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4973dc5
|
After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.
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|
socialism
inspirational
inevitability
apathy
marxism
capitalism
resistance
|
Terry Eagleton |
|
a989ac7
|
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.
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|
marxism
|
Cornel West |
|
cbc093d
|
Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone's different needs.
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|
socialism
equality
social-justice
marxism
|
Terry Eagleton |
|
3b9f6d2
|
Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
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|
history
race-theory
sophism
final-solution
historians
marxism
totalitarianism
antisemitism
ideology
communism
|
Hannah Arendt |
|
e2d4922
|
"1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was 'a basket case' before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA's plan to kidnap and murder General Rene Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger's urging and with American financing, just between Allende's election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him 'Doctor' is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion--'I don't see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible'--suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger's, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. 'Spare me the civics lecture,' replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with 'deniable' assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The of the day was: 'foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.' Saddam Hussein heartily concurred.
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|
war
india
murder
morality
politics
1971-bangladesh-atrocities
1972-nixon-visit-to-china
1973-chilean-coup-d-etat
1974
1975
bangladesh
bangladesh-liberation-war
chile
china-pakistan-relations
doctors-of-philosophy
east-timor
ecclesiastical-coup
foreign-policy-of-the-us
greek-cypriots
indo-pakistani-war-of-1971
indonesia
indonesian-national-armed-forces
israeli-lebanese-conflict
jakarta
junta
kurdish-iraqi-conflict
lebanon
military-of-chile
mohammad-reza-pahlavi
monroe-leigh
news-leaks
pakistan-united-states-relations
portugual
portuguese-empire
rene-schneider
richard-nixon
salvador-allende
schneider-doctrine
second-kurdish-iraqi-war
shah
sino-american-relations
slaughter
thomas-d-boyatt
yahya-khan
central-intelligence-agency
iran
makarios-iii
international-law
athens
henry-kissinger
turkish-invasion-of-cyprus
turkey
partition
foreign-policy
missionaries
war-crimes
coup-d-état
walter-isaacson
kurdistan
marxism
iran-iraq-war
iraqi-kurdistan
kurdish-people
iraq
pakistan
saddam-hussein
cyprus
united-states
doctors
civil-war
fascism
assassination
democracy
diplomacy
israel
china
greece
refugees
|
Christopher Hitchens |
|
e14f054
|
Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
|
|
history
politics
historical-determinism
apolitical
apathy
marxism
determinism
|
Terry Eagleton |
|
ea38497
|
Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.
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|
politics
marxism
revolution
|
Terry Eagleton |
|
117d60c
|
Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in 1917 to her anguished friend Mathilde Wurm: An inordinate proportion of the Marxists I have known would probably have formulated their own views in much the same way. It was almost a point of honor not to engage in 'thinking with the blood,' to borrow a notable phrase from D.H. Lawrence, and to immerse Jewishness in other and wider struggles. Indeed, the old canard about 'rootless cosmopolitanism' finds a perverse sort of endorsement in Jewish internationalism: the more emphatically somebody stresses that sort of rhetoric about the suffering of others, the more likely I would be to assume that the speaker was a Jew. Does this mean that I think there are Jewish 'characteristics'? Yes, I think it must mean that.
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|
racism
suffering
empathy
compassion
africans
dh-lawrence
mathilde-verne
plantations
rootless-cosmopolitanism
rosa-luxemburg
internationalism
jewish-question
victims
marxism
europeans
race
prison
jews
|
Christopher Hitchens |
|
23f60ad
|
What we are dealing with here is another version of the Lacanian ' ...': if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no 'meta-language' enabling us to grasp the two levels from the same neutral standpoint, although--or, rather, --these two levels are inextricably intertwined.
|
|
sex
politics
lacan
marxism
|
Slavoj Žižek |
|
c70c4f6
|
It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.
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|
future
criticisms-of-marxism
futures-exchange
utopianism
marxism
capitalism
|
Terry Eagleton |
|
33a41ac
|
Trotsky was so much an intellectual that in the final analysis, Marxism was not quite enough for him.
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|
marxism
leon-trotsky
trotskyism
|
Christopher Hitchens |
|
d12b120
|
The last time I heard an orthodox Marxist statement that was music to my ears was from a member of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, during the mass slaughter in the country. 'The terms Hutu and Tutsi,' he said severely, 'are merely ideological constructs, describing different relationships to the means and mode of production.' But of course!
