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Jacobin
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I think the first step towards that is to see that the fundamental problem these days is not North versus South, the fundamental problem is that in any country where working people try to raise their voice, the first power they come up against and they have to confront is their own ruling classes.
[...] Trade-unionism, by its very nature, was addicted to the status quo. Its dialectic of partial conquests--if we ask for more we might lose what we have already won--made it a defensive, conservative and insufficient force. [...]
We need revolutionary government, we need (for a certain transitional period) a state. This is what distinguishes us from the anarchists. The difference between the revolutionary Marxists and the anarchists is not only that the former stand for centralized, large-scale communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small production. The difference between us precisely on the question of government, of the state, is that we are for, and the anarchists against, utilizing revolutionary forms of the state in a revolutionary way for the struggle for socialism.
The Communist Manifesto
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The Communist Manifesto
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multiple authors
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The Communist Manifesto
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multiple authors
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multiple authors
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
the famous quote
- Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
- A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
- Abolition of all right of inheritance.
- Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
- Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
- Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
- Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
- Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
- Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
Bourgeois socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class.
Equality, not competition or hierarchy, is 'the mother of invention'. Progress slows or goes into reverse as soon as ideas are appropriated by hierarchical organizations. Inequality is sustained when a few people persuade the majority that there is no alternative. [...]
not sure if the Thatcher reference is intentional or not but it's great
All societies that become greatly unequal eventually fail to adapt technologically and become unsustainable. [...] When inequality rises, you pour more and more resources into your armies and into new technology for them--not into truly productive and co-operative purposes. Slaves and scribes are left to do the hard work. Eventually the empire falls--because high and rising inequality and a consequent lack of innovation and adaptation is how it so often ends.
We can see this end coming. It is not too late to learn and change. And technology can help us do this if we better understand it--and ourselves.
[...] 'Technology' often implicitly refers to something you are expected to turn over to 'the guys who understand it'.
great quote. from Ted Nelson's self-published book Computer Lib, apparently a foundational text for the hacker movement (why haven't I heard of it????)
The frequent claim that inequality promotes accumulation and growth does not get much support from history. On the contrary, great economic inequality has always been correlated with extreme concentration of political power, and that power has always been used to widen the income gaps through rent-seeking and rent-keeping, forces that demonstrably retard economic growth.
citation: "Measuring Ancient Inequality" (a paper)