Mark Fisher Quotes

Nine-tenths of the socialistic and semi-socialistic, and sentimental or ethical, suggestions by which we are overwhelmed come from failure to understand the phenomena of the industrial organization and its expansion. It controls us all because we are all in it. It creates the conditions of our existence, sets the limits of our social activity, regulates the bonds of our social relations, determines our conceptions of good and evil, suggests our life-philosophy, molds our inherited political institutions, and reforms the oldest and toughest customs…

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

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.

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

Since the end of the Cold War, metropolitan elites everywhere have identified progress and modernity with the cornucopia of global capitalism, the consolidation of liberal democratic regimes and the secular ethic of consumerism.

American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.

Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.

Algeria was therefore only the beginning of something that was in development: this is why I say that it's the global capitalist system that finally reacted against us.

It should be no surprise that religion in the non-western world has failed to disappear under the juggernaut of industrial capitalism, or that liberal democracy finds its most dedicated saboteurs among the new middle classes.

Capitalism has only hurt Latin America.

It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples. Our political philosophy and our patterns for living have very little applicability to masses of people in Asia. They may be all right for us, with our highly developed political traditions running back into the centuries and with our peculiarly favorable geographic position; but they are simply not practical or helpful, today, for most of the people in Asia.

The idea of progress has a couple of contradictions … it leads to Eurocenterism….

The civilized world is far ahead of us. We have no choice but to catch up.

The revolution eats its own. Capitalism re-creates itself.

It’s no surprise that a global economy creates a global class conflict…. All markets create classes and class conflicts.

Modern industry and the opening of the world market made the struggle universal and at the same time gave it unheard-of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside.

The need to colonize a country in the old fashioned way is gone. Even in Iraq they will pull out. But Iraq will have McDonald's, Iraq will have American interests in there, America will be able to do its business there. They don't necessarily need to send in troops - they send in men in suits and they colonize the place financially. It's a cultural and financial imperialism

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.

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

The main reason western culture has been dominant is because Europeans have controlled political, economic and social power including educational policy for the last several centuries.

The US became arrogant because of what it owns of weapons and technology. For that, it handles the world as it pleases, and changes the ideologies of people, their habits and ethics in order to spread Western culture at the expense of Islam.

Prediction of whether or not the capitalist order will survive is, in part, a matter of terminology.

Wealth governs this country, and wealth uses military violence to control the rest of the world as best it can.