The
system of corporate life is a new power for which our language
contains no name. We have no word to express government
by moneyed corporations
-- Charles Francis Adams
Capitalism
is a thug's economy, a heartless economy, a base and vile
and largely boring economy. It is the antithesis of human
fulfillment and development. It mocks equity and justice.
It enshrines greed... Capitalism sucks. Does anyone seriously
want to contest that?
-- Michael Albert
“We
have to choose between a global market driven only
by calculations of short-term profit, and one which
has a human face.”
--
Kofi
Annan
*
“We
must ensure that the global market is embedded in
broadly shared values and practices that reflect
global social needs, and that all the world's people
share the benefits of globalization.”
-- Kofi
Annan
|
|
“Business,
labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources
that are vital in helping to build a more robust global
community.”
-- Kofi
Annan
The
greatest weapon of mass destruction is corporate economic
globalization.
-- Kenny Ausubel
*
....the
globalization that characterizes today’s economics
goes beyond or eludes the sovereignty of individual
states, and thus the power of their rulers. It is
not they, but rather financial groups in control
of vast amounts of capital, who decide upon their
vertiginous passage through nations, without taking
into account the serious crises they might generate.
-- Patricio
Aylwin Azócar
|
|
|
|
*
We are committed with our lives to building a different
model and a different future for humanity, the Earth,
and other species. We have envisaged a moral alternative
to economic globalization and we will not rest until
we see it realized.
-- Maude
Barlow
|
"I would
define globalization as the freedom for my group of companies
to invest where it wants when it wants, to produce what
it wants, to buy and sell where it wants, and support the
fewest restrictions possible coming from labour laws and
social conventions."
-- (Percy Barnevik, President of the ABB Industrial Group)
A single
decision by the chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell has a greater
impact on the health of the planet than all the coffee-ground-composting,
organic-cotton-wearing ecofreaks gathering in Washington
D.C., for Earth Day festivities this weekend.
-- Sharon Begley
*
Changing the structure and rules of the global economy
will require a mass movement based on messages of
compassion, justice, and equality, as well as collaborative
and democratic processes ... If we stay positive,
inclusive, and democratic, we have a truly historic
opportunity to build a global movement for social
justice.
-- Medea
Benjamin
|
|
|
|
For
complex reasons, our culture allows "economy" to mean
only "money economy." It equates success and even
goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any
other standard of measurement. I am no economist,
but I venture to suggest that one of the laws of such
an economy is that a farmer is worth more dead than
alive. A second law is that anything diseased is more
profitable than anything that is healthy. What is
wrong with us contributes more to the "gross national
product" than what is right with us.
~ Wendell
Berry
|
The
liberal political tradition provides no coherent response
to the obvious question: Why should the rights of ownership
prevail over the rights of democratic citizenry in determining
who is to manage the affairs of a business enterprise whose
policies might directly affect as many as half a million
employees, and whose choice of product, location, and technology
touches entire communities and beyond?
-- Samuel Bowels
If you
thought the army was here protecting people like yourself,
I've some news for you, we're here to defend wealth.
-- Billy Bragg
If
only more of today's military personnel would realize
that they are being used by the owning elite's as
a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad
-- Major
General Smedley Butler
Why
don't those damn oil companies fly their own flags
on their personal property-maybe a flag with a gas
pump on it.
-- Major
General Smedley Butler
|
|
...
the 20th century has been characterized by three developments
of great political importance: The growth of democracy,
the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate
propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against
democracy.
-- Alex Carey, Australian social scientist
|
Globalization,
as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice
thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are
talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers.
This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the
world.
-- Jimmy
Carter
|
 |
|
|
*
I think there are a lot of strong leaders around the
world who have made very convincing arguments about
the weakness of corporate-led globalization and the
compelling nature of alternatives.
-- John
Cavanagh
A
huge part of our power came from our moral authority
... the moral issue of debts as being killers of millions
of poor people around the world...I think our power
is also rooted in our intellectual power. I think
there are a lot of strong leaders around the world
who have made very convincing arguments about the
weakness of corporate-led globalization and the compelling
nature of alternatives.
-- John
Cavanagh
|
|
|
*
What
is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate
mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable
private tyrannies exercising vast control over the
economy, political systems, and social and cultural
life...
-- Noam
Chomsky
|
In any
institution-factory, university, health center, or whatever-there
are a variety of interests that ought to be represented
in decision-making: the work force itself, the community
in which it is located, users of its products or services,
institutions that compete for the same resources. These
interests should be directly represented in democratic structures
that displace and eliminate private ownership of the means
of production or resources, an anachronism with no legitimacy.
