libertarian-socialists

"Sorry that the memory of you being told that you're loved has to be tainted by the moment it was associated with."

"The ideological leftist -- the real leftist -- would be somebody who understands that the state is fundamentally incompatible with the Marxist vision of communism. [...] So the state is, at its best, an inconvenient mechanism for facilitating the transition towards that society, which is something that I believe. I don't think we can just jump into statelessness, but I do think that the state should be treated with a significant degree of, like, scrutiny, you know? Because time and time and time again, we have seen socialist revolutions kind of, like, fall or cut under themselves because the people who ended up in charge just didn't do the socialism, they just empowered and enriched themselves at the expense of the proletariat."

"One of the most shamelessly predatory, pedophilic ideas I've ever seen taken half-seriously is The Wall. [...] The idea that women become unattractive and lose all sexual value after the age of 30. I know the harm of this specific idea is mostly hypothetical because the median believer in The Wall is, like, a fourteen-year-old boy who doesn't talk to women anyway, but it's still an example of how political ideologies can influence the extent to which predatory attitudes against women are socially normalized. To make a change for the better, y'know, you'd probably have to look into some kind of, uh, I don't know, uh, feminism thing."

""Do you believe in unity or only winning?" What unity is there with fascists? What do you mean by that? How do you unify with them? On what issues? If "winning" means, uh, like "everyone supports what I support" and that is unity, then sure, then that, to me, is winning. Right now, unity just means trying to build bridges with fascists."

"No matter how good you are at debate, you always need both sides to be invested in doing it. Like, if I showed up for a debate and they just made farting noises with their mouth, I can't make a good point in that environment. It requires two people engaging with some standard of mutual competency. It's not even a matter of performing well, it's just unfun. All of the rhetorical skills that I'm interested in? Meaningless. You just scream your soundbites. That's it."

"People aren't always rational, countries aren't always rational. Fascism is not rational."

"I do think there is a bit of a glimmer of hope. For one, as I have pointed out [...], there is a global tide of fascism that is creeping up, but if we look at comparable examples of this happening in other countries [...], there seems to be a very pronounced lack of sauce in a lot of these fascist movements -- an inability to fully collapse the liberal democracies they're built off of."

"People used to be a lot more willing to wish death on others because people used to be a lot less human to each other. I think it's a little bit easier to sympathize with people in an environment where you can pop open Twitter and just see 'The Enemy' be normal."

"Could they really divide us that well? Could Trump or "The Powers That Be" commit that well to a doctrine of dismantling, not only our democracy, but all of the protections, all of the interconnectedness that queer people, people of different races, whatever, that all of them have managed to build? I don't think so."

"The main thing you want, if you want to survive difficult times, is know your neighbor. You can get more done as a group than you ever can as an individual, and the last thing that you want during socially difficult times is to not have your neighbor's number."

"I think that if you ask me right now, why it went down this way? Ballpark answer: Misogyny, weakened rhetoric on immigration -- that is to say, Democrats stopped pushing back against anti-immigrant sentiment and started kind of adopting it themselves -- and a lack of economic populism. They are fighting for procedural institutionalist rhetoric in a world that is populist."

"I don't know what you should do. I know what processes you should adopt in order to maximize the likelihood of you making it through this. That you should be calm. That you should befriend your neighbors. Develop close relations with the people around you. [...] Familiarize yourself with the laws of your local environment. Honest to God? Familiarize yourself with the parts of it you don't like as much. [...] Get out of your bubble. Be calm. Walk the neighborhood."

"People who were born in time to serve for World War I died after the moon landing. You've got a lot of time ahead of you."

"There are lots of people all around the world who endure worse circumstances than you have up to this point, and what you will endure over the next four or however many years. I'm not saying you got it easy; you don't. I'm not saying that you should be "Oh, y'know, because kids in Africa are starving" or whatever. I'm just saying, they do make it work in a lot of cases."

"You're gonna have to be smart when, in a better world, in a better time, you could've gotten away with being more frivolous. You're going to have to be withdrawn in times when maybe being more open would've been better. It's going to ask a lot-- the world's going to ask a lot of you, and none of it's going to be fair, but you can do it. And like everything else, this will pass. And things will get better. On a long enough time-scale, the "It's So Over" is always followed by the "We're So Fucking Back". It's just math."

"You can fuckin' support as much genocide as you want or disenfranchise as many people as you want. As long as people are getting cheap personal chauffeurs for their burritos from the local, like, Mexican joint, that's the-- That's their standard for who they're voting for."

