Free Trade
Free
Exchange
Marketplace
Profit
Price
Buying-Selling
Traders
Entrepreneurs
Labor
Capitalism
Credit System
Debt
Foreign Debt
Interest
Petty Usurers
Indentured
Servitude
Competition
Usurpation
Cheating
Commercial
Ideals
False
Theories
Moral
Scruples
Dog-Eat-Dog
World
Embryo Slaves
Servitude
Rancor
Malice
Tyranny
Reflexivity
Boom/Bust
Calculative
Thinking
|
The Analects.
"The Master said: ‘If one acts with a view to profit,
there will be much resentment.’" [4:12]1a
"The Master said: ‘The gentleman is familiar with what is
right, just as the small man is familiar with profit.’"
[4:16]1b
"Zigong said: ’Suppose there is a beautiful jade here,
does one wrap it up, put it in a box and keep it, or does one try
to get a good price and sell it?’ The Master said: ‘Sell it of
course, sell it of course! I am one who is waiting for a price.’"
[9:13]1c
"Jie Yu, the madman of Chu, passed Master Kong, singing:
Phoenix, phoenix,
What a decline of virtue!
. . .
Master Kong got down and wished to speak with him. But he
hurried off and avoided him . . . " [18:5]1d
|
Politics.
"The
trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency
itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve"1a
"The market-place
for buying and selling should be separate from
[the] public square and at a
distance from it . . . "1b
|
The New
Testament.
"And they come to
Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them
that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the
moneychangers . . . And
the scribes and chief priests . . . sought how they might destroy him:
for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his
doctrine" [St.
Mark 11:15-18].1a |
The
Koran.
"Do not devour one
another's property by unjust means, nor bribe with
it the judges in order that you may wrongfully and knowingly
usurp the possessions of other men." [The Cow 2:188].1a
"Give orphans the property
which belongs to them. Do not exchange their valuables
for worthless things or cheat them of their possession;
for this would surely be a great sin." [Women 4:3].1b
|
On Law, Morality, and Politics.
" . . . To take interest for
money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not
exist, and this
evidently leads to inequality, which is contrary to justice. . . Now,
money according to the Philosopher1a, was invented chiefly for the purpose of
exchange, and, consequently, the proper and principal use of money is its consumption or
alienation, whereby it is sunk in exchange. Hence, it is by
its very nature unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is
known as interest, and just as a man is bound to restore other ill-gotten goods, so
is he bound to restore the money which he has taken in interest."1
|
The Wealth of
Nations.
"As soon as the land of any country
has all become private property, the landlords,
like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed . . . "1a
"It
is not . . . difficult to foresee which of the two parties must . . . have the advantage
in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.
The
masters . . . can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at
least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen."1b
"When the law does not enforce the performance of
contracts, it puts all borrowers nearly upon the same footing with bankrupts or people
of doubtful credit . . . "1c
"The pretence that
corporations are necessary for the better government of the
trade,
is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline
which is exercised over a workman, is not that of his corporation,
but that of his customers."1d
"The experience of all ages and nations, I believe,
demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it
appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any."1e
"Commerce, which
ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond
of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord
and animosity. . . [T]he mean rapacity,
the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers,
who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it
cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from
disturbing the tranquility of any body but themselves."1f
" . . . [T]he cruellest of our
revenue laws . . . are mild and gentle, in comparison of some of
those which the clamour of our merchants and manufacturers has extorted
from the legislators, for the support of their own absurd and
oppressive monopolies."1g
" . . . [I]n the mercantile
system, the interest of the consumer is
almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer . .
. "1h
|
Groundwork of the
Metaphysic of Morals.
"In the kingdom of ends
everything has either a price [market price
or fancy price] or a dignity [intrinsic
worth]."1a*
Perpetual
Peace.
"
. . . [A]s an instrument in the struggle among powers, the credit system -- the ingenious invention of a
commercial people [England] during this century -- of endlessly
growing debts that remain safe against immediate demand (since the
demand for payment is not made by all creditors at the same time) is
a dangerous financial power. It is a war
chest exceeding the treasure of all other nations taken
together . . . This ease in making war, combined with the
inclination of those in power to do so . . . is a great obstacle to
perpetual peace. Thus, forbidding
foreign debt must be a preliminary article for perpetual peace . . . "2
The
Metaphysics of Morals.
" . . . [A] human being regarded
as a person, that is, as the subject of a morally practical
reason, is exalted above any price; for as a person (homo
noumenon) he is not to be valued merely as a means to
the ends of others or even to his own ends, but as as an end in
himself; that is, he possesses a dignity (an
absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect for
himself from all other rational beings in the world."3a*
|
Rights
of Man.
"The obscurity in which the origin of
all the present old governments is buried, implies the iniquity
and disgrace with which they began. . . Those bands of
robbers having parcelled out the world, and divided it into dominions,
began . . . to quarrel with each other. . . What at
first was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue
. . .
