"Capitalism is not an economic system, but a world-outlook, or rather, a part of a whole world-outlook"
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Capitalism, in Yockey's hands, is less a market mechanism than a psychological regime: a way of seeing people, value, and history through a spreadsheet lens. That reframing is the point. By denying capitalism the status of a neutral "economic system", he strips it of technocratic legitimacy and recasts it as ideology wearing the mask of common sense. The move is strategic: if capitalism is a worldview, you can attack it not by tweaking policy but by replacing the culture that makes it feel inevitable.
The subtext is a challenge to liberal modernity itself. "World-outlook" suggests that shopping, finance, individual rights, even scientific rationalism are not separate domains but coordinated habits of mind. Yockey is arguing that capitalism colonizes the moral imagination: it teaches societies to rank everything by utility, exchangeability, and personal advantage, then calls that ranking "freedom". The phrase "part of a whole world-outlook" is doing additional work, hinting that capitalism is only one symptom of a broader civilizational condition - the kind of total diagnosis that invites total remedies.
Context matters because Yockey was not a disinterested cultural critic. Writing in the mid-century wreckage of Europe and the early Cold War, he advanced a far-right, anti-liberal vision that treated both American capitalism and Soviet communism as twin expressions of a corrosive modern spirit. So the line carries an implicit recruitment pitch: stop arguing about economics and start fighting over the soul of the West. It's a clean, aphoristic sentence with a dangerous payoff - it makes politics feel like metaphysics, and extremism feel like clarity.
The subtext is a challenge to liberal modernity itself. "World-outlook" suggests that shopping, finance, individual rights, even scientific rationalism are not separate domains but coordinated habits of mind. Yockey is arguing that capitalism colonizes the moral imagination: it teaches societies to rank everything by utility, exchangeability, and personal advantage, then calls that ranking "freedom". The phrase "part of a whole world-outlook" is doing additional work, hinting that capitalism is only one symptom of a broader civilizational condition - the kind of total diagnosis that invites total remedies.
Context matters because Yockey was not a disinterested cultural critic. Writing in the mid-century wreckage of Europe and the early Cold War, he advanced a far-right, anti-liberal vision that treated both American capitalism and Soviet communism as twin expressions of a corrosive modern spirit. So the line carries an implicit recruitment pitch: stop arguing about economics and start fighting over the soul of the West. It's a clean, aphoristic sentence with a dangerous payoff - it makes politics feel like metaphysics, and extremism feel like clarity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
|---|---|
| Source | Imperium — Francis Parker Yockey. Line attributed to Yockey's political tract Imperium (appearance varies by edition; consult the full text of Imperium for exact placement). |
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