Joan Robinson Quotes

The key thing about wealth in a capitalist economy is that it reproduces itself and usually earns a positive net return.

Capital is a result of labor.

Private industry's job is to make money. Private industry's job is to create a huge economic engine.

We are to see the development of the country pushed forward at an unprecedented rate by an aggregation of capital, and a systematic application of it under the direction of competent men.

It's a great thing when you can show that you've been successful and that you've made a lot of money and that you've employed a lot of people.

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

A desire of gain is common to mankind, and the general motive to business and industry.

What do you want your business to do? Make money, of course. To pay for people and supplies, to be able to grow.

People began to understand that with the acquisition of California the nation had obtained practically half a continent, of which the future possibilities were almost unlimited, so far as the development of natural resources and the genera production of wealth were concerned.

Large profits mean large payrolls.

Commerce is the weapon …., the all powerful arm with which we have entered in earnest, with every prospect of success, upon our conquest of Mexico.

Neither capital can do without labor, nor labor without capital.

There is a surplus of capital as well as of goods. The financiers no longer know where to place it. Then they go among the happy nations who are leafing in the sun smoking cigarettes and they lay down railroads, erect factories and import the curse of work. And this exportation of French capital ends one fine morning in diplomatic complications

As capital is thus the most essential element in setting industry in motion, so it is by the amount of it, that the productiveness of that industry is chiefly determined.

I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

It is the rate of investment which governs the rate of saving, and not vice versa.

What sets imperialism of the capitalist sort apart from other conceptions of empire is that it is the capitalist logic that typically dominates, though ... there are times in which the territorial logic comes to the fore. But this then poses a crucial question: how can the territorial logics of power, which tend to be awkwardly fixed in space, respond to the open spatial dynamics of endless capital accumulation? And what does endless capital accumulation imply for the territorial logics of power?

The accumulation of capital involves the expansion of value over time.

Capital brings forth living offspring, or at the least, lays the golden eggs.

I am not, sir, in favor of cherishing the passion of conquest. I am permitted ... to indulge the hope of seeing, ere long, the new United States, (if you will allow me the expression,) embracing not only the old.

The concept of unlimited expansion that alone can fulfill the hope for unlimited accumulation of capital, and brings about the aimless accumulation of power, makes the foundation of new political bodies - which up to the era of imperialism always had been the upshot of conquest - well-nigh impossible.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.

What is the most effective, practical way of raising the wealth of nations? What causes wealth? I have come to think that the dream of democratic socialism is inferior to the dream of democratic capitalism, and that the latter's superiority in actual practice is undeniable.

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.