Criticisms
Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States democratic system, said "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country." Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress, warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism:
he 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.
Statistics of the Bureau of Internal Revenue reveal the following amazing figures for 1935: "Ownership of corporate assets: Of all corporations reporting from every part of the Nation, one-tenth of 1 percent of them owned 52 percent of the assets of all of them."
Dwight D. Eisenhower criticized the notion of the confluence of corporate power and de facto fascism, but nevertheless brought attention to the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" in his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, and stressed "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage."
Read more about this topic: Corporate Capitalism
Famous quotes containing the word criticisms:
“I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.”
—William James (1842–1910)