From such beginning of governments, what could be expected, but a continual
system of war and extortion? It has established itself into a trade."1a
|
Capital.
Volume 1.
"The
restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is
what [the capitalist] aims at. This boundless greed
after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value, is
common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is
merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational
miser."1a
"The capitalist knows that all
commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they
may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly
circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out
of money to make more money."1b
[Karl Marx was born of a German-Jewish family converted to
Christianity2a]
"The Roman slave was held by fetters: the
wage-labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The
appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant
change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract."1c
"The capitalist system presupposes
the complete separation of the labourers from all property in
the means by which they can realise their labour. . .
The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else
than the historical process of divorcing the producer from
the means of production."1d
Capital.
Volume 3. "[T]the pioneering entrepreneurs generally go
bankrupt, and it is only their successors who flourish, thanks
to their possession of cheaper buildings, machinery etc. Thus
it is generally the most worthless and wretched kind of
money-capitalists that draw the greatest profit from
all new developments of the universal labour of the human
spirit and their social application by combined labour."2a
"Accumulation of capital in the form of
the national debt . . . means nothing more than the growth
of a class of state creditors with a preferential
claim to certain sums from the overall proceeds of taxation."2b
"The credit system which has its
focal point in the allegedly national banks and the big
money-lenders and usurers that surround them, is one enormous
centralization and gives this class of parasites
a fabulous power not only to decimate the industrial
capitalists periodically but also to interfere in actual
production in the most dangerous manner . . . "2c
|
Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.
" . . . Where the market-place begins, there begins the uproar
of the great actors and the buzzing of the poisonous flies . . . The people have little
idea of greatness, that is to say: creativeness . . . The actors possess spirit but little
conscience of the spirit . . . The market-place is full of solemn
buffoons . . .
They
want blood from you in all innocence, their bloodless souls thirst for blood . . .
Flee my friend . . . "1a
The Gay
Science.
"Have you not heard of that
madman who . . . ran to the
market place, and cried incessantly, 'I seek God! I seek
God!' . . . 'Whither is God' . . . 'I shall
tell you. We have killed him - you and I.'"2*
The
Will to Power.
"What does nihilism mean? That
the highest values devaluate themselves."3a*
|
The Decline of the
West.
"Through
money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has
destroyed intellect."1a
"Politics and trade
in developed form -- the art of achieving material successes
over an opponent by means of intellectual superiority
-- are both a replacement of war by other means."1b
"Thinking
in money generates money -- that is the secret of the world
economy."1c*
"The sword is
victorious over money, the master-will subdues again the
plunderer-will. . . A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a
principle, and only one power that can confront money is left. Money is overthrown and
abolished by blood. Life is alpha and omega . . . It is
the fact of facts
within the world-as-history."1d*
|
Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy.
" . . . This process of Creative
Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism."1a
"The perfectly
bureaucratized giant industrial unit not only ousts the
small or medium-sized firm and 'expropriates' its owners,
but in the end it also ousts the entrepreneur . . . "1b
Business Cycles.
" . . . [C]apitalism is
that form of private property economy in which innovations are
carried out by means of borrowed money . . . "2a
"It was the financing of
innovation by credit creation . . . which is at the bottom
of that 'reckless banking.'"2b
"Capitalism and its
civilization may be decaying, shading off into something else, or
tottering toward a violent death."2c
" . . . [W]ithout innovation,
no entrepreneurs, without entrepreneurial achievement, no
capitalist returns . . . "2d
|
The General
Theory.
"With the separation between
ownership and management . . . and with the development of organized
investment markets, a new factor of great importance has
entered in, which sometimes facilitates investment but sometimes adds
greatly to the instability of the system."1a
"I sympathise . . . with the
pre-classical doctrine that everything is produced by
labour, aided by what used to be called art and is now
called technique, by natural resources . . . , and by the results
of past labour, embodied in assets . . . "1b*
|
The Question Concerning Technology.
"The man who is deranged [Nietzsche's Madman who 'ran to the
market place, and cried incessantly, "I seek God! I seek
God!" . . . "Whither is God" . . . "I shall
tell you. We have killed him - you and I"'1a]
. . . has nothing in common with the kind of men standing about in
the market place 'who do not believe in God.' For these men are
not unbelievers because God as God has to them become unworthy of
belief, but rather because they themselves have given up the
possibility of belief, inasmuch as they are no longer able to seek
God. They can no longer seek because they no longer think.
Those standing about in the market place have abolished thinking
and replaced it with idle babble that scents nihilism in every
place in which it supposes it own opinion to be endangered."1*
The Principle of
Reason.
