Paul A. Baran > Quotes

“At the root of capitalism poverty one always finds unemployment and underemployment what Mark called the industrial reserve army which directly deprive their victims of income and undermine the security and bargaining power of those with whom the unemployed compete for scarce jobs.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Le capitalisme monopoliste

“A model is, and must be, unrealistic in the sense in which the world is most commonly used. Nevertheless, and in a sense paradoxically if it is a good model it provides the key to understanding reality.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Le capitalisme monopoliste

“Thus, important parts of physics and chemistry have been pressed into the service of war and destruction; much mathematical and statistical ingenuity has been turned into an auxiliary of monopolistic market control and profit maximization; psychology has become a prostitute of 'motivation research' and personnel management; biology is made into a handmaiden of pharmaceutical rackets; and art, language, color, and sound have been degraded into instrumentalities of advertising.”
― Paul A. Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis

“Capitalism everywhere generates wealth at one pole and poverty at another.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Le capitalisme monopoliste

“Irrationality and aggressiveness in our time are, therefore, not emanations of some unalterable human instincts. Nor do they express simply the supposedly 'natural' rejection of reason. Irrationality and aggressiveness in our time reflect primarily the refusal to accept as sacrosanct the rationality of capitalism. They testify to the protest against the mutilation and degradation of reason for the sake of capitalist domination. This outcry against bourgeois rationality, as well
as its identification with reason as such is magnificently depicted~in Dostoevsky's Underground Man who 'vomits up reason' and who scornfuIly rejects the commandment to accept the proposition that two times two equals four. While this strikingly exemplifies the posture of irrationalism, an important aspect of the Underground Man's attitude should not be lost sight of. It is that the Underground Man, irrational and crazy as he is, is actually profoundly right in 'vomiting up reason' in refusing to bow to the logic of two times two equals four. For this logic is the logic of the capitalist market, of the exploitation of man by man, of privileges, insecurity, and war. To be sure, his contempt for this rationality, his uprising against the 'common sense' of human misery, is an irrational reaction to a pernicious social order. But it is the only reaction available to the isolated and helpless individual who, incapable of comprehending the forces by which he is being crushed, is unable to struggle effectively against them. This reaction is neurosis.”
― Paul A. Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis

“It was capitalism, with its enthronement of greed and privilege, which created the race problem and made of it the ugly thing it is today. It is the very same system which resists and thwarts every effort at a solution.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Study Guide to Accompany American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials, 3rd

“The co-opting begins at birth, the potential for co-optation is built into the system. It is part of what we have been taught is good. We have been taught to feel that the couple of thousand dollars a year more is what is desirable.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Study Guide to Accompany American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials, 3rd

“Here is Senator Russell in a colloquy on the Senate floor with Senator Proxmire: There is something about preparing for destruction that causes men to be more careless in spending money than they would be if they were building for constructive purposes. Why that is so I do not know; but I have observed, over a period of almost thirty years in the Senate, that there is something about buying arms with which to kill, to destroy, to wipe out cities, and to obliterate great transportation systems which causes men not to reckon the dollar cost as closely as they do when they think about proper housing and the care of the health of human beings.”
― Paul A. Baran, Monopoly Capital

“The co-opting begins at birth, the potential for co-optation is built into the system. It is part of what we have been taught is good. We have been taught to feel that the coup of thousand dollars a year more is what is desirable.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Study Guide to Accompany American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials, 3rd

“Such planning and such action, however, will never be undertaken by a government run by and for the rich, as every capitalist government is and must be. To demand these things from a capitalist government is to demand that it cease to be capitalist.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Le capitalisme monopoliste

“It was capitalism, with its enthronement of green and privilege, which created the race problem and made of it the ugly thing it is today. It is the very same system which resists and thwarts every effort at a solution.”
― SWEEZY Paul M. BARAN Paul A., Study Guide to Accompany American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials, 3rd