communism

Visible alternatives shatter the sense of inevitability, that the system must, necessarily, be patched together in the same form -- this is why it became such an imperative of global governance to stamp them out, or, when that's not possible, to ensure that no one knows about them. To become aware of it allows us to see everything we are already doing in a new light. To realize we're all already communists when working on a common projects, all already anarchists when we solve problems without recourse to lawyers or police, all revolutionaries when we make something genuinely new.

O masses, o masses! When will you assume the image and likeness of your avant-garde?

Parvus denied that universal suffrage was an end to itself since the middle class would always find ways to manipulate the electoral system. Freedom could not be begged for: it had to be won.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Life is about means not ends. There is no utopia to be gained, there is no end-state that is static and eternal, once accomplished. This was one of the great lies of communism. Likewise, capitalism offers the great deception that thanks to its machinations everyone will be richer in the future, thus justifying gross inequality and humiliation today.

The winner takes all mindset at the root of capitalism is a poison if left unchecked. That__ not to say capitalism is bad per s_, or that a more refined version of it cannot work effectively. Nor does it mean the world should move toward socialism or communism, which have both proven throughout history to be just as disastrous. But surely the world__ recent financial catastrophes and the bankrupting of individuals, families, small businesses, communities and entire nations, must make even the most ardent capitalist examine his or her beliefs.

Absolute autonomy inevitably leads to tyranny.

No society has succeeded in abolishing the distinction between ruler and ruled... to be a ruler gives one special status and, usually, special privileges. During the Communist era, important officials in the Soviet Union had access to special shops selling delicacies unavailable to ordinary citizens; before China allowed capitalist enterprises in its economy, travelling by car was a luxury limited to tourists and those high in the party hierarchy Throughout the 'communist' nations, the abolition of the old ruling class was followed by the rise of a new class of party bosses and well-placed bureaucrats, whose behaviour and life-style came more and more to resemble that of their much-denounced predecessors. In the end, nobody believed in the system any more. That, couple with its inability to match the productivity of the less bureaucratically controlled, more egoistically driven capitalist economies, led to its downfall.

The communists may not have done very well in the end, but I can't help thinking of capitalism as merely the go-to religion of the greedy and selfish.

It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.

Hunger justifies the middle classes.

What economists and political scientists today call the __ational choice of individuals,_ but what Smith called __he individual pursuit of happiness,_ leads according to this view in a mechanical way to general welfare. As Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man put it: __rue Self Love and Social are the same._ While this is the foundation of liberal capitalism, Marx__ dialectical materialism is not different in its selection of the economy as the prime mover. In this way the economy becomes the most important purpose of society. Fortunately, the economy has laws of causation, or, at least, that is what economists would like us to believe. Statistics are gathered to provide an objectified view of reality that enables social engineering. The individual and the collective are simultaneously put in an economic framework that is secular not in the sense that it is nonreligious, since individuals can rationally pursue religious ends, but in the sense that a God-given order of society has been replaced by an order that is constantly produced by homo economicus_ (p. 41).

When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you__ threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes

A highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example, may in most cases be both made and maintained by a small toll upon the carriages which make use of them: a harbour, by moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of the shipping which load or unload in it. The coinage, another institution for facilitating commerce, in many countries, not only defrays its own expense, but affords a small revenue or seignorage to the sovereign. The post-office, another institution for the same purpose, over and above defraying its own expense, affords in almost all countries a very considerable revenue to the sovereign. When the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them. It seems scarce possible to invent a more equitable way of maintaining such works.

Marx himself wrote that capitalism produces above all its own gravediggers. Do you think that perhaps he wasn't talking about capitalism?

Communism in a capitalist world requires eliminating the hope of the citizens for owning what others own.

China's success lies on being a communist community within and a capitalist company outside.

These diverse effects of slavery and freedom are easily understood: _ the men in Kentucky [neither] have zeal nor enlightenment _ cross over into Ohio in order to utilize their industry and to be able to exercise it without shame _ in Kentucky, masters make slaves work without being obliged to pay them, but they receive little fruit from their efforts, while the money that they would give to free workers would be recovered with interest from the value of their labors.