socialism

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too.

The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

Captured by the ideological animus, both socialist and liberal-democratic art abandoned the criterion of beauty - considered anachronistic and of dubious political value - and replaced it with the criterion of correctness.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker

The first duty of a man is to think for himself

Oh, Lord! don't I know it's difficult! ... Don't I know that perhaps it's impossible! But it's the only way to do it. Therefore, I say, let's try to get it done. And everybody says, 'difficult, difficult,' and nobody lifts a finger to try. And the only real difficulty is that everybody for one reason or another says that it's difficult. It's against human nature. Granted! Every decent thing is. It's socialism. Who cares?

We did everything correctly, following the established plan approved by management!' Just as under socialism--we do and did everything correctly, yet life, the world, continues to collapse beneath our feet like a reactor that has entered a runaway state of nuclear meltdown. Is there any need to explain what those two great liberating words mean: chain reaction?

Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included).

In fact, even Tillich's socialism was accommodationist because it continued the Constantinian strategy: The way to make the church radical is by identifying the church with secular "radicals", that is, socialists.

Resentment is a powerful and corrosive force, both on the slippery left and the slippery right, and the history of humankind can largely be read as a history of resentment. Aside from a profound philosophy of capital, what we really need is a profound psychology and philosophy of resentment. We must learn to live for ourselves, without reference to the other, and, at the same time, to rise above and beyond ourselves. Or else history will keep repeating itself, and our life will be a living death.

Efficiency was just a measurement of how fast money moved from the poor to the rich. We prefer the opposite of efficiency, which is to say, justice.

the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development

I have heard that all ideas of equality are visionary__hat they can never be realized__nd I believe it. But surely, though there must be hewers of wood, and drawers of water, they ought to have the absolute necessaries of life.

Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, __aguaryevich_) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calculators, since to them yes is yes and no is no), pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, but only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was useless to seek absolute evidence-for evidence is always relative-or unchallengeable witnesses-for they can say different things at different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, __asing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his Party sensitivity, his moral forces_ (in other words, the superiority of someone who has slept well, has been well fed, and has not been beaten up) __nd on his character_ (i.e., his willingness to apply cruelty!)_ In only one respect did Vyshinsky fail to be consistent and retreat from dialectical logic: for some reason, the executioner__ bullet which he allowed was not relative but absolute_