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.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

From 1945 to 1974, the Western world – including America – was more socialistic than capitalistic, more pro-labor than pro-business.

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

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.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!

Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.

The Revolution did not assume a socialist nature because of support from the U.S.S.R.; it was the other way around: support from the U.S.S.R. was produced by the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution. To such a degree, that when the U.S.S.R. disappears, Cuba keeps on being socialist.

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.

I could become very rich in Guatemala but by the low method of ratifying my title, opening a clinic, and specialising in allergies. To do that would be the most horrible betrayal of the two ‚I’s‘ struggling inside me: the socialist and the traveller.

Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

At times, I’ve referred to Christ’s miracles, and have said, ‚Well, Christ multiplied the fish and the loaves to feed the people. That is precisely what we want to do with the Revolution and socialism.‘

Politics is just a function of business now, just a tributary of the great entrepreneurial capitalist system.

There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating… because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

I would remind you the lesser of two socialists is still a socialist.

It’s impossible, I think, however much I’d become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don’t think I’d ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property, and the division of the resultant public income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.

Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.

The environmentalists say capitalism is killing our oceans, air, land, and forests. Capitalists argue that they provide food, fuel, and building materials for a growing world.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.

Whole new businesses will emerge around breakthrough products as revolutionary technologies accelerate capitalism’s creative destruction of slower industries.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.