"If this is the way it's
going to be, may we give up what is worthy of thought in
favor of the recklessness of exclusively calculative thinking
and its immense achievements? Or are we obliged to find paths upon
which thinking is capable of responding to what is worthy of
thought instead of, enchanted by calculative thinking, mindlessly
passing over what is worthy of thought?"2 |
The Road to
Serfdom.
"Before 1914 all the
true German ideals of a heroic life were in deadly danger before
the continuous advance of English commercial ideals, English
comfort, . . . "1a
Law, Legislation
and Liberty.
"
. . . [S]ince the power of the monopolist to discriminate can be
used to coerce particular individuals or firms, and is
likely to be used to restrict competition . . . , it
clearly ought to be curbed by appropriate rules of conduct."2
|
The Anatomy of Human
Destructiveness.
"It was discovered that man could be used as an economic
instrument, that he could be exploited, that he could be made
a slave."1a
"For the marketing
character everything is transformed into a commodity -
not only things, but the person himself, his physical energy, his
skills, his knowledge, his opinions, his feelings, even his
smiles."1a
|
The Open Society
and Its Enemies.
"Money . . . becomes dangerous only if it can buy
power, either directly, or by enslaving the economically
weak who must sell themselves in order to live."1a
|
The Virtue
of Selfishness.
"The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational
selfishness . . .
It holds that the rational interest of men do not clash -
that there is no conflict of interests among men . . . who deal
with one another as traders, giving value for
value.
The principle of trade is the only rational
ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and
social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle
of justice."1a*
"All credit transactions are contractual agreements.
. . Only a very small part of the gigantic network of credit
transactions ever ends up in court, but the entire network is
made possible by the existence of the courts, and would collapse
overnight without that protection."1b*
|
Money.
"In all of the panics there were recognizable constants. First
came an expansion in business activity. This usually centered on some dominant form of
investment . . . Then, as time passed, expansion gave way to speculation . . . The banks, needless to say, provided the money that financed the
speculation that in each case preceded the crash."1a
The Great Crash
1929.
|
Technology
Management and Society.
"Today the whole earth has
become a local community . . ."1a
"In government, modern technology and
the modern economy founded on it have outmoded the national
state as a viable unit."1b
"To take risk is . . . the essence
of economic activity."1c
"Managers today cannot take the time
to understand, because they don’t have it."1d
|
Capitalism and
Freedom.
"The possibility of co-ordination through voluntary
co-operation rests on the elementary - yet frequently denied -
proposition that both parties to an economic transaction benefit
from it, provided the transaction is bi-laterally
voluntary and informed.
Exchange can therefore bring about co-ordination without coercion.
A working model of a society organized through voluntary exchange
is a free private enterprise exchange economy - what
we have been calling competitive capitalism."1a*
"Few trends
could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free
society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social
responsibility other than to make as much money for their
stockholders as possible."1b
|
The
Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt.
"Immediately rebellion,
forgetful of its generous origins, allows itself to be
contaminated by resentment; it denies life, dashes toward
destruction, and raises up the grimacing cohorts of petty
rebels, embryo slaves all of them, who end by offering
themselves for sale, today, in all the marketplaces of Europe, to
no matter what form of servitude. It is no longer either
revolution or rebellion but rancor, malice, and tyranny. . . . All
of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the
limits of nihilism. But few of us know it."1g
|
A People's History of the United
States.
"It is roughly estimated that Africa lost 50 million
human beings to death and slavery . . . at the hands of slave
traders and plantation owners in Western Europe and America, the
countries deemed the most advanced in the world."1a
" . . . [C]ontracts made
between rich and poor, between employer and employee, landlord and
tenant, creditor and debtor, generally favor the more powerful
of the two parties."1b
|
The
Crisis of Global Capitalism.
"
. . . [P]eople can get rich in financial markets and
powerful in politics by propounding false theories or self-fulfilling
prophesies."1a
"
. . . I devised an ideal type of boom/bust sequence. . .
There is nothing determinate about the ideal case . . . but reflexivity
. . . is
the rule and it is ignored by the prevailing wisdom."1b*
"Everybody
must look out for his or her own interests and moral
scruples can become an encumbrance in a dog-eat-dog world."1c "Why
bother about the truth when a proposition does not need to be
true to be effective? Why be honest when it is success,
not honesty or virtue that
gains people's respect? . . . We are ready to enter the Age of
Fallibility."1d
|
The Essence
of Capitalism.
"Gargantuan debts are nothing but
indentured servitude."1a
" . . . [U]sing Hobbesian logic, I revealed
Capitalism as a Religion of Money (banks as churches,
bankers as clergy, loan applications as auricular confessions, bankruptcies as
excommunications, credit bureaus as index librorum prohibitorum, etc.)."1b
Bank-Induced
Risks.
"Today, people around the
world are giving themselves up recklessly to the 'calculative thinking'3a of the marketplace. People calculate what is
better -- a loan or a lease --; but, they seldom reflect on the meaning of usury. Why?
Because they are too busy being indentured."2 |
