Guy Standing Quotes

In the interests of competitiveness in a globalizing world economy, governments of all complexions introduced labour-market reforms that promoted flexibility but accentuated the precariat's insecurities.

The dominant economic approach of the last thirty years is now on its last legs. Letting the market rip and an indifference to inequality are now seen as important causes of the greatest economic crash since the 1930s.

Capitalism has only hurt Latin America.

Contemporary capitalist polities need to accept that inequality and insecurity will continue to be the inevitable results of market operations and find ways to shield citizens from their consequences—while somehow still preserving the dynamism that produces capitalism’s vast economic and cultural benefits in the first place.

Globalization and trade liberalization were supposed to make us all better off through the mechanism of trickle-down economics. What we seemed to be seeing instead was trickle-up economics, accompanied by a destruction of democratic politics, as we moved ever closer to a system of 'one dollar, one vote' as opposed to 'one person, one vote.'

This notion that borders wouldn't matter, that we would have commonality of interests around the world. Well, guess who got there first? The plutocrats.

Capitalism is destroying the world.

The '90s came, and then the 2000s, and we saw radical corporate interest extremism, we've seen the disparity between rich and poor just get bigger, with globalisation and the corporate agenda on the rise ever since.

Freedom" is a grand word, but under the banner of Free Trade the most predatory wars were conducted; under the banner of "free labor" the toilers were robbed.

The profit-grinding system is maintained by competition, or veiled war, not only between the conflicting classes, but also within the classes themselves: there is always war among the workers for bare subsistence, and among their masters, the employers and middle-men, for the share of the profit wrung out of the workers; lastly, there is competition always, and sometimes open war, among the nations of the civilised world for their share of the world-market.

Capitalism is very unfair but it is the only system that works.

The unfettered free market has been the most radically disruptive force in American life in the last generation.

Americans today are blaming globalization for change itself and the pace of change, much of which has little to do with globalization.

We are told that we must open up, that trade and commerce must be totally free. Free for whom? For rogue speculators. For anarchists wanting to destroy weak countries in their crusade for open societies, to force us to submit to the dictatorship of international manipulators.

it must be right to suggest that all countries should use their resources so as to advance the right to development for their people in an equitable manner and that all countries should cooperate for the mutual achievement of the right to development. The alternative to such a policy framework is a Darwinian world of market-oriented capitalism with no social or human rights safety nets. How can developing countries survive in such a world?

Unevenness of economic and political development is the inflexible law of capitalism.

Western fundamentalism: By this term I mean the elevation of Western modernity above all other ways of knowing and being and it includes adherence to capitalism, individualism, patriarchy, scientific rationalism, ‘Christian’ morality, commodification of the environment, private property and a belief in progress.

As long as a man sees in our present society only a few inevitable abuses and recognizes no sin and evil deep-seated in the very constitution of the present order, he is still in a state of moral blindness… Christians should see through the fictions of capitalism.

The way to hell is capitalism, neo liberalism and globalization.

Capitalism’s intrinsic dynamism, however, produces insecurity along with benefits and so its advance has always met resistance…. It was only the creation of the modern welfare state in the middle of the 20th century that finally enabled capitalism and democracy to coexist in relative harmony.

A market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values sweep into every aspect of human endeavor. It is a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.

Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.

Labour is held to be a mere “commodity,” and if the labourer cannot sell it, he has no “right” but to starve—himself, his wife, and his children... Such are the doctrines of the free-trade school …

Neoliberalism is hard to define. It could refer to intensified resource extraction, financialization, austerity, or something more ephemeral - a way of life - in which collective ideals of citizenship give way to marketized individualism and consumerism.

Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.