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The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

— Michael Parenti Against Empire (1995)

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Capitalism

More quotes by Michael Parenti

The slums are not the problem, they are the solution; they are the way capitalism deals with the surplus people of a market economy.

Democracy for the Few (2010)

How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained.

Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)

Through all this, one seldom actually hears from the “politically correct” people who supposedly dominate the universe of discourse.

Contrary Notions (2007)

For all their faults and shortcomings, the people are all we have.

Contrary Notions (2007)

The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.

Dirty truths (1996)

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I have no doubt that the revolution will triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism.

Huey P. Newton Revolutionary Suicide (1973)

The most obvious negative feature of capitalism is that it can produce private monopolies that restrict output and thereby harm consumers.

Dennis Mueller The Oxford Handbook of Capitalism (2012)

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

Winston Churchill

Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the moral, nor the ethics, nor the will to solve the problems of poverty.

Fidel Castro

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Parenti (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.