In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: there must be countervailing forces that defend people's needs against the brutality of profit driven capitalism.
. . . then life began, and since then we remember each dumpster, abandoned house, and foot-chase by retail security. At night, after running around, plotting and scheming, our checklist items all crossed out, we paused to think — 'What to do tomorrow?' and the answer was always, 'As we please . . .
Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees.
It made Daniel think. The people who had the least were the most willing to share. He outlined a dictum that he would believe the rest of his life: the more people have, the less the give. Similarly, generous cultures produce less waste because excess is shared, whereas stingy nations fill their landfills with leftovers.
How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow s hall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure, -- is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?
Paradise, the capitalists promise, is right around the corner. True, mistakes have been made such as the Atlantic slave trade and the exploitation of the European working class, but we have learned our lesson and if we just wait a little longer and allow the pie to grow a little bigger, everybody will receive a fatter slice.
It [predatory capitalism] is incapable of meeting human needs that can be expressed only in collective terms, and its concept of competitive man who seeks only to maximize wealth and power, who subjects himself to market relationships, to exploitation and external authority, is antihuman and intolerable in the deepest sense.
The road to the new society had lengthened and become overgrown sadly since 1904. The working class in many thousands had been shown its errors in thinking, but persisted in them. Very well: the working class must have the rigours of capitalism, and if the rigours were harsh - it serves them right for not accepting socialism.
Deeply rooted in the universalist Western tradition of the Stoics and the the early medieval Christians, Tolkien created a myth to explore the nature of the human person against the avaricious dreams of the capitalists and the diabolical schemes of the national and international socialists, all of whom would replace God with man.
Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else.A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth.
Any capitalist . . . who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn't each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don't you go and do it?
In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
...the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: "These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we make a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest.
America runs on credit darling. Why do you worry, our credit will take care of this payment. It is not saving or cash in hand that matters. We do not need cash, we just need potential. The system in the US believes in potential. That isthe model of the future. You need not be born rich, but you should be in the league that can make it big.
It seems to me that the Russian prestige is declining and that America holds in its hands the immediate future of the world: as long as America knows how to develop the sense of the earth at the same time as her sense of liberty." [Written from Peking, October 1945, on the eve of departure, after having been stuck there since the war began.]
