"The revival of trade... was the dawn of a new industrial epoch. The repeal of the Corn Laws and the financial reforms subsequent thereon gave to English industry and commerce all the elbow-room they had asked for... The colonial markets developed at an increasing rate their capacity for absorbing English manufactured goods... China was more and more being opened up. Above all, the States United then, commercially speaking, a mere colonial market, but by far the biggest of all them underwent an economic development astounding even for that rapidly progressive country... And in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay."
"[The world economy today] is characterised by its highly modern anarchic structure. In this respect the structure of world economy may be compared with the structure of [national] economies typical till the beginning of [the 20th century], when the [economic planning] process, briskly coming to the fore in the last years of the nineteenth century, brought about substantial changes by considerably narrowing the [previously] unhampered "free play of economic forces." ... Still, notwithstanding the fact that modern world economy as a whole represents an anarchic structure, the process of [planning] is [occuring] even here, expressing itself mainly in the growth of international syndicates, cartels, and trusts."
"This line of reasoning, however, leads [one] away from focusing on the operation of the system and its institutional demands. It fails to appreciate the internal contradictions of [half-measures] that plagued the [Soviet New Economic Policy of the 1920s] with recurring economic crises throughout its history."
"today, nothing is as striking...as the glaring contradiction between the economic groundwork, which daily grows stronger...and the political superstructures, the national states which attempt to divide humanity into alien hostile portions, by artificial means, by border lines, tariff barriers and militarism."
"Simply blaming the avarice and short-sightedness of bankers does not explain how they found it so easy to get the funds that they gambled so heavily. ... Government borrowing must eventually be paid for. Otherwise the value of the currency will decline and inflation will result. If the spending is repaid by taxing profits it reduces the incentive to invest...But the most [The Federal Reserve] could do would be to reflate the lending and borrowing bubble until it bursts again in a couple of years time."
" Economic central planning is defined as a single owner-planner of all of the means of production. Ownership of financial assets is ownership of the means of production. To the extent that [the state] own[s] a portion of the [capital markets] they are engaged in central planning."
"[The state], as though driven by an unquenchable lust, had spread its organizing tentacles into all areas of social life. The separation of state and society was being systematically destroyed."
"Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends."
"Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social relation between producers, but were natural objects with strange social properties. And modern economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital? How long is it since economy discarded the ...illusion, that rents grow out of the soil and not out of society? ... Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects."
"For the last sixty years, the United States has provided military protection for the European and Asian capitalist powers... In the long run, when monetary authorities around the globe play the game same and especially when the use of that credit is so often indirectly used to finance war ... that the seemingly radical step of a return to commodity-based money [may be in order]. Given the need to avoid an implosion of the world political order, such a transition would probably have be created in conjunction with [other countries] in order to avoid a panicked run on the dollar, amid attempts to attack a grossly overextended American imperial position."