The
system of corporate life is a new power for which
our language contains no name. We have no word to
express government by moneyed corporations
-- Charles Francis Adams
Capitalism
is a thug's economy, a heartless economy, a base and
vile and largely boring economy. It is the antithesis
of human fulfillment and development. It mocks equity
and justice. It enshrines greed... Capitalism sucks.
Does anyone seriously want to contest that?
-- Michael Albert
"I
would define globalization as the freedom for my group
of companies to invest where it wants when it wants,
to produce what it wants, to buy and sell where it
wants, and support the fewest restrictions possible
coming from labour laws and social conventions."
-- (Percy Barnevik, President of the ABB Industrial
Group)
A
single decision by the chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell
has a greater impact on the health of the planet than
all the coffee-ground-composting, organic-cotton-wearing
ecofreaks gathering in Washington D.C., for Earth
Day festivities this weekend.
-- Sharon Begley
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For
complex reasons, our culture allows "economy"
to mean only "money economy." It equates success
and even goodness with monetary profit because
it lacks any other standard of measurement.
I am no economist, but I venture to suggest
that one of the laws of such an economy is
that a farmer is worth more dead than alive.
A second law is that anything diseased is
more profitable than anything that is healthy.
What is wrong with us contributes more to
the "gross national product" than what is
right with us.
~ Wendell
Berry
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The
liberal political tradition provides no coherent response
to the obvious question: Why should the rights of
ownership prevail over the rights of democratic citizenry
in determining who is to manage the affairs of a business
enterprise whose policies might directly affect as
many as half a million employees, and whose choice
of product, location, and technology touches entire
communities and beyond?
-- Samuel Bowels
If
you thought the army was here protecting people like
yourself, I've some news for you, we're here to defend
wealth.
-- Billy Bragg
If
only more of today's military personnel
would realize that they are being used by
the owning elite's as a publicly subsidized
capitalist goon squad
-- Major
General Smedley Butler
Why
don't those damn oil companies fly their
own flags on their personal property-maybe
a flag with a gas pump on it.
-- Major
General Smedley Butler
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...
the 20th century has been characterized by three developments
of great political importance: The growth of democracy,
the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate
propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power
against democracy.
-- Alex Carey, Australian social scientist
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What
is called 'capitalism'is basically a system
of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely
unaccountable private tyrannies exercising
vast control over the economy, political systems,
and social and cultural life, operating in
close cooperation with powerful states that
intervene massively in the domestic economy
and international society.
-- Noam
Chomsky
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In
any institution-factory, university, health center,
or whatever-there are a variety of interests that
ought to be represented in decision-making: the work
force itself, the community in which it is located,
users of its products or services, institutions that
compete for the same resources. These interests should
be directly represented in democratic structures that
displace and eliminate private ownership of the means
of production or resources, an anachronism with no
legitimacy.
-- Noam
Chomsky
In
considering how human rights might serve as a 'guiding
value' in American foreign policy, one should not
dismiss the historical record, which is ample. There
is indeed a close relationship between human rights
and American foreign policy. There is substantial
evidence that American aid and diplomatic support
increase as human rights violations increase, at least
in the Third World. Extensive violations of human
rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards
for much of the population, police-sponsored death
squads, destruction of representative institutions
or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated
with US government support. The linkage is not accidental;
rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough.
Client fascism often improves the business climate
for American corporations, quite generally the guiding
factor in foreign policy. It would be naïve indeed
to think that this will change materially, given the
realities of American social structure and the grip
of the state ideological system.
-- Noam
Chomsky
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Power
that controls the economy should be in the
hands of elected representatives of the people
instead of an industrial oligarchy
~ Justice
William O. Douglas
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One
has to realize that the powerful industrial
groups concerned in the manufacture of arms
are doing their best in all countries to prevent
the peaceful settlement of international disputes,
and that rulers can achieve this great end only
if they are sure of the vigorous support of
the majority of their peoples.
-- Albert
Einstein |
"In
the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of displaced power exists and will persist."
-- Dwight
D. Eisenhower
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To
the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism
I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop
worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him
about the merits of the world economic system...
-- Vassilis Epaminondou
Capitalist
exploitation and cartels and monopolies are the enemies
of underdeveloped countries. On the other hand ...
a regime which is completely oriented towards the
people as a whole and based on the principle that
man is the most precious of all possessions, will
allow us to go forward more quickly and more harmoniously,
and thus make impossible that caricature of society
where all economic and political power is held in
the hands of a few who regard the nation as a whole
with scorn and contempt.
-- Frantz Fanon
Do
you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism,
greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the
capitalist and you will sweep war from the earth."
-- Henry Ford
Where
do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one
poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries,
numbers live better than people. How many people prosper
in times of prosperity? How many people find their
lives developed by development?
-- Eduardo Galeano
We
should know that only replacing the economics of competition
and greed with the economics of equitable cooperation
will guarantee a globalization that takes advantage
of potential efficiency gains in ways that also promote
environmental protection, international equity, economic
democracy, and variety.
-- Robin Hahnel
Recognizing
that the current form of globalization is nothing
more than a generalized downward leveling in which
global corporations are extracting more and more of
the wealth, power, and productive energies from communities
and the environment is the right approach... And knowing
that in every specific battle, what we are fighting
for is merely the substitution of the human agenda
for the corporate agenda is what can guide and sustain
us.
-- Robin Hahnel
So
long as private corporations remain the dominant production
institution of society, no matter who is in power,
the long-run trend in society will be to promote the
corporate interest.
-- Michael Harrington
It
is a government of the people by the people for the
people no longer it is a government of corporations
by corporations for corporations
-- Rutherford B. Hayes
Economists
have provided capitalists with a comforting concept
called the "free market." It does not describe any
part of reality, at any place or time. It's a mantra
conveniently invoked when it is proposed that government
do something the faithful don't like, and just as
conveniently ignored whenever they want government
to do something for them.
-- Edward S. Herman
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I
hope we shall take warning from the example
of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy
of our moneyed corporations which dare already
to challenge our Government to trial and bid
defiance to the laws of our country.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
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Militarism.
. . is the chief bulwark of capitalism. When
it is that militarism is undermined, capitalism
will fail.
-- Helen
Keller
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Capitalism
is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of
men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest
good of everyone.
-- John Maynard Keynes
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When
machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights are considered more important
than people; the giant triplets of racism,
militarism, and economic exploitation are
incapable of being conquered. A true revolution
of values will soon cause us to question the
fairness and justice of many of our present
policies...
--
Martin
Luther King, Jr
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"This
is a role our nation has taken. The role of those
who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing
to give up the priveleges and pleasures that comes
from the immense profits of overseas investments.
I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side
fo the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo
a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin
to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented
society. When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important
than people; the giant triplets of racism, militarism,
and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to
question the fairness and justice of many of our present
policies... True compassion is more than flinging
a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will
soon look on uneasily upon the glaring contrast of
poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It
will look across the seas and see individual capitalists
of the West invest in huge sums of money in Asia,
Africa, and South America only to take the profits
out with no concern for the social betterment of the
countries, and say 'this is not just'. It will look
at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America
and say 'this is not just'. Western arrogance of feeling
it has everything to teach others, and nothing to
learn from them is not just. A true revolution of
values will lay hands on the world order and say of
war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.'
This business of burning human beings with napalm,
of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows,
of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of
people normally humane, of sending men home from dark
and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and
psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with
wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues
year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual
death."
--
Martin
Luther King, Jr
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When
the institutions of money rule the world,
it is perhaps inevitable that the interests
of money will take precedence over the interests
of people. What we are experiencing might
best be described as a case of money colonizing
life. To accept this absurd distortion of
human institutions and purpose should be considered
nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal
insanity."
-- David
Korten
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I
see in the near future a crisis approaching
that unnerves me and causes me to tremble
for the safety of my country....corporations
have been enthroned and an era of corruption
in high places will follow, and the money
of the country will endeavor to prolong its
reign by working upon the prejudices of the
people until all wealth is aggregated in a
few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I
feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the
midst of war.
