Michael Parenti quotes

Michael Parenti is a renowned American political scientist, historian, and author known for his insightful analysis of power dynamics and social issues. With a career spanning over five decades, Parenti has written over 20 books on topics ranging from imperialism to inequality. His critical perspective on capitalism and corporate influence has earned him a dedicated following. Explore Michael Parenti's thought-provoking work and learn more about his perspectives on political activism, media manipulation, and democracy. Discover why he is considered a leading voice in progressive thought and a champion of social justice.

The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution.

- Michael Parenti

The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces.

- Michael Parenti

The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.

- Michael Parenti

It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.

- Michael Parenti

In almost every enterprise, government has provided business with opportunities for private gain at public expense. Government nurtures private capital accumulation through a process of subsidies, supports, and deficit spending and an increasingly inequitable tax system.

- Michael Parenti

Even though the crime rate has dropped in recent years, the United States has more police per capita then any other nation in the world.

- Michael Parenti

Conservatives insist that government should be 'run more like a business'. One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation.

- Michael Parenti

All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic. Marx said this, and so did Jefferson. It is a revolutionary doctrine, and very much an American one.

- Michael Parenti

Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform.

- Michael Parenti

One mechanism of repression is the grand jury.

- Michael Parenti

The last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography, prostitution, and narcotics.

- Michael Parenti

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

- Michael Parenti

The diseconomies of capitalism are treated as the public's responsibility. Corporate America skims the cream and leaves the bill for us to pay, then boasts about how productive and efficient it is and complains about our wasteful government.

- Michael Parenti

Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals

- Michael Parenti

Designed to leave the world's economic destiny at the mercy of bankers and multinational corporations, globalization is a logical extension of imperialism, a victory of empire over republic, international finance capital over democracy.

- Michael Parenti

You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.

- Michael Parenti

You see there are people who believe the function of the police is to fight crime, and that's not true, the function of the police is social control and protection of property.

- Michael Parenti

You don’t know you’re wearing a leash if you sit by the peg all day.

- Michael Parenti

The third world is not poor. You don't go to poor countries to make money. Most countries are rich. Only the people are poor. Ordinary people pay the costs of empire. These countries are not underdeveloped, they are over exploited.

- Michael Parenti

The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment-or at least much handicap-to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.

- Michael Parenti

The powers that be not only try to control events, but they try to control our memory and understanding of these events, which is part of controlling the events themselves.

- Michael Parenti

The inflated numbers of the crimes of Stalin offered by cold-war scholars serve neither historical truth nor the cause of justice but merely help to reinforce a knee-jerk fear and loathing of those terrible Reds.

- Michael Parenti

The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.

- Michael Parenti

The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments.

- Michael Parenti

People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.

- Michael Parenti

No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except for the ones that succeed.

- Michael Parenti

Capitalism is not just an economic system but an entire social order. Once it takes hold, it is not voted out of existence by electing socialists or communists.

- Michael Parenti

As demonstrated in Russia and numerous other countries, when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter.

- Michael Parenti

Apathy's a problem but who cares?

- Michael Parenti

The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.

- Michael Parenti