David Graeber Quotes

I think we need to think of capitalism as a very bad way of organizing communism. Much of what we do is already communism, so just expand it.

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for.

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

Socialism has several aspects. Economically, it means the socialization of the means of production; politically, the establishment of the dictatorship of the toiling masses; emotionally, the abolition of the reign of egotism and anarchy which characterizes the capitalistic system.

Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology.

Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, and as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can't be transcended from with capitalism itself, but through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. I'm also convinced that it is possible to do it under democracy, but not in the type of democracy being imposed by Washington.

Capitalism Survive?—I have tried to show that a socialist form of society will inevitably emerge from an equally inevitable decomposition of capitalist society.

Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism.

The struggle between Communism and capitalism has been perverting people's analysis of social issues.

When capitalism changes, so must socialism.

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

Socialism and freedom are not compatible, regardless of repeated convincings.

I certainly did not know what the word 'socialism' meant growing up, because I was brought up in a very nonpolitical family. My brother was somewhat active, but my parents were not.

We are not communists.

While some people have rejected capitalism gladly and swiftly, I've done so slowly and reluctantly. Part of the reason was that I could see no clear alternative: unlike some anti-capitalists, I have never been an enthusiast for state communism.

Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Well socialism is exactly the reverse.

We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy-the form of state suited to capitalism-and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities.

Capitalism works. In the end, socialism imploded on itself. Communism imploded on itself. Ultimately jihadism will implode on itself, if we stay in the fight and stay on offense because failed philosophies don't work, there's no future.

Communists are frustrated capitalists.

Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.

Communism was a great system for making people equally poor - in fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. Capitalism made people unequally rich.

In Democracy, man exploits man; in Communism, it's the other way round.

I'm by no means convinced that capitalism and the development of technology has made anarchism easier.

Capitalism, communism ... it's all garbage.