Economic Determinism Quotes

Friedrich Engels’ first draft of the Communist Manifesto included a deliberate undermining of family bonds as part of the Marxian political agenda, though Marx himself was politically astute enough to leave that out of the final version.

I regard Marxism as the most sinister and the most subtle form of totalitarianism.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

The conservative argument is that the economy is like the weather, that it just operates automatically.

Modern capitalism is just as subversive as Marxism. The materialistic view of life on which both systems are based is identical. As long as we only talk about economic classes, profit, salaries, and production, and as long as we believe that real human progress is determined by a particular system of distribution of wealth and goods, then we are not even close to what is essential.

All systems of political administration or governmental machinery are but the reflex of the economic forms which underlie them

He [Karl Marx] forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment.

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.

Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.

According to Marx, socialism is the first stage of communism and it covers a very long historical period in which we must practise the principle "to each according to his work" and combine the interests of the state, the collective and the individual, for only thus can we arouse people's enthusiasm for labour and develop socialist production.

I'm not a communist, of course. But I do think that everything is down to economics. Capitalism doesn't change.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in their bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles.

The British system denied any role for human creativity, and instead argued, that if man merely followed his hedonistic desires, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, objective laws would naturally guide society to achieve the best allocation of wealth.

Technological change can become 'fetishized' as a 'thing in itself', as an exogenous guiding force in the history of capitalism.

History, having destroyed the religion as the opium of the people, now requires that they be given a taste of the real stuff.

Throughout this evolution from left to right, Beard always detested war. Hence his writings were slanted to show that the military side of history was insignificant or a mere reflection of economic forces.

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religious faiths

Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.

There is then a universal and forced tendency to reduce to the lowest the workers’ wages, and this law is sufficient to crush all the best intentions of employers, prisoners of the social order, by which, however, they benefit.

Marxism represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man's universal vision... The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty... More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken.