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BOOK III THE ESSENCE OF CAPITALISM THE METAPHYSICS AND PHYSICS OF CAPITALISM"What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism." Friedrich Nietzsche1 " . . . Thus, it is a political axiom that power follows property. But it is now a historical fact that the means of production are fast becoming the monopolistic property of Big Business and Big Government." Aldous Huxley2 "The capitalist scheme of values in fact transformed five of the seven deadly sins of Christianity -- pride, envy, greed, avarice, and lust -- into positive social virtues, treating them as necessary incentives to all economic enterprise; while the cardinal virtues . . . were rejected as 'bad for business,' except in the degree that they made the working class more docile and more amenable to cold-blooded exploitation." Lewis Mumford3 " . . . Fascism can be combatted as capitalism alone, as the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive, and most treacherous form of capitalism." Bertolt Brecht4 " . . . [O]ur comparative ignorance of the laws of society and history is due not only to the great complexity of human affairs, but also to the very prejudice that there are no laws of history -- a prejudice suspect of being allied to powerful social (or antisocial) interests that are vitally interested in preventing deep insights into the social mechanism. Et pour cause! People who are able to take the social mechanism apart in theory may wish to change it in practice, and -- what is more dangerous for those who live on the persistence of fossil social forms -- such men may even succeed in their attempt." Mario Bunge5 " . . . [W]e can see clearly what is the nature of the slave and what is his capacity: anybody who by his nature is not his own man, but another's, is by his nature a slave; anybody who, being a man, is an article of property is another's man; an article of property is an instrument intended for the purpose of action and separable from its possessor." Aristotle6
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| For references, see Bibliography. |