February 2012
Hanna: “You’ve got two more birthday thingies on Facebook but I don’t know who these kids are.”
Me: “Who are they from?”
Hanna: “Uhlon and Harmon Jenkins.”
Me: “Uhlon? Don’t know who that is, how do you spell it?”
Hanna: “A L A N”
Me: “….Alan?”
Hanna: “Oh.”
2 tags
3 tags
an explanation of capitalism
“Capitalism is a system which reproduces itself, at the end of any defined period it needs to have the correct amount of or ratio of resources to perform the process of capitalism again, basically there needs to be resources (including labour) available and enough markets available for the businesses to profit. In the process of creating these conditions it creates a number of massive...
2 tags
on america and central/south america
“You can’t tell a kid, “a-ha, you’re rubbish at building sandcastles!” if you come kick it down, break his hands, kill his friends and blind him as soon as he starts.”
lloydgeorge asked: Just Wiki'd Claude Vorilhon. why.
“It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would...”
– Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “The Other America.” Grosse Pointe High School, March 14, 1968. (via rethinksocialism)
“The true function of constitutionalism was to protect the bourgeoisie from the...”
– L.C.B. Seaman, From Vienna to Versailles [1955] (via rethinksocialism)
1 tag
3 tags
the yugoslavian economy of the 50s/60s is very...
methinks ill have to do more research
1 tag
http://kylemcqueen.tumblr.com/post/17001274059/clau... →
Free trade as it exists is just another front for global capital to find new markets; it’s a bad thing, and fair trade is much more preferable. Earmarks are a distraction and barely contribute to the debt, they’re like 1% of it, and half the time they’re good things like supporting local parks and museums and things like that. I honestly don’t know too much about block...
He’s better than Paul because he’s not totally insane (ie he doesn’t want to explode the Federal Reserve and plant the Confederate Flag on its ashes) but he still supports a bunch of dumb regressive policies like the free market, thinks tort reform will solve health care, think it’s a good idea to privatize Social Security, and thinks the budget deficit is the central issue...
“Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into...”
– Karl Marx (via matthewernest)
Rethink Socialism: The Myth of State Communism or... →
rethinksocialism:
State communism. I’ve heard this term thrown around quite a lot.
What is state communism? Contrary to popular belief, state communism is a myth. This is word conjured by the bourgeoisie to be used as a substitute for Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism. State communism is intrinsically a…
3 tags
Ronald Reagan was a bad dad
Ronald Reagan, always good with crowds, chats a little with each graduate.
“My name is Ronald Reagan. What’s yours?” he says to one young boy.
“I’m your son Mike,” the boy says.
“Oh,” says Ronald Reagan. “I didn’t recognize you.”
2 tags
January 2012
“Even in the purely economic sphere,” writes Kestner, “a certain change is taking...”
– Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
(via rethinksocialism)
Dan DiMaggio: Road Maps, Dead Ends, and the Search... →
rethinksocialism:
For the past seven-plus years I have devoted much of my life to effort to build a socialist movement in the United States. As a member of one of the many tiny socialist groups on the US left, I have organised dozens of anti-war, labour solidarity, immigrant rights and other rallies and campaigns. I have toured the country to speak at college campuses about socialism. I have set...
“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized...”
– Fidel Castro
I’m not one who loves Fidel, but oh the lulz.
(via rethinksocialism)
“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and...”
– Karl Marx (via solitaryforager)
“The problem today is that we have a lot of ‘anti-capitalism,’ indeed an overload...”
– Slavoj Žižek (via solitaryforager)
Letters To My Country: Adam Smith: Furtive... →
letterstomycountry:
George Scialabba reviews Nicholas Phillipson’s Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. In the process, he relates Smith’s observations about the relationship between workers and employers:
Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price,…
6 tags
More Zizek
“So what are we to do? Everything possible (and impossible), just with a proper dose of modesty, avoiding moralising self-satisfaction. I am aware that when the left builds a protest movement, one should not measure its success by the degree to which its specific demands are met: more important than achieving the immediate target is the raising of critical awareness and finding new ways...
1 tag
In case you didn't actually read the Zizek...
“In times of crisis, the obvious candidates for ‘belt-tightening’ are the lower levels of the salaried bourgeoisie: political protest is their only recourse, if they are to avoid joining the proletariat. Although their protests are nominally directed at the brutal logic of the market, they are in effect protesting against the gradual erosion of their (politically) privileged economic...
The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie
rethinksocialism:
by Slavoj Žižek
How did Bill Gates become the richest man in America? His wealth has nothing to do with the production costs of what Microsoft is selling: i.e. it is not the result of his producing good software at lower prices than his competitors, or of ‘exploiting’ his workers more successfully (Microsoft pays its intellectual workers a relatively high salary). If that...
The USSR and Problems of the Transitional Epoch →
rethinksocialism:
by Leon Trotsky
The Soviet Union emerged from the October Revolution as a workers state. State ownership of the means of production, a necessary prerequisite to socialist development, opened up the possibility of rapid growth of the productive forces. But the apparatus of the workers’ state underwent a complete degeneration at the same time: it was transformed from a...
Rethink Socialism: Interesting Experiment Using... →
anticapitalist:
My interpretation of that bullshit post about “Obama’s Socialism”
“An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Ron Paul’s libertarianism…
this is a fake dumb thing but it’s a good illustration so
Why Ronald Reagan is the worst president ever.
kaisparda:
octoberingabout:
1. He started deficit spending.
2. He tried to roll back safety regulations in the workplace.
3. His tax cuts helped the rich.
4. He sold to weapons to Iran and used the money to support terrorists. 5. Continued a long american president tradition of propping up brutal dictatorships around the world.
6. He was Racist.
7. He was a corporate tool,
This.
Funny...
kylemcqueen asked: So "the line must be drawn here" has hit the mainstream after all these years.
“The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition...”
– Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, page 18 (via garethalteran)
True, though not that simple. It’s a little more to read, but it should be quoted in full context to make things more clear.
“The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally,...