Freedom from the Market Quotes

“poverty] does not kill perhaps but it stunts,” and it “takes the form of a slow, chronic contest against everlasting odds” in which “the tenement child runs his race, but it is always a handicap.” Poverty was not worthwhile or necessary for social balance; rather, it reflected a failure of society to provide work and income to its most vulnerable”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“Poverty acted as a motivating force for the rich and poor alike. It allowed the rich to be inspired to acts of charity for the community, and it forced the poor to learn from their desperation and pushed them toward, patience, thrift, and hard work.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“We are constantly rediscovering the case for social insurance. That the market can’t provide genuine security against poverty, sickness, old age, and disability is something that is understood but not readily accepted”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“property as a vertical relationship of you over it. But property is really a horizontal relationship between people based on social rules, mutual coercion, and reciprocal duties. I own my house not because I have a special relationship with the bricks and wood, but because I can exclude other people from using it. We can say it is my property because other people have a duty not to enter, and I have the power to use it as I want without others being able to prevent that. The state and its institutions cannot be neutral in this, because they are the ones that define and enforce how the limits of that exclusion works. Reference to liberty cannot solve the question either, since an extension of economic liberty for some comes as a result of restricting the liberty of others.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“Steward had no problems criticizing the mass culture of his time. He deplored those who “sell rum, print dime novels, race horses or play base ball for a living,” as they made workers “not sufficiently ambitious to agitate for anything.” A mass culture distracted by frivolous things meant workers would “attend the circus, but never go to labor meetings; and are generally ready to take the strikers’ vacant places.” As astute as Steward was about many things, he missed that the growing working-class culture was far richer than this.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“As Roger Taney argued before the Supreme Court in 1827, the law never understood there to be a natural right to sell, else a person “may offer for sale large quantities of gunpowder in the heart of a city, and thus endanger the lives of the citizens”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“Advocates also argued that courts shouldn’t enforce labor contracts that were influenced by the “weakness of parties, infringement on the civil rights of the citizen, [or were] oppressive and against public policy,” and that contracts “which take away the free rights of citizens are oppressive and … not just and should not be protected by law.”3”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“In this turn against Reconstruction we see how the American idea of freedom is a living, evolving thing. Before, Greeley believed that simply ending slavery and providing a background of free labor policies would be enough to ensure that people could be self-sufficient, independent, and removed from the arbitrary domination of others. It led Greeley to promote ideas that were genuine and remarkable in creating this freedom, with free homesteads among the most important. But the challenge of Reconstruction showed Greeley that this wouldn’t be sufficient in a new era.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“His idea of shared interest and self-sufficiency among all parties was at its most developed when it came to leading the campaign for land reform and free homesteads, as he saw land as the solution to labor unrest within the growing market economy.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“He refused to see labor and capital as having opposing interests. Greeley supported labor but hated class conflict. He endorsed arbitration, worker cooperatives, and the ten-hour workday, but was against strikes. Like many in his era, Greeley believed that waged labor would weaken the character of those who worked.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“Greeley didn’t get lost in the conservatism of his party, but instead described himself as “a mediator, an interpreter, a reconciler, between Conservatism and Radicalism.” One can see this role when it came to his view on the economy and workers. Greeley believed that there was a shared interest among all parties in the economy, especially when it came to bosses and workers.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“But shortly after the election, betrayals from within destroyed the party. Some other, less influential leaders wanted nothing to do with radical land redistribution and successfully conspired to push Skidmore out at a meeting, packing the audience and preventing him from speaking. Infighting caused the party to collapse shortly after.14”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“But shortly after the election, betrayals from within destroyed the party. Some other, less influential leaders wanted nothing to do with radical land redistribution and successfully conspired to push Skidmore out at a meeting, packing the audience and preventing him from speaking. Infighting caused the”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“Their platform, strongly influenced by Skidmore, called for a ten-hour day, free public education, an end to debtors’ prisons, and ways for workers to recover wages when firms went into bankruptcy. Skidmore successfully pushed to get two additional planks added to the Working Men’s Party: a denouncement of private property in wealth and an end to its hereditary inheritance.13”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“This is a work of history because history gives a flesh-and-blood urgency to what are often presented as abstract, academic fights.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“There are debates over whether sex work is degrading, without any underlying criticism of how waged work itself can be degrading. There are arguments over whether people should be able to purchase human organs or illegal drugs, but little about the injustice of a society where people die because they can’t buy insulin.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“A free society will provide key goods in some realms and suppress markets in others. Sometimes this can be done with regulations and mandates, while other times it must be through the public directly providing the good itself. A free society also works to suppress domination in the marketplace: by giving workers a say in their workplaces that goes beyond simply being able to leave, by aggressively checking abuses from sellers, and by ensuring that work done outside the marketplace is compensated and provided for as well.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“Karl Polanyi described in his book The Great Transformation, things like land, labor, and money aren’t actual commodities. Instead each functions as a “fictitious commodity.” Land isn’t produced by anyone; it was already there. Money isn’t made from one’s efforts but comes from banks and states as a mechanism for accounting. As Polanyi writes, “Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“freedom requires being free from arbitrary power and domination by the will of others. Americans have concluded that if others can interfere with your life in a wanton and capricious manner, you are not free.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“Isaiah Berlin”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“philosopher Wendy Brown”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“at the mercy of private, profitseeking actors and our own ability to pay. Many of our needs are left unmet or poorly provided for by the market—from health care to retirement security to providing for children—and more suffering is the result.”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“What has changed about our era is how successful capitalism has become in colonizing our everyday lives, and how market dependency has bulldozed through efforts to check it.3 People have used markets for trading and exchange for centuries. What is unique today is how the economy has been restructured to extend and accelerate our reliance on markets into all aspects of society. For all the language about how markets open up opportunities, they also create dependencies as well. As Wood notes, what defines our current way of dealing with markets “is not opportunity or choice but, on the contrary, compulsion.” The things we need to lead our lives are forced into markets where we are compelled to obtain them,”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

“No man or body of men who require such excessive labor can be friends to the country or the Rights of Man. […] The God of the Universe has given us time, health, and strength. We utterly deny the right of any man to dictate to us how much of it we shall sell. —“Ten-Hour Circular,” calling for a maximum ten-hour work day, 1835”
― Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand