Skip to content

The ideas of freedom and equality which come to the fore in bourgeois society cannot be taken at their “face value,” as directly summing up social reality; on the contrary, the legal freedoms which exist in bourgeois society actually serve to legitimize the reality of contractual obligations in which propertyless wage-labor is heavily disadvantaged as compared to the owners of capital.

— Anthony Giddens Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971)

Another quote →

Topics

Freedom

More quotes by Anthony Giddens

Human consciousness is conditioned in a dialectical interplay between subject and object, in which man actively shapes the world he lives in at the same time as it shapes him.

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971)

The concept of the “isolated individual” is a construction of the bourgeois philosophy of individualism, and serves to conceal the social character which production always manifests.

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971)

I argued more recently for a hypothecated wealth tax on very high earners to support the campaign against child poverty. Why shouldn’t the super-rich be obliged to help the super-poor?

Ten Years of New Labour edited by Matt Beech and Simon Lee (2008)

Political economy … founds its theory of society upon the self-seeking of the isolated individual. Political economy, in this way, “incorporates private property into the very essence of man.”

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971)

The expropriated peasantry are “turned en masse into beggars, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances.” This is met with fierce legislation against vagrancy, by which means the vagabond population is subjected to “the discipline necessary for the wage system.”

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971)

All Anthony Giddens quotes →

You may also like

You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.

Julian Assange

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

Abraham Lincoln

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Attribution

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