Media Critics

"The overthrow of communism gave a green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, and no longer constrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West."

"Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism and imperialism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the anti-communists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it."

"During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history."

"With the socialist ethic giving way to private greed, corruption assumed virulent new forms in the post-Communist nations. Officials high and low are on the take, including the police. The Russian security minister calculated that one-third of Russian nickel shipped out of the country was stolen. Among those enjoying "staggering profits" from this plunder were and (', 2/2/93). In April 1992, the chairman of Russia's central bank admitted that at least $20 billion had been illegally taken out of the country and deposited in Western banks (', 4/19/93)."

"Street crime has also increased sharply (', 5/7/96). In the former Soviet Union, women and elderly who once felt free to sit in parks late at night now dare not venture out after dark. Since the overthrow of communism in Hungary, thefts and other felonies have nearly tripled and there has been a 50 percent increase in homicides (, 2/24/92). The police force in Prague today is many times greater than it was under communism, when "relatively few police were needed" (New York Times, 12/18/91). How odd that fewer police were needed in the communist police state than in the free-market paradise."

"If anything, the breakup of the has brought a colossal victory for global capitalism and imperialism, with its correlative increase in human misery, and a historic setback for revolutionary liberation struggles everywhere. There will be harder times ahead for even modestly reformist national governments, as the fate of Panama and Iraq have indicated. The breakup also means a net loss of global pluralism and more intensive socio-economic inequality throughout the world."

"Seizing upon anything but class, U.S. leftists today have developed an array of centering around ethnic, gender, cultural, and life-style issues. These groups treat their respective grievances as something apart from class struggle, and have almost nothing to say about the increasingly harsh politico-economic class injustices perpetrated against us all."

"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."

"An ever-expanding capitalism and a fragile, finite ecology are on a calamitous collision course. It is not true that the ruling politico-economic interests are in a state of denial about this. Far worse than denial, they are in a state of utter antagonism toward those who think the planet is more important than corporate profits. So they defame environmentalists as "," "EPA gestapo," " alarmists," tree huggers," and purveyors of "Green hysteria" and "liberal claptrap.""

"Too often, however, history is written and marketed in such a way as to be anything but liberating. The effect is not to enlighten, but to enforce the existing political orthodoxy. Those who control the present take great pains to control our understanding of the past."

"Much written history is an ideologically safe commodity."

"This established familiarity and unanimity of bias is frequently treated as “objectivity”."

"In contrast, orthodoxy can rest on its own unstated axioms and mystifications, remaining heedless of marginalized critics who are denied a means of reaching mass audiences. Orthodoxy promotes its views through the unexamined repetition that comes with monopoly control of the major communication and educational systems."

"That a religious belief is propagated by its lower clergy and ordinary adherents does not make it any less the hierarchy’s dictum. Indeed, such lower echelon transmission is an essential factor in maintaining the belief’s hegemony."

"The important thing is not just to identify specific historical events—as might a quiz show contestant—but to think intelligently and critically about them, and be able to relate them to broader social relations."

"To say that schools fail to produce an informed, critically minded, democratic citizenry is to overlook the fact that schools were never intended for that purpose."

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, class conflict in feudal times was not a rarity but a constant. Even in the early Middle Ages, various kinds of peasant resistance probably occurred more frequently than we realize: sabotage, fleeing the manor, violating prohibitions, and refusing to pay dues or perform certain services or abide by particular regulations."

"Standard histories of the Cold War assume that the Soviet Union exercised a lockstep control over the docile “satellite nations,” the latter being little more than puppets within a monolithic “Soviet Bloc.” The new documents throw a different light on the relationship between Moscow and its allies. Communist leaders in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Cuba, Afghanistan, and elsewhere “could and did act in pursuit of their own interests, sometimes goading the Kremlin into involvements it did not want.”"

"Throughout its history, the CIA has resorted to every conceivable crime and machination to make the world safe for the Fortune 500, using false propaganda, economic warfare, bribery, rigged elections, sabotage, demolition, theft, collusion with organized crime, narcotics trafficking, death squads, terror bombings, torture, massacres, and wars of attrition."

"If the founders of the American Historical Association could visit a contemporary campus, they might be puzzled by the swarthy complexions among the professors, they might wonder at the strange-sounding Celtic, Latin, or Semitic names, but the flavor, the atmosphere of college life would not be unfamiliar to them."

"Indeed, what really bothers those who endlessly carp about the campus tyranny of “political correctness” is not the orthodoxy of the politically correct “tyrants” but their departure from orthodoxy, their willingness to critically explore gender, ethnic, and class topics in ways that normally are treated as taboo."

"In their eagerness to neutralize themselves, scholars tend to neutralize the subject matter. But history is never neutral. And relatively little of it is purely stochastic and accidental. While we need not assume there is a grand design to all that happens, we cannot rule out human agency, human intent, and political interests that are purposive in their actions. Such history does not come off as very “gentlemanly” in the patrician sense, nor very nuanced—if by “nuanced” we mean the academically trained ability to mute and dilute the brute realities of political economy and class power."