"Doom and gloom doesn't solve our problems, stay strong and weaponize this anger and resentment we've been left with. We must always keep fighting for a better future."

"People in America don't care about foreign policy. For evidence to this point, look at the entire history of the United States."

""Every day I draw breath is a victory against fascism in my books." Mm-hm! If your life is intolerant to them, then live just to spite them."

"I think that one of my biggest issues with, like, broader political discourse is that -- especially on the left -- people fixate, like, really, really hard on being a good advocate. God's honest truth is, the first step to winning is being a good person. And I don't just mean good in the sense of, like, being morally good. I mean being good at being a person. Being disciplined and effective. Saving your money when you need to. Being community-oriented. It's not just a matter of being morally correct, it's a matter of being in a position where, if you have the opportunity, you can most effectively advocate for your beliefs. Discipline matters. Community matters. Not just community with other people like you, community with people who you don't like as well. I'm sorry to say, but you gotta know your neighbors. Even if they're Trump supporters, you gotta know your neighbors."

"Step one is always seeing tomorrow. Step two is figuring out a solution."

"The problem with Cuties on Netflix isn't that 11 years are going to watch it and feel represented. The problem is that adults if we're being charitable are going to watch it to reflect on their youth, or if we're being uncharitable they're going to watch it while ******* it to the many provocative dance scenes done by minors."

"Social media platforms are terrible at acknowledging context and power relations when it comes to harassment, this is why so many trans people on Twitter get banned for calling their harassers TERFs, which is categorically not a slur. Hasan’s flagrant use of the word forced them to commit to a position. They committed harder than I expected, considering my ban."

"People don't like being convinced that they're wrong. In fact, our brains are unmatched in their ability to self-justify, to make us feel that we are right and to shut out any information that contradicts that. On a purely logical level, most people aren't going to be moved on a incorrect belief they have by arguing with them about it."

"First and foremost, if you're dealing with somebody who cares about you in any capacity [...] the most valuable tool you have to convince them of any position is the empathy they hold for you."

"The problem with leftists is that they don't have an example to point to, right? What are you going to point to? China? The Soviet Union? No, no. If you're going to make an argument for anything leftist, you're kind of throwing darts at the wall. Not necessarily a bad dart or a bad wall, but you're having to work from first principles a little bit. This is why a lot of lefties struggle with electoralism, because electoralism is the bridge that exists right now that gets us from A to B and bridge-building is tough, but imagining the other side of the river is easy. In fact, you can see it from here, it's in your head."

"I do find myself agreeing with liberals on a lot of stuff. Not, mind you, because I don't have better ideas than them -- I do, and I've argued for them -- but because the other ideas that are being thrown their way are so bad that I can't risk the left being pulled down with them. I want you guys to have a better understanding of liberals so you can better critique them. I don't want you to be complacent like the liberal, I want you to know what you're up against."

"Established order, being an instituted fixity, excludes reform, and whoever advocates change by that very act becomes an enemy to it."

"The wisest government is that which but responds readiest to the demand to which its own establishment had given birth, and for this reason will yield only as forced by fear to give something rather than risk losing all."

"Is not the whole long career of the proletariat but the “Martyrdom of Man” strewn with whitened bones, cemented with scalding tears welling up from broken hearts, and stained with the bleeding feet of countless millions?"

"Events are the true schoolmasters, and smarting under the White terror which yearly sacrifices its millions the Social Revolutionist does not hesitate to invoke the Red terror, knowing that here the words apply that “he who loseth his life shall save it.” But how? By words of rodomontade? By inviting others to do by simply preaching the gospel of discontent? No; but by deeds. The Social Revolutionist is not moved by revenge nor by mere impulse. When Alexander II was killed, when Cavendish and Burke were sent to judgment, when John Brown shot men he had never before met, the world understood the full significance of each act."

"To my mind, the very assumption of “natural rights” is at war with evolution."

"Social intercourse has slowly evolved the Ideal that peace, happiness and security are best attained by equal freedom to each and all; consequently, I can lay no claim in equity to a privilege, for that which all alike may enjoy ceases to be privileged. The important deduction from social evolution is that as militancy has weakened and industrialism widened its boundaries, liberty has ever tended toward such equalization, Privilege finds sanction in equity as right, because it violates the ideal of social progress — equality of opportunities."

"Precisely as water flows to a level when obstructions are removed, just so will social relations flow to equitable conditions when restrictions are swept away. And precisely also as liberty comes in does the assertion of “rights” go out."

