Politics is economics by other means, and war is politics…

““Politics is economics by other means, and war is politics by other means.””

Stan Goff

About This Quote

This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.

Politics and war are both strategies to achieve goals through economic or forceful means, respectively.

In simple terms: Politics and war are tools for achieving aims via economics or force.

Key Takeaway

Recognize the underlying motives behind policies and conflicts.

Themes

power conflict economics strategy

Mood

analytical critical

Type

observational philosophical

When to use this quote

policy analysis
international relations
military planning
activism

Key Concepts

realpolitik military theory political economy

Questions to Reflect On

What economic interests drive this policy?
When does force become the preferred tool?

A Different Perspective

Simplifies complex motivations into a single equation.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

More by Stan Goff

“People who claim, for example, that capitalism can overcome its dependence on fossil fuel have either not researched the question or they are on…

Stan Goff

War technology is science in the service of obscene anatomical vandalism.

Stan Goff

“If being a perfect soldier meant continuing to follow any fucking order I was given, then I would have to settle for being a…

Stan Goff

“The point is that when one is dealing with a too-powerful-for-the-present force, pragmatism demands one bite one's lip, play the game, and become very…

Stan Goff

“I think we are all about to become rootless. It may be time. The soil has become poisonous.”

Stan Goff

“It's the same hope we have to hold for humanity—that we can transform our roles, roles constructed like so many doors for us to…

Stan Goff

“The dialectical movement of economics, politics, and military power is folding and swirling like weather. Politics is being reshaped by military failure. Military failure…

Stan Goff

“That sounds stupid, but people have to remember that being raised a white male in the U.S.in the fifties and sixties, for most of…

Stan Goff

“I’ve never actually seen the military used to any higher moral purpose. There is always the bottom line, somewhere, somehow.”

Stan Goff

“The appearance of precision and order are so important to military commanders because they are generally idiots who couldn’t plan a decent cocktail party,…

Stan Goff

“It's always easier to pretend you know something than it is to learn about it. It's always easier to be cute than it is…

Stan Goff

“Racism—if you look closely—is about profit. The whole system was built on it. War—if you look closely—is about profit. Poverty, which is not, and…

Stan Goff

“The starkest reality of war is that the enemy is never really a monster, never inhuman ... Every soldier is the same fallible breed…

Stan Goff

“There’s a trendy phrase making the rounds among intellectuals these days: compassion fatigue. We’ve just grown so tired of caring so much about the…

Stan Goff

Democrat flaks jump on this like ducks on a June-bug, and in the process themselves reproduce the sick militarism of this culture that automatically…

Stan Goff

Explore all 27 Stan Goff quotes

More Economics quotes

Don't let's lose sight of what creates wealth. It is open markets, it is capitalism.

Rupert Murdoch

Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which... public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.

Alan Greenspan

Our biggest challenge is to eliminate the popular perception that economists don't have anything useful to say.

Mark Zandi

Advances in technology will continue to reach far into every sector of our economy. Future job and economic growth in industry, defense, transportation, agriculture,…

Christopher Bond

Our engagement through international economics, trade, these trade agreements, is vital and is linked to our national security. This is a lesson we learned…

Charles Boustany

“The free-market economy and globalisation process have brought about, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, a sharp and sudden rise in the…

Yaakov Malkin

“Everything economic science posits as given, that is, the range of dispositions of the economic agent which ground the illusion of the ahistorical universality…

Pierre Bourdieu

Politics is about power. It is about the power of the state. It is about the power of the state as applied to individuals,…

Kevin Rudd

Having an economy that works for the 99% is achievable.

Winnie Byanyima

“a select group of high-performing companies have managed to close the strategy-to-performance gap through better planning and execution. These companies—Barclays, Cisco Systems, Dow Chemical,…

Michael C. Mankins

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those…

Friedrich August von Hayek

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

Daniel Kahneman

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.

Frederic Bastiat

“Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are…

Karl Marx