-- Noam
Chomsky
What
is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate
mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private
tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political
systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close
cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively
in the domestic economy and international society.
-- Noam
Chomsky
In considering
how human rights might serve as a 'guiding value' in American
foreign policy, one should not dismiss the historical record,
which is ample. There is indeed a close relationship between
human rights and American foreign policy. There is substantial
evidence that American aid and diplomatic support increase
as human rights violations increase, at least in the Third
World. Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced
reduction of living standards for much of the population,
police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative
institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly
correlated with US government support. The linkage is not
accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious
enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate
for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor
in foreign policy. It would be naïve indeed to think that
this will change materially, given the realities of American
social structure and the grip of the state ideological system.
-- Noam
Chomsky
|
|
*
There's
two globalizations... The elite globalization represents
minority forces. The elite globalization is about
making money... The people's globalization, the democratic
mass globalization is about life values.
-- Kevin
Danaher
*
The
global economy works for about twenty percent of the
world, for about eighty percent it doesn't.
-- Kevin
Danaher
*
We
have a global economy that is not structured around
democratizing and including people in the decision-making.
It's operated in secret.
-- Kevin
Danaher
|
There's
two globalizations. There's the globalization of the elites,
of the corporations, represented by the World Bank, the
IMF, the World Trade Organization. That's the global state.
It's a secret global government information. There's another
globalization that's grass roots globalization. The Fair
Trade Networks, the Sister Cities, Sister Schools, Citizen
Diplomacy, the work we do at Global Exchange, linking people
up at the grass roots. That represents majority forces.
The elite globalization represents minority forces. The
elite globalization is about making money. It's money values.
The people's globalization, the democratic mass globalization
is about life values. So you got two paradigms, the money
cycle and the life cycle and they're in contestation.
-- Kevin
Danaher
|
|
Well,
we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a
result of the overall assault on the labor movement
and as a result of the globalization of capital.
-- Angela
Davis
|
|
Power
that controls the economy should be in the hands of
elected representatives of the people instead of an
industrial oligarchy
~ Justice
William O. Douglas
|
 |
 |
"I
am local, rural, communal. And I find that the whole
world is a community. We have made progress in asserting
our local community rights globally. We shall continue
to do so."
-- Tewolde
Egziabher |
 |
*
One
has to realize that the powerful industrial groups concerned
in the manufacture of arms are doing their best in all
countries to prevent the peaceful settlement of international
disputes, and that rulers can achieve this great end
only if they are sure of the vigorous support of the
majority of their peoples.
-- Albert
Einstein |
*
"In
the councils of government, we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of displaced
power exists and will persist."
-- Dwight
D. Eisenhower
|
|
To the
fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism I say:
make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop worker in
Indonesia for one month and then ask him about the merits
of the world economic system...
-- Vassilis Epaminondou
Capitalist
exploitation and cartels and monopolies are the enemies
of underdeveloped countries. On the other hand ... a regime
which is completely oriented towards the people as a whole
and based on the principle that man is the most precious
of all possessions, will allow us to go forward more quickly
and more harmoniously, and thus make impossible that caricature
of society where all economic and political power is held
in the hands of a few who regard the nation as a whole with
scorn and contempt.
-- Frantz Fanon
Do you
want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed,
the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist and
you will sweep war from the earth."
-- Henry Ford
 |
Where
do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one
poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries,
numbers live better than people. How many people prosper
in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives
developed by development?
-- Eduardo
Galeano |
Globalization
has considerably accelerated in recent years following the
dizzying expansion of communications and transport and the
equally stupefying transnational mergers of capital. We
must not confuse globalization with “internationalism” though.
We know that the human condition is universal, that we share
similar passions, fears, needs and dreams, but this has
nothing to do with the “rubbing out” of national borders
as a result of unrestricted capital movements. One thing
is the free movement of peoples, the other of money.
-- Eduardo
Galeano
Nothing
can be defined or derided on the basis of its origin. The
important thing is what is done with it and how far a community
identifies with something that symbolizes its favourite
way of dreaming, living, dancing, playing or loving. This
is the positive side of the world: a constant intermingling
that produces new responses to new challenges. But because
of forced globalization, there’s a clear trend these days
towards uniformity. This trend comes largely from the ever-greater
concentration of power in the hands of large media groups.
-- Eduardo
Galeano
|
|
"Globalization
was supposed to break down barriers between continents
and bring all peoples together. But what kind of globalization
do we have with over one billion people on the planet
not having safe water to drink?"
-- Mikhail
Gorbachev
|
We
should know that only replacing the economics of competition
and greed with the economics of equitable cooperation will
guarantee a globalization that takes advantage of potential
efficiency gains in ways that also promote environmental
protection, international equity, economic democracy, and
variety.
-- Robin Hahnel
Recognizing
that the current form of globalization is nothing more than
a generalized downward leveling in which global corporations
are extracting more and more of the wealth, power, and productive
energies from communities and the environment is the right
approach... And knowing that in every specific battle, what
we are fighting for is merely the substitution of the human
agenda for the corporate agenda is what can guide and sustain
us.
-- Robin Hahnel
So long
as private corporations remain the dominant production institution
of society, no matter who is in power, the long-run trend
in society will be to promote the corporate interest.
-- Michael Harrington
It is
a government of the people by the people for the people
no longer it is a government of corporations by corporations
for corporations
-- Rutherford B. Hayes
Economists
have provided capitalists with a comforting concept called
the "free market." It does not describe any part of reality,
at any place or time. It's a mantra conveniently invoked
when it is proposed that government do something the faithful
don't like, and just as conveniently ignored whenever they
want government to do something for them.
-- Edward S. Herman
|
I
hope we shall take warning from the example of England
and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations which dare already to challenge our Government
to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
|
|
 |
Militarism.
. . is the chief bulwark of capitalism. When it is that
militarism is undermined, capitalism will fail.
-- Helen
Keller
|
Capitalism
is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men
will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good
of everyone.
-- John Maynard Keynes
"Globilization
in its current form cannot deliver the benefits expected
of it. Civil society, particularly in developing countries,
must ensure that it does."
-- Martin Khor, Director, Third World Network
|
When
machines and computers, profit motives and property
rights are considered more important than people;
the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic
exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true
revolution of values will soon cause us to question
the fairness and justice of many of our present policies...
--
Martin
Luther King, Jr
|
 |
"This
is a role our nation has taken. The role of those who make
peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the
priveleges and pleasures that comes from the immense profits
of overseas investments. I'm convinced that if we are to
get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation
must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly
begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented
society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights are considered more important than people;
the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation
are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values
will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice
of many of our present policies... True compassion is more
than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values
will soon look on uneasily upon the glaring contrast of
poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look
across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West
invest in huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South
America only to take the profits out with no concern for
the social betterment of the countries, and say 'this is
not just'. It will look at our alliance with the landed
gentry of Latin America and say 'this is not just'. Western
arrogance of feeling it has everything to teach others,
and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution
of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war:
'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business
of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's
homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs
of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending
men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped
and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with
wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after
year to spend more money on military defense than on programs
of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
--
Martin
Luther King, Jr
|
The
truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast
food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy
of all: impunity.
-- Naomi
Klein
We
are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality,
because we're not getting those things from our communities
or from each other.
-- Naomi
Klein
|
 |
|
|
*
When
the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps
inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence
over the interests of people. What we are experiencing
might best be described as a case of money colonizing
life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions
and purpose should be considered nothing less than
an act of collective, suicidal insanity."
-- David
Korten
|
|
I
see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves
me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....corporations
have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high
places will follow, and the money of the country will
endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the
prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated
in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel
at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country
than ever before, even in the midst of war.
-- Abraham
Lincoln
|
 |
 |
*
The
role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures,
and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore,
to make them easier for global corporations to control.
Global corporations are even now trying to commodify
all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention
indigenous cultures.
-- Jerry
Mander
|
"America:
Socializing the risks, Privatizing the profits, Putting
business in the democracy, Taking the democracy out of the
business."
-- Christopher Masterjohn
The
corporations are powerful only because we have allowed them
to be. In theory, it is we, not they, who mandate the state.
But we have neglected our duty of citizenship, and they
have taken advantage of our neglect to seize the reins of
government.
-- George Monbiot
"Fascism
should more appropriately be called corporatism because
it is a merger of state and corporate power."
-- Benito Mussolini
*
The
essence of globalization is a subordination of human
rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights,
democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade
and investment.
-- Ralph
Nader |
 |
In our
country, the large corporations are the dominant institution.
They comprise the strongest, consistent, generic power in
the land. They share a high degree of coordinated values.
Their power is all the more remarkable in its resiliency
and ability to accommodate or absorb other challenging power
centers such as big government and organized labor in ways
that turn an additional profit, erect an additional privilege,
or acquire protective mechanisms to ward off new pressures
for change or reform."
-- Ralph
Nader
*
"We live in such a corporate world where everyone
is passing the buck, it seems to me. Therefore I
like stories where the individual takes responsibility
for BEING the individual, and not just for himself,
but for his comrades, his society and ultimately
for his country. Ultimately, we can all learn a
lesson from that and not be browbeaten by the corporate
world which is taking over."
