Alain Badiou Quotes

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

We who are members of the Communist Party repudiate the exclusive identification of democracy with capitalism. We declare that democracy can be widened, take on new aspects, become truly a rule of the people, only when it is extended to the economic life of the people.

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.

In principle as a philosophy, a model of organising society, Communism has to be respected. As regards the use of certain methods to advance social justice and greater regulation by the state, there are certain methods that are useful. What we need is a new society, a new civilization and convergence of all that is best in both [Communism and Capitalism]

In Democracy, man exploits man; in Communism, it's the other way round.

The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.

I am not so repelled by Communism: an element of Communism in politics is necessary and inevitable. In any involved society there must be a feeling that something must be done about poverty - which is the basis of communism.

As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game.

One thing that I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully, is that whatever the contingencies that may arise here, wherever I am there will be no communism.

... But as a Godless greed pursued its career from excess to excess, it provoked a sort of twin hostile brother, equally Godless, born in the same atmosphere of utter disregard for the foundational virtues of humility and charity. This hostile twin brother of Capitalism was destined to be called Communism, and is today setting out to murder its elder.

Personally, I never admired communists because they operate on the theory that human beings are nice people.

Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, and as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can't be transcended from with capitalism itself, but through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. I'm also convinced that it is possible to do it under democracy, but not in the type of democracy being imposed by Washington.

If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist. . . . I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

Socialism's not a word that I use. I say 'social democracy' because I don't think the government needs to own all the means of production.

Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism.

The goal of socialism is communism.

You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing, but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government.

Socialist democracy is not, a luxury and its need is not limited to the most advanced industrial countries.

The majority in every society is always the backward. The diligent are no more than thirty percent of the society. It is a natural law that the diligent breed will exploit the backward breed as best they can, like the fish at sea, where the strong eat the weak. It is inconsequential whether the diligent are capitalists and merchants, as in the bourgeois government, or whether the diligent are the managers and supervisors, the intellectuals and the allotters as in the communist government. Ultimately, the diligent will exploit the laboring backward to the best of their ability.

The struggle between Communism and capitalism has been perverting people's analysis of social issues.

… that veiled sister of communism – legalistic socialism

The clash of communism and capitalism sterilized rather than stimulated research on capital and inequality by historians, economists, and even philosophers.

Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak

I even believed in a third way; I thought it was possible to put a human face on capitalism. But I was wrong. The only way to save the world is through socialism, but a socialism that exists within a democracy; there's no dictatorship here.