1. You can talk about capitalism and communism..but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government.
Bernard Baruch (1870-1965) U.S. financier and economist. Times (London) (August 20, 1964)
2. The twentieth-century struggle between capitalism and socialism is, at an ideological level, a fight about the content of progress.
John Berger (b.1926) British novelist, essayist, and an critic. Pig Earth (1991), Introduction.
3. To speak of limits to growth under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society.
Murray Bookchin (b.1921) U.S. writer and environmentalist. Remarking Society (1990)
4. Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.
Fidel Castro (b.1927) Cuban president. Quoted in Observer (London) (November 8, 1964)
5. The worker is the slave of the capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.
James Connolly (1868-1916) Irish political activist. The Re-conquest of Ireland (1915)
6. Liberal democracy is really all there is now. We’ve seen that in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Communism was…undermined by the fact that people did not believe it was a viable form of government.
Francis Fukuyama (b.1952) U.S. economist and writer. Interview, Booknotes, www.C-Span.org (January 17, 1992)
7. You cannot go to sleep with one form of economic system and wake up the next morning with another.
Mikhail Gorbachev (b.1931) Russina former president. Guardian (London) (December 7, 1990)
8. Economic modernization….spawns indigenous types of capitalism that owe little to any western model.
John Gray (b.1948) British academic and writer. False Dawn (1998)
9. Global democratic capitalism is as unrealizable a condition as worldwide communism.
John Gray (b.1948) British academic and writer. False Dawn (1998)
10. The natural counterpart of a free market economy is a politics of insecurity.
John Gray (b.1948) British academic and writer. False Dawn (1998)
11. Stalin was not a man you could do business with. Stalin didn’t understand the importance of business.
Armand Hammer (1898-1990) U.S. industrialist, philanthropist, founder and C.E.O. of Occidental Petroleum. Interview. Sunday Times Magazine (London) (June 24, 1984)
12. Less than seventy-five years it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.
Robert L. Heilbroner (b.1919) U.S. economist “Reflections: The Triumph of Capitalism,” New Yorker (January 23, 1989)
13. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
Eric Hoffer (1902-83) U.S. philosopher. Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
14. Communism has failed, but capitalism has not succeeded.
William Keegan (b.1938) British author and journalist. The Spectre of Capitalism (1992)
15. Totalitarianism is not so good at industrial innovation and adaptation to consumer demand.
William Keegan (b.1938) British author and journalist. The Spectre of Capitalism (1992)
16. Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion-how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men…
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) British economist. The End of Laissez Faire (1926)
17. The twentieth century marks the turning point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of financial capital.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924) Russian revolutionary leader and political theorist. Imperialism, the Higher Stages of Capitalism (1917)
18. There are not only trade unions in England, but also alliances between workers and capitalists in a particular industry for the purpose of raising prices and robbing everybody else
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924) Russian revolutionary leader and political theorist. Selected Works, vol. 7
19. It is Capitalism that is being tried. We told you…that time would come when finance would be more powerful than industry. That day has come.
Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937) British prime minister. Speech, Llandudno, Wales (October 7, 1930)
20. You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.
Malcolm X (1925-65) U.S. black consciousness leader. Malcolm X Speaks (1965)
21. Between the capitalist and communist systems of society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other…the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Karl Marx (1818-83) German political and economic philosopher. Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
22. During its rule of scarce one hundred years, capitalism has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
Karl Marx (1818-83) German political and economic philosopher. The Communist Manifesto (co-written with Friedrich Engels; 1848)
23. The old Communists who run Vietnam actually believe they defeated decadent Western capitalism. So where did the little girl in Hoan Kiem Park, in the middle of downtown Hanoi, get a hula hoop?
P.J. O’Rourke (b.1947) U.S. humorist and journalist. All the Trouble in the World (1994)
24. In the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman.
P.J. O’Rourke (b.1947) U.S. humorist and journalist. “The Death of Communism,” Rolling Stone (November 1989)
25. I just made a smart deal for myself. This is America. This isn’t the Soviet Union. It’s the supply-and-demand of the marketplace.
