CAPITALISM

Related Subjects: Business, Economy, Socialism, Society

1. Your system was liable to periodical convulsions, overwhelming alike the wise and unwise, the successful cut-throat as well as his victim. I refer to the business crises at intervals of five to ten years, which wrecked the industries of the nation.—EDWARD BELLAMY, Looking Backward

2. Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land or the workmen's tools, but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive.—J. B. S. HALDANE, I Believe
   

3. They tell us that capitalism is doomed: Karl Marx, I believe, made the same announcement 8o years ago. He may still be right : but the old clock ticks on; and it does not help very much to throw stones at it. It would be surprising indeed if our system had survived quite unshaken the unprecedented upheaval of a World War. But it is infinitely adaptable and has not, I think, exhausted its resources.—A. P. HERBERT
   

4. People have stopped asking, Can capitalism survive? No intelligent individual under forty-five years of age imagines that it can. What is less certain is an answer to the question, Can the human race survive?—LANCELOT HOGBEN, Dangerous Thoughts
   

5. Mr. Chairman, I am pained when I sit in my place in the House and hear members talk about the sacredness of capital; that the interests of money must' not be touched. Yes, sir, they will vote six hundred thousand of the flower of American youth for the army to be sacrificed without a blush; but the great interests of capital currency, must not be touched.—SENATOR W. P. KELLOGG of Illinois, Feb. 3, 1862
   

6. The evidence makes it plain that capitalism in its phase of contraction will respect no principle, however venerable, in its effort to retain the power of the state in its hands.
   
   That has been the experience of Mr. Blum in France; it has been, also, the experience of Mr. Roosevelt in the United States.—HAROLD J. LASKI, I Believe
   

7. Capital, created by the labor of the worker, oppresses the worker by undermining the small proprietor and creating an army of the unemployed.—LENIN
   

8. When commercial capital occupies a position of unquestioned ascendancy, it everywhere constitutes a system of plunder.—KARL MARX, Capital
   

9. Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of nature, its own negation.—KARL MARX, Capital
   

10. Another universal saying of those days was that "capital and labor should get together," as if the interminable struggle of these conflicting interests could be settled by a conference.—LINCOLN STEFFENS, Autobiography
    

11. We have depended too long on the hope that private ownership and control would operate somehow for the benefit of society as a whole. That hope has not been realized. Now we are coming to believe that our resources will best be utilized for the benefit of all if we give deliberate study to the needs of society and adjust our land uses to those needs.—REXFORD G. TUGWELL