The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably. ibid.
‘The top 1% that control 90% of the wealth have two major political parties doing their bidding for them. And the other 99% have no political party on the ballot representing them.’ Orwell Rolls in His Grave, Michael Moore, 2003
Wisdom outweighs any wealth. Sophocles, Antigone
When Americans are faced with the prospect that they can never earn their way to wealth, they have two choices: to rebel against the system, or to settle into depressed complacency. Ben Shapiro
Here in fortified splendour live some of the richest people of the world. Representing 5% of the population, they and the rest of white South Africa control 88% of the national wealth. And yet they, not the majority, are the material beneficiaries of democracy. No longer international pariahs, they can now travel and play sport and do business wherever in the world they like secure in the delusion that they gave freedom to the majority. They’ve been asked to give up nothing. Not even a modest wealth tax ... What is remarkable is the degree of restraint exercised by the impoverished majority, given the continuing display of wealth by a minority and the adaptation of many of the injustices of the past. John Pilger, Apartheid Did Not Die, ITV 1998
One answer is that the rich minority have used much of their wealth to arm themselves with mighty weaponry to protect their ill-gotten gains. But their continuing power does not depend only on force of arms. The chief reason for their ability to continue in power is their control over ideas. They control not only where and for what rewards people work, but how people think. People are not born with a set of ideas and thoughts. They grow into them. They are taught in schools and colleges, and through the mass media, such as newspapers and television. All of these are controlled in different ways, and reflect the will and purpose of the capitalist few.
These reactionary ideas continually clash with people’s experience. The clash of most human beings’ experience with the ideas handed down to them led to the formation of an independent labour movement, with independent labour parties, organised to challenge capitalism. This in turn led to a further ideological offensive by the ruling class on the exploitation of ideas, with the unhappy result in the western democracies that the official labour movements were shackled to the exploiters they set out to tame. Paul Foot, article ‘Workers’ Movement: The Party Has Just Begun’
Rich and powerful people are always explaining how they wish to expand their wealth and power not for themselves but for everyone else. Their basic claim for the ‘free-market’ system which has made them rich is that it is the only known system which fits what is produced to what people want and need.
Yet the plainest fact of all about a world dominated by the free market system demonstrates exactly the opposite. From every corner of the world comes the suffocated howl of millions of people whose desperate needs and wants are being systematically ignored. Paul Foot, The Case for Socialism ch4
There would be no wealth at all if no one worked. Labour is essential to everything that is produced. The rich have got rich because they have swiped a proportion of the value of the workers’ labour, and because they use that surplus for one purpose only: to increase their own wealth, power and privilege.
This exploitation of labour, by a class of people who have grown rich because of it, is as central a characteristic of society today as it ever was. The ‘market’ is the economic mechanism by which this system works. It claims to be able to identify what is wanted or needed, and then to produce it. It claims an ‘economic discipline’ which only produces where a profit can be made. If something makes a profit, it is selling and therefore it is needed. If it doesn’t make a profit, it isn’t needed or wanted and therefore shouldn’t be made. ibid.
Great disparities of wealth in society, however, restrict freedoms every bit as much as restrictions on voting. Everyone is ‘free’ to send their children to private school, to have tea at The Ritz, to gamble on the stock exchange. These ‘freedoms’ are defended far more vigorously than the freedom to vote, yet they are in fact restrictions on freedom. For every one person who can have tea at the The Ritz, there are a hundred who cannot do so because they have not got the money. If 10 per cent can send their children to private school and secure for them a straight route back into the privileged class from which they came, 90 per cent cannot do so – are banned from doing so – because they cannot afford it.
Thus the ‘freedom’ handed out by capitalist society is more often than not the opposite of freedom. Yet the idea of freedom still prevails, because the prevailing ideas of any society are the ideas of the class which runs it.
So the people who fight against these ideas – whether in strikes, demonstrations, popular protests or just in argument – are always, or almost always, swimming against the stream. They are the minority. But this minority, unlike the passive majority, can involve other people far outside their immediate orbit. And once involved in struggle against the old society, people’s ideas can change decisively. ibid. ch6
40% of the world’s wealth was destroyed in the last five quarters. It is an almost incomprehensible number. Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone Group
Great wealth is destructive. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 10/13, The Smile of Reason, BBC 1969
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
Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole. Karl Marx
We can either have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both. Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Judge
Thus methinks should men of judgement frame
Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade,
And, see their wealth increaseth, so enclose
Infinite riches in a little room. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
Power from any source tends to create an appetite for additional power ... It was almost inevitable that the super-rich would one day aspire to control not only their own wealth but the wealth of the whole world.
To achieve this they were perfectly willing to feed the ambitions of the power-hungry political conspirators who were committed to overthrow all existing governments and the establishment of a central world-wide dictatorship. W Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist 1970
What’s happening in the United States is a struggle between democracy and empire. Democracy is a wonderful invention by the people of history to protect themselves against the abuses of wealth. Michael Parenti
A tiny portion of the population controls the lion’s share of the wealth and most of the command positions of state, manufacturing, banking, investment, publishing, higher education, philanthropy, and media... These individuals exercise a preponderant influence over what is passed off as public information and democratic discourse. Michael Parenti
You see I think there are two ways of keeping people controlled: first of all, frighten people; and secondly demoralise them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern ... The top 1 per cent of the world’s population own 80 per cent of the world’s wealth – it’s incredible that people put up with it. But, they are poor, they are demoralised, they are frightened. Tony Benn MP, interview with Michael Moore, Sicko, 2007
We have a set of religious beliefs here to the extent that we must support the wealthy. The rich. That the rich are in terrible trouble. That if we don’t take care of the rich, everything terrible will happen. Norman Mailer, interview Hijacking Catastrophe
I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. Richard Rumbold, on scaffold
The power of concentrated wealth shall not be abused. Theodore Roosevelt
Wealth is never destroyed; it is merely transferred. Chuck Bates, executive vice-president IRN/USA News, Monetary & Economic Review
These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society
The greater the wealth, the thicker will be the dirt. ibid.
The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market reward for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. ibid.
Trickle-down theory – the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment, 1992
Sir, the insolence of wealth will creep out. Samuel Johnson