Michael Ovitz (b.1946) U.S. movie agent and head of Disney. Quoted in Ovitz: The Inside Story of Hollywood’s Most Controversial Power Broker (Robert Slates; 1997)
26. I feel that capitalism has a very bad press with the pseudo-leftists who clog our best college campuses and that…modern capitalism has allowed the birth of the independent woman who is no longer economically dependent on her husband.
Camille Paglia (b.1947) U.S. academic, educator and writer. Interview, Reason Magazine (August-September 1995)
27. Remember this, Griffin. The revolution eats its own. Capitalism re-creates itself.
Mordecai Richler (1931-2001) Canadian novelist. Cocksure (1968)
28. The contradiction in the system which produced conflict, movement and change…is the increasingly social, cooperative nature of production..and the individual ownership of the means of production.
Eric Roll (b.1907) British economist. Discussing the causes of capitalist change. A History of Economic Thought (1942)
29. Man is born perfect. It is the capitalist system which corrupts him.
Arthur Scargill (b.1938) British former labor union leader. Speech, Wakefield, England (November 20, 1981)
30. As a matter of practical necessity, socialist democracy may eventually turn out to be more of a sham than capitalist democracy ever was.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) U.S. economist and social theorist. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), ch. 1
31. Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) U.S. economist and social theorist. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), ch. 13
32. I personally believe that capitalism, as it is now, won’t survive unless it becomes more socially responsible.
Jim Slater (b.1929) British business executive and author. Financial Times (London) (January 11, 1973)
33. Let us look at the capitalist roots of the racial miseries in our country, South Africa. The real question is not whether a system works but for whom it works.
Joe Slovo (1926-95) South African politician and lawyer. Quoted in obituary, Guardian (London) (January 7, 1995)
34. Globalization will not go away…The questions are whether global capitalism finds acceptance or if the backlash against the present hardships and inequities is going to bring forth a quite different economic paradigm.
Theo Sommer (b.1930) German newspaper publisher, journalist, and author. Speech, 5th Workshop on Inventing the Organization of the 21st Century, Munich, Germany. “Shareholder Values or Shared Values? The Politics and Ethics of the Global Economy in the Post-Cold War World” (February 1999)
35. The opening up of economies must be combined with social integration. Without it the institutions of the market would quickly lose their political legitimization…Revolution is not in the offing, but it still is in the political armory.
Theo Sommer (b.1930) German newspaper publisher, journalist, and author. Speech, 5th Workshop on Inventing the Organization of the 21st Century, Munich, Germany. “Shareholder Values or Shared Values? The Politics and Ethics of the Global Economy in the Post-Cold War World” (February 1999)
36. The fact that global capitalism is flawed does not mean that we should turn to communism or withdraw into national isolation, just as the failure of communism does not mean that markets are perfect.
George Soros (b.1930) U.S> financier entrepreneur and philanthropist. Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, New York City. “The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered” (December 10, 1998)
37. Market fundamentalism undermines the democratic political process and the inefficiency of the political process is a powerful argument in favor of market fundamentalism.
George Soros (b.1930) U.S> financier entrepreneur and philanthropist. Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, New York City. “The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998)
38. Communism may have been defeated, but the Communists often have not been.
Maragaret Thatcher (b.1925) British former prime minister. Quoted in Fortune (October 18, 1993)
39. The Western Colonial system shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbor in the end.
Barbara Ward (1914-81) British economist, journalist, and educator. The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (1962)
40. Mr Health talks about the unacceptable face of capitalism, but intrinsically it doesn’t have an unacceptable face.
Arnold Weinstock (1924-2002) British managing director of General Electric Company. Referring to prime minister Edward Health’s description to Lonrho as “the unacceptable face of capitalism.” Quoted in Daily Telegraph (London) (June 17, 1974)
41. My biggest challenge is transforming the company was fear. Under socialism, people learned to be afraid to express their opinions.
Peter Zwack (b.1928) Hungarian business executive. Forbes (April 2000)
