Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction.

You just overwhelm the system with so many dependents and so many middle class benefits having to be paid that the money isn't there. It causes a system-wide collapse, capitalism implodes upon itself, and somebody comes into the breach and restructures the government as a socialist utopian paradise - and the guy's dead serious about it.

Any capitalism is superior to feudalism.

The free enterprise system has not failed; the financial system has failed.

That is why we may say that the historical development of capitalism has involved the thrust towards the commodification of everything.

The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism - the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise.

To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.

One thing that I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully, is that whatever the contingencies that may arise here, wherever I am there will be no communism.

To a certain extent I don't see any real need for socialism in the United States immediately, but things change and it may be that there will come a need for partial changes in our economy.

The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.

We're facing a crisis that we have not provoked, yet we are the main victims of the greatest crisis since the 1930s. It's not been generated by factors external to the system, but by factors that are of the very essence of the system: exacerbated individualism, deregulation, competition, and so on.

I truly believe that capitalism was created to help people live better lives, but sadly over the years it has lost its way a bit. The short-term focus on profit has driven most businesses to forget about the important long-term role they have in taking care of people and the planet.

They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy-just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.

Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.

The current economic system is fundamentally flawed and inevitably destructive.

The characteristic feature of capitalism that distinguishes it from pre-capitalist methods of production was its new principle of marketing. Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses.

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

Capitalism, the ogre of those protesting Wall Street, has suffered a public relations crisis in the wake of the global economic collapse. But any remedy to the systemic corruption that led to the collapse should not displace recognition that capitalism creates wealth. Capitalism, and no other economic system, has raised millions from poverty around the world.

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

The great dynamic success of capitalism had given us a powerful weapon in our battle against Communism-money.

Capitalism sounds good in theory but it just doesn't work.

The pope is encouraging immigrants to come here. He's encouraging us to let them come here. He's encouraging us to stop any efforts whatsoever to prevent them from coming here. Why, if capitalism's so bad? 'Cause if he gets what he wants and everybody else along with him, we're not gonna be capitalists very much long. Here's what the pope said about Trump.

Not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use. For this is the only means that capitalism has at its disposal to achieve the level of devaluation now required. The idea is dreadful in its implications. What better reason could there be to declare that it is time for capitalism to be gone, to give way to some saner mode of production?