Capitalism is catechism in Silicon Valley. The civic religion is entrepreneurism and evangelism is a marketing tool. But for an industry that worships at the altars of the marketplace, the rhetoric of billionaires has gotten a bit confusing.
Just this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his latest plans to invest $3bn from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization whose mission statement – “Our hopes for the future center on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality” – would not sound out of place coming out of the mouth of a die-hard communist.
Zuckerberg is not the only billionaire who sounds like he has a Che Guevara shirt in his closet. Take our quiz and see if you can tell the source of the quote: techie or communist?
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“We have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.”
Techie
Communist
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“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”
Techie
Communist
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“In every struggle for human dignity and social justice – in every struggle for better wages and working conditions, against racism and patriarchy, for protecting our living environment, and for our rights to adequate health, education, and housing (among our other needs), the concept of human development is implicit.”
Techie
Communist
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“Workers’ rights are human rights.”
Techie
Communist
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“Childhood should not be spent in a factory.”
Techie
Communist
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“Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.”
Techie
Communist
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“Working too many hours isn’t just unfair, it’s unsafe.”
Techie
Communist
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“We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick.”
Techie
Communist
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“The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
Techie
Communist
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“The system is that there is no system.”
Techie
Communist
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“If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.”
Techie
Communist
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“Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution!”
Techie
Communist
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“The most fundamental issue is economic equality.”
Techie
Communist
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“If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.”
Techie
Communist
Solutions
1:A - Elon Musk speaking to Aeon about space exploration, 2:B - Karl Marx, from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), 3:B - Michael Lebowitz, professor of Marxian economics and author of The Path to Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism?, 4:A - Apple’s corporate website, 5:A - Apple’s corporate website, 6:B - The Communist Manifesto (1848), 7:A - Apple’s corporate website, 8:A - Apple CEO Tim Cook in a Bloomberg article, 9:B - The Communist Manifesto, 10:A - Apple founder Steve Jobs, 11:B - Father of Chinese communism Mao Zedong, 12:A - Steve Jobs in Wired magazine, 13:A - Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in The New Yorker magazine, 14:B - Karl Marx
