In rich countries like Britain globalisation is well advanced. The disastrous selling off of the railways and the creeping privatisation of everything, from healthcare to air traffic control – the financial pages proclaim a booming economy, yet one in five British children grows up in poverty. There are almost ten million Britain living in poverty ... All over the world, millions of ordinary people are asking why they have no say in decisions that bring hardship to their lives ... Why should we accept a system of winners and losers? John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World
This is Capitalism: a system of taking and giving. Mostly taking. The only thing we didn’t know was when the revolt would begin. Michael Moore, Capitalism: A Love Story, 2009
Actually, what Reagan presided over was the wholesale dismantling of our industrial infrastructure. It was done for short-term profits. And to destroy the unions. ibid.
I guess that’s the point of Capitalism. It allows you to get away with anything. ibid.
I remember thinking during the Katrina flood, Why is it always the poor who have to suffer the misery? Why is it never Bernie Madoff up on the roof screaming for help? Or the head of Citibank or the hedge-fund guys at Goldman Sachs, or the CEO of AIG? Never is these guys, is it? It’s always those who never got a slice of the pie. ’Cause these men took it all. And left them with nothing. Left them to die. ibid.
Capitalism is an evil. And you cannot regulate evil. ibid.
Capitalism means that a few people will do very well, and the rest will serve the few. Michael Moore
Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too – if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac. (Capitalism & Greed) Michael Moore
We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values. Tony Benn
At the heart of this institutional self-preservation lies the monetary system. For it is money that provides that means for power and survival. Therefore, just as a poor person might be forced to steal in order to survive, it is a natural inclination to do whatever is needed to continue an institution’s profitability; this makes it inherently difficult for profit-based institutions to change, for it puts in jeopardy not only the survival of large groups of people, but also the coveted materialistic lifestyles associated with affluence and power, therefore the paralysing necessity to preserve an institution regardless of its social relevance is largely rooted in the need for money or profit. It is important to point out that regardless of the social system, whether fascist, socialist, capitalist or communist, the underlying mechanism is still money, labour and competition ... Monetarism is the true mechanism that guides the interests of all the countries on the planet ... People tend to just accept that as The Way It Is. Not seeing the inherent corrupt inhumanity of such an action. Because the fact is, whether it is dumping toxic waste, having a monopoly enterprise, or downsizing the workforce, the motive is the same – Profit. They are all different degrees of the same self-preserving mechanism which always puts the well-being of people second to monetary gain; therefore corruption is not some by-product of monetarism, it is the very foundation. Zeitgeist addendum, 2008
There’s got to be some kind of a rebellion between the people that have nothing and the people that’s got it all. I don’t understand. There’s no in-between no more. There’s the people that’s got it all and the people that have nothing. Randy Hacker, cited Capitalism: A Love Affair
Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike. William O Douglas, former US Supreme Court Justice, 1969
Then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more. Michelle Obama, 8th April 2008
We are at a turning point in our history. Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance. But it is the truth. And it is a warning. Jimmy Carter, televised broadcast
There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there – good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory ... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea – God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. Elizabeth Warren
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. Eugene V Debs
The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society – we are on the eve of universal change. Eugene V Debs
Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun. Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr Rosewater
Fascism is capitalism plus murder. Upton Sinclair
The Master said, If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment. Confucius
Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: it attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff. George Carlin
In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: there must be countervailing forces that defend people's needs against the brutality of profit driven capitalism. Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader
The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. Helen Keller
The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
The bank – the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants – insists – must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You’ve scrabbled at it long enough, God knows. ibid.
Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things. Philip Slater
We seldom consider how much of our lives we must render in return for some object we barely want, seldom need, buy only because it was put before us ... And this is understandable given the workings of our system where without a job we perish, where if we don't want a job and are happy to get by we are labelled irresponsible, non-contributing leeches on society. But if we hire a fleet of bulldozers, tear up half the countryside and build some monstrous factory, casino or mall, we are called entrepreneurs, job-creators, stalwarts of the community. Maybe we should all be shut away on some planet for the insane. Then again, maybe that is where we are. Ferenc Máté, A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence