival that expands according to its own laws.

system, as the advanced economic sector which directly shapes a growing multitude of image-objects, the spectacle is the main production of present-day society.

Le spectacle est la principale production de la société actuelle.

Dont tout «avoir» effectif doit tirer son prestige immédiat et sa fonction dernière.

The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing, from which all actual "having" must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function.

Con la massa degli oggetti cresce ... il regno degli enti estranei a cui l'uomo è soggiogato. E' lo stadio supremo di un'espansione che ha ritorto il bisogno contro la vita. Il bisogno di denaro è quindi l'unico bisogno prodotto dall'economia politica, e il solo che esso produca.

The language of the spectacle consists of signs of the dominant system of production — signs which are at the same time the ultimate end-products of that system.

Les force qu'elle a déchaînées suppriment la nécessité economique qui a été la base immuable des sociétés anciennes. Quand elle la remplace par la nécessité du développement economique infini, elle ne peut que remplacer la satisfatction des premiers besoins humains sommairement reconnus, par une fabrication ininterrompue de pseudo-besoins qui se ramènent au seul pseudo-besoin du maintien de son règne.

The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle's estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual's gestures are no longer his own.

The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation.

Die Gesellschaft, die auf der modernen Industrie beruht, ist nicht zufällig oder oberflächlich spektakulär, sie ist zutiefst spektaklistisch. Im Spektakel, dem Bild der herrschenden Wirtschaft, ist das Endziel nichts, die Entwicklung alles. Das Spektakel will es zu nichts anderem bringen als zu sich selbst.

the working class is also occluded from representing itself in the throng of images that make up the society of the spectacle.

there is no final inner cabal, no capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses) pulling the strings: the final instance 'calling the shots' (often literally) is the market economy itself.

Within spectacular society today there is a 'holy trinity' of such roles: consumer, manager and shareholder.

That which was the economic it must become the I.

All parties accept that companies must act in the 'interest of their stockholders' whatever the cost in alienation or exploitation.

Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.

Since the 1980s, we have given the rich a bigger slice of our pie in the belief that they would create more wealth, making the pie bigger than otherwise possible in the long run. The rich got the bigger slice of the pie all right, but they have actually reduced the pace at which the pie is growing.

Between the Great Depression and the 1970s, private business was viewed with suspicion even in most capitalist economies. Businesses were, so the story goes, seen as anti-social agents whose profit-seeking needed to be restrained for other, supposedly loftier, goals, such as justice, social harmony, protection of the weak and even national glory.

Gore Vidal, the American writer, once famously described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'.

That blasted family could never look at a living thing without wanting to make a profit out of it, preferably by killing it.

Marriage domesticates sex but frees love. It is unsuitable as a solution to human need, but as with capitalism, the alternatives are much worse.

The concept of unlimited expansion that alone can fulfill the hope for unlimited accumulation of capital, and brings about the aimless accumulation of power, makes the foundation of new political bodies—which up to the era of imperialism always had been the upshot of conquest—well-nigh impossible. In fact, its logical consequence is the destruction of all living communities, those of the conquered peoples as well as of the people at home.