W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

The power of groups of men organized by incorporation ... or of small knots of rich men acting in combination has developed with unexpected strength in unexpected ways, overshadowing individuals and even communities, and showing that the very freedom of association which men sought to secure by law when they were threatened by the violence of the potentates may, under the shelter of law, ripen into a new form of tyranny.

But that's the whole point of corporatism: to try and remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run —which include production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything—are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.

The building of the transcontinental railroads resulted in an orgy of political corruption. The public lands and the natural resources of coal, of iron, and of timber were lavishly wasted in the great scramble for wealth and material power. The carnival of waste and plunder reached its climax about 1890. Evidences were abundant that the great business interests of the country were controlling the government for their own private benefit. The capitalists who financed the railroads, mines, mills, packing houses, grain elevators, and other great enterprises, received from Congress favors which destroyed competition and enormously increased private fortunes.

Not surprisingly, corporate monopoly leads to political power. It has always been thus. The giant railroads of the 19th century tried to bully and buy entire legislatures, including the U.S. Congress. Today, Major League Baseball—exempt from antitrust laws—and a cohort of megacorporations such as Delta and Coca-Cola are trying to order about states on election integrity, while Google, Facebook and Twitter decide which citizens may say what in the public square. Nike lectures the nation on social justice while it is suspected of profiting from forced labor overseas, as the Congressional-Executive Commission on China noted in its March 2020 report. Welcome to the woke economy, led by concentrated woke capital. Do as these companies say or face cancellation.

Bush’s crimes are … more worrisome than Clinton’s. He has taken powers and … is adopting standards that are a terrible anathema to our people...He claims powers that even King George did not claim at the time of the Revolution.

To control the American market is to own America.

For thousands of years, the natural tendency of elites everywhere has been to monopolize power rather than restrain it.

What we call Monopoly is Business at the end of its journey. The concentration of wealth, the wiping out of the middle classes, are other names for it. To get it is, in the world of affairs, the chief end of man.

Out of this modern civilization, economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

With deregulation, one sector of the economy after another is "liberated" to capital's unmonitored authority. The very notion that there is a public interest is contested…. Deregulation has been, above all else, a means of reducing corporate business's accountability to the public.

Neither this people or any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the government a still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also to be used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole…. [We must] keep the great highways of commerce open to all on reasonable and equitable terms.

The founders understood that concentrations of power in either government or the economy are dangerous, threatening the rule of the people. That’s why they curbed monopolies and strictly limited the corporate form, largely confining its use to educational institutions and churches and sometimes public-works projects. They wanted the people to govern the nation, not an elite, whether that elite resided in government or business.

The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

As a result of my study, I came to the conclusion that a common supreme authority was undesirable.

All military regimes use security as the reason why they should remain in power. It's nothing original.

The American people do not begrudge anyone his or her power until they start abusing it.

Bad leaders believe that they have to project control at all times.

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

The greater the power, the more need there is for transparency, because if the power is abused, the result can be so enormous. On the other hand, those people who do not have power, we mustn't reduce their power even more by making them yet more transparent.

When scrutiny is lacking, tyranny, corruption and man's baser qualities have a better chance of entering into the public business of any government.