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Capitalism Quotes

This is a page where the critics talk the most. David Harvey, Fidel Castro, Jim Stanford, Michael Parenti and Terry Eagleton lead, so much of what is here is argument from the left. The sourced material is more varied. G. K. Chesterton, in The Utopia of Usurers (1917), warns that the community the capitalists are constructing will be complete and absolute. Bertrand Russell, in 1963, says he dislikes communism because it is undemocratic and capitalism because it favours exploitation. Malcolm X, in 1965, argues that you cannot have capitalism without racism.

The one flagged entry is “Fascism is capitalism in decay,” credited to Lenin and marked misattributed.

Random quote on Capitalism

Most quoted on capitalism:

Most people have no alternative but to sell their ability to work for a wage and inevitably be paid less than the value they produce. This is the capital order, the backbone of our society that we do not criticize or even discuss. It is only through the lens of class that we can escape this trap and understand the functioning of our economic system and the policies implemented to govern it.

Clara Mattei Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention (2026)

“So what’s wrong with capitalism?”
He sighs. For a minute I wonder if maybe he’s a capitalist. But then he says, “It’s not a fair system.”
“That’s stupid,” I say. “Things aren’t fair. Only little kids expect things to be fair.”

Maureen F. McHugh Protection (1992)

When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Ayn Rand The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars.

Max Weber

First, capitalists detain control of the means of production. Second, laborers are denied independent access to means of production and must sell their labor power to the capitalists. Third, the maximization of surplus produced by the laborers with the means of production owned by the capitalists entails "ceaseless accumulation accompanied by changes in the methods of production."

Eric Wolf

We are quite obviously faced with a need to organize some small defenses to the more flagrant abuses of the system now. ... While we await the precise moment when all of capitalism's victims will indignantly rise to destroy the system, we are being devoured. ... Some of us are going to have to take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for selective retaliatory violence.

Jonathan P. Jackson

Capitalism was born from the money loan. Money lending contains the root idea of capitalism. Turn to the pages of the Talmud and you will find that the Jews made an art of lending money. They were taught early to look for their chief happiness in the possession of money. They fathomed all the secrets that lay hid in money. They became Lords of Money and Lords of the World.

Werner Sombart

The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.

Joan Robinson Economic Philosophy (1962)

It's beyond me how anybody can look at these protestors and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anticapitalist, pro-Marxist communists.

Rush Limbaugh

The parties which assumed the names of liberals were, or became in due course, simple guardians of capitalism.

Eduard Bernstein Evolutionary Socialism (1899)

American capitalism finds its sharpest and most expressive reflection in the American cinema.

Sergei Eisenstein

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction; from the point of view of the proletariat the difference between the types of reaction is meaningless.

Leon Trotsky What Next? (1932)

More than ever before, for humanity to live under capitalism, is to live on borrowed time.

David Horowitz

Now, if one speaks of the limitations of capitalism, there is always someone who will label you a communist or draw antagonistic conclusions.

Andrea Orlando

Capitalism is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived.

Irving Kristol

It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.

Michael Parenti Democracy for the Few (2010)

Contrary to liberal myth, Smith was not an apologist for capitalists. He argued in fact, that capitalists always seek "to deceive and oppress the public" by conspiring to inflate their prices and profits.

David McNally Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002)

Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

Don Tapscott

Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.

Joan Robinson Economic Heresies (1971)

But we hate the system - capitalism, militarism, reaction – and that system we scorn with a healthy, burning, eternal hatred.

Ture Nerman

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