-- Liam
Neeson
|
|
 |
Instead of having a set of policies that are equipping
people for the globalization of the economy, we have
policies that are accelerating the most destructive
trends of the global economy.
-- Barack
Obama
This
is the moment when we must build on the wealth that
open markets have created, and share its benefits
more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our
growth and global development. But we will not be
able to sustain this growth if it favors the few,
and not the many.
-- Barack
Obama
|
|
|
"Leave the old and dying America and use your creative
energies to help form a new America, which would be
demilitarized, more humanistic, where the police are
less hostile and closer to the community, where the
wealthy are not given unleashed power for the exploitation
of the people, and mostly because it's now a matter
of life and death, reassert an ecological balance
with the environment, which means thhe people in the
oil companies and the car companies and the space
industry will have to be brought into account, so
there will be a new definition of government which
has to be closer to the people and less close to special
interests which are far more harmful that any revolutionaries.
-- Phil
Ochs
|
"The
problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst
part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic,
acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much
punishment--or at least much handicap--to honesty, compassion,
fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and
a concern for those in need."
-- Michael Parenti
|
|
Our
resistance to this war should be our resistance to
profit at the cost of human life. Because that is
what these drums beating over Iraq are really about.
This is about business.
-- Tim
Robbins
|
"The
liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate
the growth of private power to a point where it becomes
stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in
its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by
an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling
private power. Among us today a concentration of private
power without equal in history is growing."
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt |
 |
|
|
*
"The Globalization of humanity is a natural, biological,
evolutionary process. Yet we face an enormous crisis
because the most central and important aspect of globalization-its
economy-is currently being organized in a manner that
so gravely violates the fundamental principles by
which healthy living systems are organized that it
threatens the demise of our whole civilization.
-- Elisabet
Sahtouris
We
are capable of regaining our reverence for life, of
replacing the drive to conquer with the will to cooperate,
of remaking our engineered institutions, including
our corporations, into living systems.
-- Elisabet
Sahtouris
|
|
The
policy of letting things alone, in the practical sense
that the Government should never interfere with business
or go into business itself, is called Laisser-faire
by economists and politicians. It has broken down
so completely in practice that it is now discredited;
but it was all the fashion in politics a hundred years
ago, and is still influentially advocated by men of
business and their backers who naturally would like
to be allowed to make money as they please without
regard to the interest of the public.
-- George
Bernard Shaw
Capitalism
has destroyed our belief in any effective power but
that of self interest backed by force.
-- George
Bernard Shaw
|
|
 |
A
key issue in managing globalization is therefore how
we organise the global investmentand labour markets
to meet the needs of flexibility for enterprises,
security for workers and quality for consumers. We
need new proactive policies that focus directly on
how authorities in the public and private sphere can
blend economic and social policies with an enabling
environment for private initiative to create market
opportunities for Decent Work.
-- Juan
Somavia
|
I think
the team that successfully puts together an economic and
social policy framework for global full employment in decent
working conditions based on local development, that would
command the support of all stakeholders and all international
organizations concerned, should be awarded the [Nobel] prize.
I am sure they would get it not just for economics, but
also for peace in the world.
-- Juan
Somavia
I think
the greedy corporate owners have to be confronted with the
fact that they are ignoring their most powerful resource
-- their workers.
-- John Sweeney, 1995
There
is a growing consensus that Globalization must now be reshaped
to reflect values broader than simply the freedom of capital.
-- John Sweeney
Clearly,
the Global Economy isn't working for workers in China and
Indonesia and Burma any more than it is for workers here
in the United States.
-- John Sweeney
We can
no longer allow multi-nationalists to parade as agents of
progress and democracy in the newspapers, even as they subvert
it at the workplace.
—John Sweeney
Did
you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when
it has no soul to be damned, and nobody to be kicked?
-- Lord Chancellor Thurlow
 |
*
It is absolutely sure that if globalization is not
founded on moral values not only will fail but will
bring about global calamities.
-- George
Vithoulkas
|
Contrary
to the received wisdom, global markets are not unregulated.
They are regulated to produce inequality.
-- Kevin Watkins
|
"I'm
helping to create an economic system that will respect
and protect the earth -- one which would replace corporate
globalization with a global network of local living
economies. Business is beautiful when it's a vehicle
for serving the common good."
-- Judy
Wicks
|
|
 |
Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer
insists on having the world as a market, the flag
of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the
nations which are closed against him must be battered
down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded
by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of
unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies
must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful
corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.
-- Woodrow
Wilson, 1919
|
Since
I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided
to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States,
in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of
something. They know that there is a power somewhere so
organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete,
so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath
when they speak in condemnation of it."
-- Woodrow
Wilson
