“The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation [of capital]. As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and this turns into capital, without the necessity of exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry …”

“Usury centralises money wealth ... It does not alter the mode of production, but attaches itself to it as a parasite and makes it miserable. It sucks its blood, kills its nerve, and compels reproduction to proceed under even more disheartening conditions. … usurer’s capital does not confront the labourer as industrial capital ... but impoverishes this mode of production, paralyzes the productive forces instead of developing them.”

“Under the form of interest the whole of the surplus over the necessary means of subsistence (the amount of what becomes wages later on) of the producers may here be devoured by usury…”