Charles Bukowski Quotes

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.

Every time I say the word capitalism, everyone just assumes I have plenty of Marxism in me, I do. But Russia and China had their bloody revolutions and even while they were Communist, they had the same idea about generating wealth - tear it out of the bowels of the earth. And now they have come out with the same idea in the end... you know, capitalism. But capitalism will fail, too.

Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.

Capitalism works. In the end, socialism imploded on itself. Communism imploded on itself. Ultimately jihadism will implode on itself, if we stay in the fight and stay on offense because failed philosophies don't work, there's no future.

The left hates capitalism, not because of freedom and liberty - although they do. But the primary they hate capitalism is that it is the most efficient engine to create wealth for the greatest number of people in a society that has ever been devised. Nobody's ever claimed it's perfect. Nobody's ever said it's flawless. But it's better than anything else out there, particularly anything left has to offer.

Thus I came to condemn capitalism, not through any oppression endured by me personally, but through that very deification of efficiency which capitalism had taught me, for its own purposes.

Bear in mind that capitalism is a tiny period of human society. You never really had capitalism, you always had one or another variant of state capitalism.

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it's not a perfect system.

You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.

Global capitalism is simply accepted as a fact that you cannot do anything about. The only question is, Will you accommodate yourself to it, or will you be dismissed and excluded?

Capitalism works better than it sounds, while socialism sounds better than it works.

The word "Capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.

Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible.

If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism.

Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

There is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the well-to-do peasants.

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction.

I don't think capitalism can survive.

Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.

Capitalism has never stood back and examined itself properly. I think everybody knows that capitalism is the only thing that works, but is the current form of capitalism the best way of it working?

This capitalist society has not lasted forever; it's only a few hundred years old.