"To conclude, history is not just what the historians say it is, but what government agencies, corporate publishing conglomerates, chain store distributors, mass media pundits, editors, reviewers, and other ideological gatekeepers want to put into circulation. Not surprisingly, the deck is stacked to favor those who deal the cards."

"Whether a leader is acting with admirable “firmness” or “aggressive rigidity” in a situation will often depend on the political values and views of the observer."

"History has many unanswered questions, but it is no mystery as such—except for those who make it so."

"Caesar’s sin, I shall argue, was not that he was subverting the Roman constitution—which was an unwritten one—but that he was loosening the oligarchy’s overbearing grip on it. Worse still, he used state power to effect some limited benefits for small farmers, debtors, and urban proletariat, at the expense of the wealthy few."

"They have yet to consider that republicanism might largely be a cloak for oligarchic privilege—as it often is to this day—worn grudgingly by the elites as long as it proved serviceable to their interests."

"Here is a story of latifundia and death squads, masters and slaves, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, profiteering slumlords and urban rioters. Here is a struggle between the plutocratic few and the indigent many, the privileged versus the proletariat, featuring corrupt politicians, money-driven elections, and the political assassination of popular leaders. I leave it to the reader to decide whether any of this might resonate with the temper of our own times."

"The writing of history has long been a privileged calling undertaken within the church, royal court, landed estate, affluent town house, government agency, university, and corporate-funded foundation."

"An imperialism without imperialists, a design of conquest devoid of human agency or forethought, such a notion applies neither to Rome nor to any other empire in history."

"Those who think Roman slavery was such a benign institution have not explained why fugitive slaves were a constant problem. Owners did not lightly countenance the loss of valuable property. They regularly used chains, metal collars, and other restraining devices. Slaves who fled were hunted down and returned to irate masters who were keen to inflict a severe retribution."

"Like most other people, Gibbon tended to perceive reality in accordance with the position he occupied in the social structure. As a gentleman scholar, he produced what elsewhere I have called "gentlemen's history," a genre heavily indebted to an upper class ideological perspective. In 1773, we find him beginning a work on his magus opus, A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, while settled in a comfortable town house tended by half-a-dozen servants. Being immersed in what he called the "decent luxuries," and saturated with his own upper-class prepossession, Edward Gibbon was able to look kindly upon ancient Rome's violently acquisitive aristocracy. He might have produced a much different history had he been a self-educated cobbler, sitting in a cold shed, writing into the wee hours after a long day of unrewarding toil. No accident that the impoverished laborer, even if literate, seldom had the agency, agency to produce scholarly tomes."

"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."

"While unsparingly praised by generations of classicists for his principled ways, Cicero was often an unprincipled opportunist and dissembler. In 50 BC, for example, with Caesar's fame and power ascendant, he persuaded the senate to decree a thanksgiving service in Caesar's honor, and himself delivered a hypocritical panegyric - which he privately recanted shortly thereafter in a letter to Atticus: “I was not exactly proud of my palinode. But goodnight to principle, sincerity and honor!”"

"Throughout history, in the name of “liberty,” owning classes have opposed political leaders who have sought a more equitable distribution and use of wealth. And in the name of “stability” and “public safety,” they have repeatedly surrendered some of their own power to autocratic leaders dedicated to preserving the privileged socioeconomic order."

"The struggle against plutocracy and the striving for peace and democracy are forever reborn."

"Some critics complain that the press is sensationalistic and intrusive. In fact, the media’s basic modus operandi is evasive rather than invasive. More common than the sensationalistic hype is the artful avoidance."

"The efficacy of a label is that it propagates an evocative but undefined image lacking a specific content that can be held up to the test of evidence."

"Our readiness to accept something as true, or reject it as false, rests less on its argument and evidence and more on how it aligns with the preconceived notions embedded in the dominant culture, assumptions we have internalized due to repeated exposure."

"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."

"Devoid of the supportive background assumptions of the dominant belief system, the deviant view sounds too improbable and too controversial to be treated as reliable information."

"Facing a campus that is not nearly as reactionary as they would wish, ultra-conservatives rail about how academia is permeated with doctrinaire, “politically correct” leftists. This is not surprising, since they describe as “leftist” anyone to the left of themselves, including mainstream centrists. Their diatribes usually are little more than attacks upon socio-political views they find intolerable and want eradicated from college curricula. Through all this, one seldom actually hears from the “politically correct” people who supposedly dominate the universe of discourse."

"Something has got to be done about the internal combustion engine before it does something irreversible to us—assuming it already has not. It is not a rational and survivable form of technology. Its social, ecological, and human costs are far greater than any benefit it brings."

"In short, it is possible to demonstrate that (a) many people support positions or political forces that violate their own professed interests, and (b) many people profess interests that violate their actual well-being."

"The conceptual distinction between state and government allows us to understand why taking office in government seldom guarantees full access to the instruments of state power."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."