Critics From The United States

"Throughout the ages, in keeping with their ideological proclivities, gentlemen historians have tended to dismiss the populares of the Roman Republic as self aggrandizing demagogues who affronted constitutional principles by encroaching upon the Senate's domain."

"Countries with ostensibly democratic governments often mani­fest a markedly undemocratic state power."

"People who never complain of the orthodoxy of their mainstream political education are the first to complain about the dogmatic “political correctness” of any challenge to it. Far from seeking a diversity of views, they defend themselves from exposure to such diversity, preferring to leave their unexamined background assumptions and conventional political opinions unruffled."

"The “global economy” is another name for imperialism, and imperialism is a transnational form of capitalism. The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead, gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, televi­sion, and armed force."

"The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes."

"There is a century-old saying, "The dollar votes more times than the man.""

"Conservatives insist that government should be "run more like a business." One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation."

"Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all."

"The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order."

"Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number."

"The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather than undermined democratic forces."

"Conservatives have nothing against incumbency when it is their people who are filling the slots."

"The police confront dangers and social miseries of a kind most of us can only imagine. They deal with the waste products of a competitive corporate society: the ill-fed, the ill-housed, the desperate, and the defeated. The slums are not the problem, they are the solution; they are the way capitalism deals with the surplus people of a market economy. And for all they cost the taxpayer in crime, police and welfare, the slums remain a source of profit for certain speculators, arsonists, realtors, big merchants, and others."

"The trick is to steal big."

"One mechanism of repression is the grand jury."

"There is no such thing as unbiased or objective reporting of news. All reports and analyses are selective and inferential to some inescapable degree - all the more reason to provide a wider ideological spectrum of opinions and not let one bias predominate. If we consider censorship to be a danger to our freedom, then we should not overlook the fact that the media are already heavily censored by those who own or advertise in them. The very process of selection allows the politico-economic interests of the selector to operate as a censor."

"Capitalism's modus operandi is to produce and sell an ever expanding supply of goods and services for ever greater profits. But the earth is finite. So is its ability to absorb wastes and toxins. While food yields shrink, the world's population grows 90 million a year and the planet's life support systems move closer to catastrophe. An ever expanding capitalism and a fragile, finite ecology appear to be on a calamitous collision course."

"Even though the crime rate has dropped in recent years, the United States has more police per capita than any other nation in the world."

"To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people."

"The media have been tireless in their efforts to suppress the truth about the gangster state."

"The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution."

"Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform."

"When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed."

"In the end I created a career of my own, concentrating on my writing and lecturing, reaching larger audiences than I would had I ended up with tenure and a full teaching load. It was Virginia Woolf who said that it is terrible to be frozen out of a sacred tradition-but even more terrible to be frozen into it."

"It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support."

"It is never explained why God could not have freely granted us redemption and salvation, assuming we were deemed worthy of it, without contriving to have some of us brutalize and murder his son."

"Economically deprived groups are seen as a threat because they want more, and more for the have-nots might mean less for the haves."

"During the Cold War, the anti-communist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum."

"The desire to "make it," even at the expense of others, is not merely a wrong-headed at attitude but a reflection of the material conditions of capitalist society wherein no one is ever really economically secure except the superrich."

"The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased."

"Superior firepower, not superior culture, has brought the Europeans and Euro-North Americans to positions of global supremacy."

"Imperialism has created what I call “maldevelopment”: modern office buildings and luxury hotels in the capital city instead of housing for the poor, cosmetic surgery clinics for the affluent instead of hospitals for workers, highways that go from the mines and latifundios to the refineries and ports instead of roads in the back country for those who might hope to see a doctor or a teacher."

"The secret to wealth usually is not to work hard, but to have others work hard for you."

"History has many enemies, including some who profess to serve its cause. The struggle to define the past is part of the struggle to control society itself."

"Putting an end to the population explosion will not of itself save the ecosphere, but not ending it will add greatly to the dangers the planet faces. The environment can sustain a quality of life for just so many people."

"At the same time, the rise in and has given us , , of waterways, shrinking grasslands, disappearing water supplies and , and the , with hundreds more on the ."

"The American two-party electoral system, with its ballyhoo and hoopla, its impresarios and stunt artists, is the greatest show on earth. Campaign time is show time, a veritable circus brought into our living rooms via television as a form of entertainment. The important thing is that the show must go on - because it is more than just a show. The two-party system electoral social order. It channels and limits political expression, and blunts class grievances. It often leaves little time for the real issues because it gives so much attention to the contest per se who will run? who is ahead? who will win the primaries? who will win the election? It provides the form of republican government with little of the substance. It fives the plutocratic system of appearance of popular participation while being run by and for a select handful of affluent contestants."

"It is not Socialism that subverts democracy, but democracy that subverts capitalism."

"It is somewhat ironic to credit capitalism with the genius of gradual reform when most reforms through history have been vehemently and sometimes violently resisted by the capitalist class and were won only after prolonged and bitter contest."

"Much written history is an ideologically safe commodity."

"Democracy is something more than a set of political procedures. To be worthy of its name, democracy should produce outcomes that advance the well-being of the people."

"They who struggled against formidable odds with the fear and courage of ordinary humans, whose names we shall never know, whose blood and tears we shall never see, whose cries of pain and hope we shall never hear, to them we are linked by a past that is never dead nor ever really past. And so, when the best pages of history are finally written, it will be not by princes, presidents, prime ministers, or pundits, nor even by professors, but by the people themselves. For all their faults and shortcomings, the people are all we have. Indeed, we ourselves are the people."

"Twelve states in the Great Plains have a wind energy potential greater than the electric use of our entire nation."

"Margaret Thatcher, who we all know is Ronald Reagan in drag."

"Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has."

"In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid."

"The Third World is not poor. You don't go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich! Brazil is rich! Mexico is rich! Chile is rich! Only the people are poor. But there's billions to be made there, to be carved out, and to be taken. There's been billions for 400 years! The capitalist European and North American powers have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labour. They have taken out of these countries. These countries are not underdeveloped, they're overexploited!"

"Someone once said that Margaret Thatcher satisfied the average Englishman's longing for the perfect dominatrix. No doubt about it, she could deliver pain. The Iron Lady should best be remembered as the Leather Lady. Indeed, today Thatcherism leaves its dreary imprint not only on the Conservative Party but---thanks also to Tony Blair---on a Labor Party that accepts most of her regressive policies."

"“You’re probably right,” sighed Vance. “I haven’t any coruscatin’ arguments to combat you with. Only, I’m disappointed. I don’t like anticlimaxes, especially when they don’t jibe with my idea of the dramatist’s talent. Pardee’s death at this moment is too deuced neat—it clears things up too tidily. There’s too much utility in it, and too little imagination.”"

"“Oh, my dear fellow! I’m not indulgin’ in implications. I’m merely givin’ tongue to my youthful curiosity, don’t y’ know.”"