Francois Mitterrand Quotes

I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.

We are for Free Trade, because by Free Trade all economical laws, with their most astounding contradictions, will act upon a larger scale, upon the territory of the whole earth; and because from the uniting of all these contradictions in a single group, where they will stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emancipation of the proletariat.

We no longer have a free market in the United States, we have a government controlled free market.

Whoever claims that economic competition represents 'survival of the fittest' in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics.

If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you'll have zero capitalism, zero competition - it would just be one giant company.

When the government gets involved in pricing, I don't think it's the right way to look at a business.

I'd like to talk about free markets. Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving. And that's basically becoming limited.

There is no pure free-market economy.

Overcoming the myth that there is such a thing as an objectively defined 'free market' is the first step towards understanding capitalism.

Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.

Globalization must be controlled.

No nation, rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian, can escape the fundamental economic imperatives of the global market. No nation can escape its discipline. No nation can avoid its responsibility to do its part

Globalization tends to turn all friends and enemies into competitors.

The people were told in the last campaign that trusts [corporate monopolies] were a natural evolution, and that the only way to deal with them was to regulate them. The people are tired of being told such things. What they want is the kind of opportunity that formerly existed in this country.

We have not addressed the effects of global economics where we are the only free traders in town.

Capital has never been circumcised by state boundaries …. The welfare of … electorates depends on capitalism. The reverse is not always the case. Capital can relocate elsewhere; electorates cannot.

Competition, or the unimpeded pressure of individual on individual, has been from the beginning a great force in societies ; but of old it was hindered and controlled by custom ; in the future, like the other great physical forces of society, it will be controlled by morality.

Politicians make the claim that our government has helped multinationals globalize and that businesses that globalize are somehow 'crony capitalists.' This is hogwash.

The free market is not a god; we have to do everything we can to make the market competitive.

Because of my politics, I don't necessarily think that the independent capitalist is that much better than the multinational capitalist; it's just that the independent capitalist hasn't grown as big yet.

It is a free market that makes monopolies impossible.

Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away.

There's a difference between a free market and free-for-all market.

Capitalism has forced everyone to overoptimize in order to compete.

I mean, the country was founded on free enterprise. There's good things about it, and there's obviously bad things about it.