-- Abraham
Lincoln
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"America:
Socializing the risks, Privatizing the profits, Putting
business in the democracy, Taking the democracy out
of the business."
-- Christopher Masterjohn
The
corporations are powerful only because we have allowed
them to be. In theory, it is we, not they, who mandate
the state. But we have neglected our duty of citizenship,
and they have taken advantage of our neglect to seize
the reins of government.
-- George Monbiot
"Fascism
should more appropriately be called corporatism because
it is a merger of state and corporate power."
-- Benito Mussolini
The
essence of globalization is a subordination
of human rights, of labor rights, consumer,
environmental rights, democracy rights, to the
imperatives of global trade and investment.
-- Ralph
Nader |
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In
our country, the large corporations are the dominant
institution. They comprise the strongest, consistent,
generic power in the land. They share a high degree
of coordinated values. Their power is all the more
remarkable in its resiliency and ability to accommodate
or absorb other challenging power centers such as
big government and organized labor in ways that turn
an additional profit, erect an additional privilege,
or acquire protective mechanisms to ward off new pressures
for change or reform."
-- Ralph
Nader
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"Leave the old and dying America and use your
creative energies to help form a new America,
which would be demilitarized, more humanistic,
where the police are less hostile and closer
to the community, where the wealthy are not
given unleashed power for the exploitation
of the people, and mostly because it's now
a matter of life and death, reassert an ecological
balance with the environment, which means
thhe people in the oil companies and the car
companies and the space industry will have
to be brought into account, so there will
be a new definition of government which has
to be closer to the people and less close
to special interests which are far more harmful
that any revolutionaries.
-- Phil
Ochs
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"The
problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the
worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving,
opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward
and often much punishment--or at least much handicap--to
honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard
work, love of justice, and a concern for those in
need."
-- Michael Parenti
"The
liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people
tolerate the growth of private power to a point
where it becomes stronger than their democratic
state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism
- ownership of government by an individual,
by a group, or by any other controlling private
power. Among us today a concentration of private
power without equal in history is growing."
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt |
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The
policy of letting things alone, in the practical
sense that the Government should never interfere
with business or go into business itself,
is called Laisser-faire by economists and
politicians. It has broken down so completely
in practice that it is now discredited; but
it was all the fashion in politics a hundred
years ago, and is still influentially advocated
by men of business and their backers who naturally
would like to be allowed to make money as
they please without regard to the interest
of the public.
-- George
Bernard Shaw, 1928
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I
think the greedy corporate owners have to be confronted
with the fact that they are ignoring their most powerful
resource -- their workers.
-- John Sweeney, 1995
There
is a growing consensus that Globalization must now
be reshaped to reflect values broader than simply
the freedom of capital.
-- John Sweeney
Clearly,
the Global Economy isn't working for workers in China
and Indonesia and Burma any more than it is for workers
here in the United States.
-- John Sweeney
We
can no longer allow multi-nationalists to parade as
agents of progress and democracy in the newspapers,
even as they subvert it at the workplace.
—John Sweeney
Did
you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience,
when it has no soul to be damned, and nobody to be
kicked?
-- Lord Chancellor Thurlow
Contrary
to the received wisdom, global markets are not unregulated.
They are regulated to produce inequality.
-- Kevin Watkins
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Since trade ignores national boundaries and
the manufacturer insists on having the world
as a market, the flag of his nation must follow
him, and the doors of the nations which are
closed against him must be battered down.
Concessions obtained by financiers must be
safeguarded by ministers of state, even if
the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged
in the process. Colonies must be obtained
or planted, in order that no useful corner
of the world may be overlooked or left unused.
-- Woodrow
Wilson, 1919
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Since
I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views
confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men
in the United States, in the field of commerce and
manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that
there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle,
so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive,
that they better not speak above their breath when
they speak in condemnation of it."
-- Woodrow
Wilson
