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Capitalism

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More than 10 million people globally die each year from hunger and from preventable and treatable diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, tuberculosis and AIDS, with sub-Saharan Africa the region most seriously impacted. — location: 139 ^ref-17426

‘The driving force of this expansion is capital accumulation and the search for ever expanding profits.’ — location: 410 ^ref-26425

The real questions are rather different. How does government intervene in the economy? And in whose interests?’ — location: 416 ^ref-16968

capitalism actually demonstrates a natural anti-democratic streak (by virtue of the inherent tendency for private wealth, and hence political influence, to be continually concentrated in the hands of a very small proportion of society).’ — location: 455 ^ref-12865

control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system. — location: 464 ^ref-9634

according to the logic of capital, society exists to serve the economy, rather than the reverse. — location: 468 ^ref-45417

rule of law under liberal democracy ultimately upholds private property as sacrosanct and, thereby, serves the interests of capital: — location: 474 ^ref-57061

the individual and property rights prioritized under liberal democracy — and enforced by the rule of law — do not ensure freedom for all people, but rather maintain the conditions of inequality under which some individuals are free to exploit others. — location: 482 ^ref-30544

that capitalism has little to do with freedom for workers — the overwhelming majority of people — and more to do with creating conditions that permit capital to exploit these ‘human’ commodities as it does all other commodities in its never-ending drive to maximize profits. — location: 498 ^ref-705

When society’s relationship with nature is based on sustenance, nature exists as a commons. It only becomes a resource when profit becomes the organising principle and creates a financial imperative for the exploitation of this ‘resource’ for the market. — location: 540 ^ref-13584

‘Structurally enforced inequality is the all-important defining characteristic of the capital system, without which it could not function for a single day.’ — location: 740 ^ref-57655

Returning to subsistence farming is not an option because once farmers become indebted to banks or unscrupulous money-lenders they have little choice but to continue cultivating cash crops in the hope of generating the necessary income required to make their loan payments. — location: 1040 ^ref-7363

The lack of input into policymaking and the inability to access land, food and life-saving drugs sentence more than 10 million people to death each year. — location: 1432 ^ref-51085

Part of what sustains poverty and human insecurity is ‘discourse dominance’. This means that neoliberalism can create the illusion of propriety by dominating debate, responses and logic. This is achieved in part by its ability to maintain that concepts like the ‘free’ market are valid, when the evidence shows quite clearly that the market is not free. — location: 1646 ^ref-5494

Watch cable TV news, and you’ll see sensationalized stories about crime and violence or titillating celebrity gossip — while discussions about the real issues that affect people’s lives get shortchanged. The poor are stereotyped and scapegoated, while the wealth and power of the rich are celebrated. Even shows meant as entertainment tend to reinforce the conventional wisdom. — location: 1720 ^ref-24533

liberal democracy and capitalism are legitimized while the values they promote are viewed as common sense. Meanwhile, those who challenge the prevailing order are easily dismissed as ‘radicals’ or ‘extremists’. — location: 1726 ^ref-17203

the general embrace of the ideology of consumption and the idea that progress is measured by the quantitative growth of consumption.… The peoples of the peripheries, who are for the most part deprived of access to acceptable levels of consumption and blinded by aspirations to consume like the opulent North, are losing consciousness of the fact that the logic of historical capitalism makes the extension of this model to the entire globe impossible. — location: 1744 ^ref-29864

privatization of profitable state-owned companies results in wealth accumulation for those multinational corporations based in the North that purchase them and diminished revenues for governments in the global South, making it more difficult for them to service their debts and to provide adequate education, health care and other social services to their populations. — location: 1784 ^ref-40721

The intent of this hegemonic discourse is to convince people that capitalism provides them with the greatest opportunity to live free in a democratic society, which will ultimately allow them to improve their material condition. — location: 1790 ^ref-64021

For if capital were natural, why has it only occupied the last 500 years of a record that goes back for hundreds of thousands? More to the point, why did it have to be imposed through violence wherever it set down rule? And most importantly, why does it have to be continually maintained through violence, and continuously reimposed on each generation through an enormous apparatus of indoctrination? — location: 1807 ^ref-21420

capitalists are bound to find the process of wealth distribution somewhat painful and to view the policies associated with redistribution as ‘authoritarian.’ Interestingly, it is not said that this is the bitter medicine that the rich must swallow to see a more just and humane society. Whereas the poor, on the other hand, have been asked to swallow the bitter medicine of neo-liberal austerity for over two decades in the vain hope that some of the wealth would eventually trickle-down. — location: 2134 ^ref-5178

date, the social transformation under way in Venezuela has not been authoritarian; in fact, it has been primarily rooted in participatory democracy. The central components of this participatory democracy consist of communal councils, which coordinate policies at the community level; worker-owned cooperatives; and direct democracy through national referendums. — location: 2139 ^ref-31349

Ironically, the ‘illiberal’ democracy in Venezuela is much more reflective of ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ than the ‘liberal’ democracy in the United States, which prioritizes the interests of capital. — location: 2251 ^ref-8455

Tellingly, Cuba’s number one export is health care. This contrasts dramatically with the leading export of the United States, which is weaponry. — location: 2403 ^ref-8284

While more than 10 million people die annually as a result of capitalism’s structural genocide, hundreds of millions more suffer non-fatal forms of structural violence such as trying to survive on a non-living wage or no wage at all, a lack of basic housing, hunger, sickness and many other social injustices. — location: 2565 ^ref-30526

in order to address these social injustices, capital must be displaced from its current hegemonic position by whatever means are available. Anything less will result in a continuation of the structural genocide and the related ecological crisis. — location: 2589 ^ref-22984

In order to achieve such a revolution, people must first emancipate themselves from the hegemonic discourse of capital. — location: 2626 ^ref-42161