Capitalist Mode of Production Quotes

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

Marx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx.

Karl Marx was in favor of socialist and communist-socialist revolutions, but he had a pretty nuanced view about it.

Marxism does not make sense, and I am the first one to say this

Of course, Marxism is an example of what Carl Popper would have called a 'World Three' structure, in that it's got immense power as an idea, but you couldn't actually hold up anything in the world and say: 'this is Marxism'.

Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical.

Traditional Marxism attempted to argue against free enterprise by saying that capitalism causes poverty and that, therefore, socialism is necessary. That didn't work, because it was false.

Socialism never arises in the earlier phases of capitalism, as, for instance, among the pioneers of civilisation in a country where there is plenty of land available for private appropriation by the last comer.

For [Karl] Marx, science was a creative, historic and revolutionary force.

Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.

And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.

What guides Marxism, then, is a different model of society, and a different conception of the function of the knowledge that can be produced by society and acquired from it.

Marx is the prophet of globalized capitalism.

Capitalism is not a human being. Capitalism is a Moloch, a god, a god of bloody sacrifice that sees human beings as ants

If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction.

I'm a Marxist.

Marxists have some way of analyzing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be.

For nearly two centuries, scholars and politicians have debated the future of capitalism. Its critics, most prominent among them Karl Marx, have seen capitalism as intrinsically unstable, full of contradictions that will lead eventually to its collapse. Its supporters see it as the best way to allocate resources and rewards. Some even hint that the democratic capitalistic society is not just a phase in the historical evolution of economic systems but its ultimate end.

As far as Marx's analysis of capitalism, there's a lot of very useful ideas in it, but he's developing an abstract model of 19th century capitalism. It's abstract and it's changed.

In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.

Marxism is an interpretation of history which explains the progress of society as a product of the expansion of the forces of production of the material means of life, that is, the development of economy.

Matter as matter rather than matter as symbol is a conscious political position, essentially Marxist.

Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people's lack of understanding of economics.

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