10 Quotes by Jackie Wang about capitalism


  • Author Jackie Wang
  • Quote

    But what exactly is primitive accumulation? It entails the creation of a labor market and a system of private property achieved through the violent process of dispossessing people of their land and ways of life so that they can be converted into workers for capitalists. (pg. 102)

  • Tags
  • Share



  • Author Jackie Wang
  • Quote

    However, to maintain a good credit rating during periods when revenue is lagging, municipalities must fuck over residents by implementing austerity measures such as firing public employees, cutting pension funds and health-care benefits, weakening the power of labor unions, cutting the education budget, and so forth. (pg. 175)

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Jackie Wang
  • Quote

    In April 2014 a settlement agreement was reached in court, and Detroit had to pay $85 million to USB AG and Bank of America Corporation to terminate the swaps. The use of variable-rate instruments, such as swaps, to finance debt was the single "biggest contributing factor to the increase in Detroit's legacy expenses." (pg. 169)

  • Tags
  • Share


  • Author Jackie Wang
  • Quote

    As the U.S. deindustrialized and the welfare state was gutted (a process that started in the 1970s), the solution to the problem of what to do with the unemployed people who had migrated to cities to become industrial workers—as well as the mentally ill people housed in hospitals that were shutting down en masse—was racialized mass incarceration. (pg. 56)

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Jackie Wang
  • Quote

    This evolution in the social function of the state from provider of social services to provider of security also represented an evolution in how racialized populations in the United States would be manged. The project of dismantling the welfare state gained legitimacy through the association of social entitlements with blackness.

  • Tags
  • Share