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Next to sex, the activity combining bodily experience and intense emotion to the highest degree is the participation in a mass demonstration at a time of great public exaltation
Eric Hobsbawm (9 June 1917 - 1 October 2012)
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Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned with only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes – that is the majority – as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair … The failure of the regime in the Soviet Union was, for me not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.
The Dalai Lama Beyond Dogma: Dialogues and Discourses (1996)
File under important stuff they don’t mention on the news
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“The upshot of Baudrillard’s analyses is to license a kind of intellectual dandyism,” (Alex Callinicos, 1990)
Jean Baudrillard - hipster bastard (and post-68 disillusionist)
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This month’s recommended reading: David Harvey’s Rebel Cities
Probably the best £9.99 you’ll spend this year.
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This is always a difficult time of the year for me. As a devout Marxisante I’m religiously opposed to nationalism in any way, shape, or form. But as an Irishman, Easter always has significant emotional connotations for me, as it does for countless Irish people. Connotations that can’t be resolved in just any old materialist dialectic.
I hate nationalism. I love my country. CONTINUE READING -
The Party of Wall Street has one universal principle of rule: that there shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective. Those possessed of money power shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative potentialities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable.
David Harvey The Party of Wall St meets its nemesis -
Everything ideological possesses meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs there is no ideology.
