acquisitive society

We are, after all, an individualistic, acquisitive society with a powerful and vulgar popular culture.

They could be considered an acquisitive society, often accused of thinking of nothing but how to earn money.

Into their satiric compacters goes all the short-sighted self-obsolescence of an acquisitive society.

Was it the prosperity of an acquisitive society prepared to forsake children, or the depression which accounted for the inter-war population trends?

In "Ujamma" he declared: "In acquisitive societies, wealth tends to corrupt those who possess it.

Tawney opposed what he called the "acquisitive society" that causes private property to be used to transfer surplus profit to "functionless owners" - capitalist rentiers.

"We live in an extremely acquisitive society," said a model-tall Lauren Bacall lookalike decked out in a few major acquisitions herself.

"In our acquisitive society a lot of students already have a lot things," said Laura Gross, director of marketing for American Express Gift Cheques.

CORPORATE America is becoming the acquisitive society par excellence, with everybody trying to acquire everybody else.

Save for a few surface evils he sees nothing wrong in an acquisitive society, with its equation of money and virtue, its pious millionaires and erastian clergymen.

Rich in Time The basic difference between our acquisitive societies and those of hunter-gatherers isn't a matter of sophistication, Juliet B. Schor suggests, but of desires.

The Mask of Hate: The Problem of False Solutions in the Culture of an Acquisitive Society' (1972)

However, the reforms in the social services which were eventually to be put into effect by the 1945 Labour government took place within the confines of the acquisitive society condemned by Tawney.

He is reluctant to preach, but if his lifestyle conveys anything, it is an emphatic witness to the importance of the things of the spirit; a disclaimer of the acquisitive society.

The habits of an acquisitive society were too strongly forged to be broken without the utmost devotion and selflessness to the cause, and rugged individualism triumphed over the abortive attempt at communal ownership and communal living here.

Thirdly, it is also possible that the advances in birth control operating within the climate of an 'acquisitive society' might well have permitted couples to plan their family lives in such a way as to allow them to enjoy the consumer benefits of society.

Precise definition of what is and is not a legitimate purpose is probably not possible, but the fact that we live in a competitive or acquisitive society has led English law, for better or worse, to adopt the test of self-interest or selfishness as being capable of justifying the deliberate doing of lawful acts which inflict harm.