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1 " When the institution of transnational corporations and the phenomenon of consumerism emerged in the early twentieth century, nobody could have predicted the dominant role that corporatism and consumerism were destined to play in American capitalism and in American empire-building. "
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2 " It was not easy for the Americans to convince Western Europe of the alleged merits of consumerism and a mass consumer society. In many Western European countries - but especially in France - people regarded American mass consumer culture with suspicion and as an expression of the vulgar materialist culture that had developed in the US. They could not, however, dispute the fact that the US had experienced such astonishing economic growth since 1870 that its citizens were able to maintain much higher living standards than those of Europe. "
3 " The Americanisation of the South African politico-economic system during the transformation 1994/96 was based on the wrong ideological premises, on the wrong power structures, and put South Africa on the wrong developmental path. The Americanisation of the South Afrocan politico-economic system was integrated into the criminalised global structures and the criminalistaion of the apartheid regime was replaced by the the criminalisation of the system by American-led global capitalism. "
4 " In spite of the close relationship between wealth and poverty in all neoliberal capitalist countries, the rich are usually not prepared to acknowledge that they are rich because the majority is poor. The rich usually live in denial about the casual relationship between wealth and poverty. They don't like to be the flipside of the poor. The rich are always very self-assured, very complacent and very arrogant about their wealth. They are always of the opinion that what belongs to them does so because of their merit, inventiveness, and perseverance, and that nobody - but nobody - has the right to take it from them. "
5 " I suspect that the NDP is actually a carefully crafted ideological propaganda document. This version of ideological propaganda could be called the 'ideology of targetism'. The aim of this ideological propaganda is to lull the general public, and especially the impoverished majority, into contentment until 2030 "
6 " Mainstream economists (of the neoclassical school) are always concerned about the intervention of the political authorities into the allegedly self-regulatory functioning of a free-market or capitalistic economic system. This attitude is pure 'economism' and not justifiable (see Teivo Teivainen, 2002). It betrays the ideological prejudices of that school of thought that regards capitalism as a sovereign system existing independently of the political realm, that capitalism operates automatically according to natural economic laws, and that the political authorities should not (and ought not to) interfere with the functioning of the capitalist market. Nothing can be further from the truth than this representation of capitalism by neoclassical economists. "
7 " Capitalism is not a sovereign and self-regulatory system, and it does not operate in accordance with natural economic laws. Capitalism is not a natural construct is a human construct and a man-made phenomenon. It is a project always in the making. A capitalist system cannot exist in a political or constitutional vacuum. Capitalism is always part of a dual politico-economic system in which the political authority, the state - irrespective of whether or not it has been elected democratically - represents the political side of the dual system, and capitalism the economic side. "