"Until my imprisonment I had believed that except for Albert Parsons, Dyer D. Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre, and a few others America was barren of idealists. Her men and women cared only for material acquisitions, I had thought. John Swinton's account of the liberty-loving people who had been and still were in every struggle against oppression changed my superficial judgment."

"Dyer D. Lum proposed the creation of "co-operative homes," and Voltairine de Cleyre later elaborated the idea: "I would destroy the individual 'home' with its waste of forces and have instead magnificent palaces, spacious grounds. . swimming rooms, bathrooms, everything on a large scale," yet with private rooms for every individual whenever he or she desired to be alone."

"I discovered how much more he hated the liberals than the tories. This came out vividly when we were walking past the ground of the Highclere Estate. ... At this point Douglas, to my astonishment, launched into a panegyric of the English aristocracy. It might not have been wholly serious, but it did, I think, reflect a certain nostalgia for pre-industrial Britain."

"A society that acquiesces in the presence in its midst of a vast permanent army of unemployed is a society that has ceased to believe in itself."

"We afterwards went on to see G. D. H. Cole. ... He struck me as a genuine British Bolshevist, disbelieving in Parliamentary action, disbelieving in the trades union movement and the trades unionist leaders, and waiting only till the shop-stewards movement...was further developed...in order to use the weapon of the general strike, or some approach to it both for political and for industrial purposes. When I suggested that Parliamentary action was the appropriate weapon and that a general election...ought to give Labour a great accession of strength he objected that there were no leaders and no prospect of any. ... Professed himself a thorough "Pacifist"...so that it would seem he was preparing...for a stop-the-war movement by industrial pressure. At the same time he professed to be against the violence which such a movement if carried far enough would necessarily provoke. Personally I should doubt if he has the moral qualities needed for the enterprise."

"We shall never get a chance of building socialism unless we carry with us in the process the consent of the ordinary man. And he, very naturally, takes short views ... We can be at once opportunist and constructive; but we must never, in the search for constructiveness, forget the need for building on the opportunities of the moment, of offering the plain man realities and not mere promises post-dated to the Socialist future."

"Economy à la Sir George May will not help much; for it means nothing positive. ... We need, if not a Five Years Plan, at any rate a centrally controlled attempt to readjust industry and agriculture to the changing needs of the British consumer and of the world market, with less exclusive concentration on the old staple industries and far more attention to the development of those which have a real capacity for expansion."

"Gradualism, in this sense, however much it appeals to the first thoughts of the electorate, fails because in the event it is unable to deliver the goods. It may put a Labour Government into office; but it will also ensure its subsequent discredit."

"I became a Socialist, as many others did in those days, on grounds of morals and decency and aesthetic sensibility. I wanted to do the decent thing by my fellow-men. I could not see why every human being should not have as good a chance in life as I, and I hated the ugliness both of poverty and of the money-grubbing way of life that I saw around me."

"In any socialised enterprise, no matter what its form, socialisation requires that proper provision be made for the democratic participation of the workers in determining the conditions and allocation of work, both at the work place level and at the higher levels of management and control."

"Professor Cole is a fluent and engaging writer with a natural sense of style, and avoids like the plague anything that smacks of obscurity or pseudo-profundity. His conversational manner, which probably owes something to the lecture-room, makes him always easy to read, though it is also responsible for a certain looseness of texture which sometimes seems more appropriate to the spoken than to the written word. Any impression, however, that Professor Cole is only skimming the surface of his subject may be corrected by consulting the very thorough and systematic bibliography at the end of the volume. This is a work of encyclopaedic learning, however lightly the learning may be worn. Few people to-day have browsed so widely and so far afield as Professor Cole among these lesser known French and British progenitors of socialist ideas."

"Douglas is a strong Tory in everything but politics!"

"However much on the intellectual plane Douglas was an internationalist, emotionally—and he never attempted to hide it—he was profoundly attached to England. He was not even a little Englander—really a little Southern Englander!"

"A realistic definition of capitalism should not present it as a constant, created and characterized by unicentral thought and action. It is , in essence, the result of the actions of opportunist individuals and groups who established themselves into openings and cracks within society a the potential for surplus product developed; these actions became systemaised as they nibbled away at the surplus product."

"The struggle of the Kurdish woman is the struggle of all the women of the world"

"This war is not only a military war, but also a life war. It renews the society, renews the culture, renews the spirit, renews the brain and politics. Every Kurd knows that this is his/her rebirth."