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|
marxism
rwanda
rwandan-genocide
rwandan-patriotic-front
tutsis
ideology
|
Christopher Hitchens |
|
a1bd446
|
"As it happens I am comfortable with the Michael Laskis of this world, with those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments; I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History. But of course I did not mention dread to Michael Laski, whose particular opiate is History. I did suggest "depression," did venture that it might have been "depressing" for him to see only a dozen or so faces at his last May Day demonstration, but he told me that depression was an impediment to the revolutionary process, a disease afflicting only those who do not have ideology to sustain them."
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|
marxism
|
Joan Didion |
|
7be5caf
|
Had Heidegger attached his great ego to the cause of international socialism, he would have enjoyed the whitewash granted to Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Hobsbawm and the other apologists for the Gulag.1 But the cause of national socialism could enjoy no such convenient excuse, and the sin was compounded, in Heidegger's case, by the fact that it was precisely the national, rather than the socialist aspect of the creed that had attracted him.
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|
national-socialism
marxism
|
Roger Scruton |
|
5af9bf6
|
The sectarian divisions which plagued Marxism are manifestations of an urge for purity which the Left would be better off without.
|
|
unity
sectarianism
marxism
purity
puritanism
patriotism
|
Richard M. Rorty |
|
8de9e5f
|
It was not Marxism that made Lenin a revolutionary but Lenin who made Marxism revolutionary.
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|
lenin
marxism
|
Orlando Figes |
|
649c95d
|
If he had stayed in Slovenia, and Slovenia had stayed Communist, Zizek would not have been the nuisance he has since become. Indeed, if there were no greater reason to regret the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the release of Zizek on to the world of Western scholarship would perhaps already be a sufficient one.
|
|
slavoj-zizek
marxism
|
Roger Scruton |
|
4a0767e
|
In a moment of doubt about the socialist record Eric Hobsbawm once wrote: 'If the left have to think more seriously about the new society, that does not make it any the less desirable or necessary or the case against the present one any less compelling.'1 There, in a nutshell, is the sum of the New Left's commitment. We know nothing of the socialist future, save only that it is both necessary and desirable. Our concern is with the 'compelling' case against the present, which leads us to destroy what we lack the knowledge to replace.
|
|
marxism
|
Roger Scruton |
|
8838436
|
Your leaders must know powerful magic. Yes, said one of the women. The magic is called Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Class Dialectics. It didn't sound like very powerful magic to me.
|
|
marxism
|
David Mitchell |
|
f1e7532
|
Whereas the property-owning middle class could win freedom for themselves on the basis of rights to property--thus excluding others from the freedom they gain--the property-less working class possess nothing but their title as human beings. Thus they can liberate themselves only by liberating all humanity.
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|
property-rights
proletariat
marxism
|
Peter Singer |
|
5d7c342
|
So let us replace the word with a true description. People in our societies own things, their labour included, and can trade those things freely with others. They can buy, sell, accumulate, save, share and give. They can enjoy all that their freely exercised labour can secure for them and even, if they choose, do nothing and still survive. You can take away the freedom to buy and sell; you can compel people to work on terms that they would not freely accept; you can confiscate property or forbid this or that form of it. But if those are the alternatives to 'capitalism' there is, now, no real alternative save slavery.
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|
marxism
|
Roger Scruton |
|
d042bd6
|
A society whose members are helpless need idols.
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|
marxism
sociology
psychology
|
Erich Fromm |
|
4f143d6
|
Lenin's Personal life was extraordinarily dull. He dressed and lived like a middle-aged provincial clerk, with precisely fixed hours for meals, sleep, work and leisure. He liked everything to be neat and orderly.
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|
dull
provinvial-clerk
russian-revolution
lenin
marxism
|
Orlando Figes |
|
6c1014c
|
He claimed to be a Marxist, the only one of his claims I believed. He had that Marxist passion for oysters and good Sancerre, and that Marxist paralysis when the waiter brought the check. Already it's obvious how much the Communists got wrong, overbetting on human high-mindedness, lowballing human desire.
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|
marxism
|
Francine Prose |
|
5a16a48
|
I was happiest when I was working for myself. Setting my own goals. Improving my own skills... Take control of your world.
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|
globalization
marxism
capitalism
revolution
|
Warren Ellis |
|
39112a5
|
Those who imagined, in 1989, that never again would an intellectual be caught defending the Leninist Party, or advocating the methods of Josef Stalin, had reckoned without the overwhelming power of nonsense. In the urgent need to believe, to find a central mystery that is the true meaning of things and to which one's life can be dedicated, nonsense is much to be preferred to sense. For it builds a way of life around something that cannot be questioned. No reasoned assault is possible against that which denies the possibility of a reasoned assault.
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|
marxism
|
Roger Scruton |