Modern Capitalism Quotes

“It is not from the benevolence of the Butcher, the Brewer or the Baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest”
― Adam Smith, The Invisible Hand

“The high standard of living in the domain of the great corporations is restrictive in a concrete sociological sense: the goods and services that the individuals buy control their needs and petrify their faculties. In exchange for the commodities that enrich their life, the individuals sell not only their labor but also their free time. The better living is offset by the all-pervasive control over living. People dwell in apartment concentrations- and have private automobiles with which they can no longer escape into a different world. They have huge refrigerators filled with frozen foods. They have dozens of newspapers and magazines that espouse the same ideals. They have innumerable choices, innumerable gadgets which are all of the same sort and keep them occupied and divert their attention from the real issue- which is the
awareness that they could both work less and determine their own needs and satisfactions.”
― Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud

“Elevated to the status of a credit subject, the consumer believes [in the myth of credit] to see in this fact his own human realization and that of his social dignity. The commodity fetishism embodies in his person as the fetish of being, to whom credit gives a sensible and objective reality: the consumer sees himself in credit as in a mirror reflecting all the human attributes emanating from possession - respectability, honesty, occupational activity, recognized and weighed by social consensus...”
― José Revueltas