User Profile

Today, the century-old utopian dream of a future techno-paradise is within sight. The technologies of the information and communication revolution hold out the long-anticipated promise of a near-workerless world in the coming century. Ironically, the closer we seem to come to the technological fruition of the utopian dream, the more dystopian the future itself appears. That's because the forces of the marketplace continue to generate production and profit, with little thought of generating additional leisure for the millions of working people whose labor is being displaced. The high-tech Information Age is now on our doorsteps. Will its arrival lead to a dangerous replay of the operating assumptions of trickle-down technology, with continued emphasis on endless produc- tion, consumption, and work? Or will the high-tech revolution lead to the realization of the age-old utopian dream of substituting machines for human labor, finally freeing humanity to journey into a post-market era? This is the great issue at hand for a world struggling to make the transition into a new period of history.

— The end of work by Jeremy Rifkin (Page 56)

The mass-consumption phenomenon did not occur spontane- ously, nor was it the inevitable by-product of an insatiable human nature. Quite the contrary. Economists at the tum of the century noted that most working people were content to earn just enough income to provide for their basic needs and a few luxuries, after which they preferred increased leisure time over additional work hours and extra income. According to economists of the day like Stanley Trevor and John Bates Clark, as people's income and affluence increase, a diminishing utility of returns sets in, making each increment in wealth less desirable. [...] Converting Americans from a psychology of thrift to one of spend- thrift proved a daunting task. [...] Consumption economists like Hazel Kyrk were quick to point out the commercial advantages of turning a nation of working people into status-conscious consumers. Growth, she declared, required a new level of consumer buying. "Luxuries for the well-off," she argued, had to be "turned into necessities for the poorer classes." Overproduction and technological employment could be mitigated, even eliminated, if only the working class could be re-educated toward the "dynamic consumption of luxuries." [...] Author Susan Strasser recounts the many marketing problems encountered by companies trying to sell products that never before existed and create needs that people had never before perceived: "People who never before bought com flakes were taught to need them: those formerly content to buy oats scooped from the grocer's bin were informed about why they should prefer Quaker Oats in a box. At the same time, they learned how packaged breakfast cereals fit modem urban life-styles, suiting people seeking convenience."

— The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin (Page 19 - 21)

Those who say a demonstration should be concerned with education rather than theater don't understand either and will never organize a successful demonstration, or for that matter, a successful revolution.

— Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

Constantly seek to have every detail of the press conference differ in style as well as content from the conferences of people in power. Make use of music and visual effects. Don't stiffen up before the press. Make the statement as short and to the point as possible. Don't read from notes, look directly into the camera. The usual television spot is one minute and twenty seconds. The cameras start buzzing on your opening statement and often run out of film before you finish. So make it brief and action packed. The question period should be even more dramatic. Use the questioner's first name when answering a question. This adds an air of informality and networks are more apt to use an answer directed personally to one of their newsmen. Express your emotional feelings. Be funny, get angry, be sad or ecstatic. If you cannot convey that you are deeply excited or troubled or outraged about what you are saying, how do you expect it of others who are watching a little image box in their living room? Remember, you are advertising a new way of life to people.

— Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn't allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power. We are not interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover its grave.

— Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

Every rock or molotov cocktail thrown should make a very obvious political point. Random violence produces random propaganda results. Why waste even a rock?

— Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

We’ve seen that the Manifesto views liberation, equality and the free development of individuals as arising when the productive capacities of society have reached a certain degree of red plenty. There’s a beauty to this vision of development growing, stalling, then unfurling under mass control. There’s a poignancy, too. Because to read the Manifesto today is to have to acknowledge that after centuries of exploitation and planetary degradation, the rupture is more urgent than ever – and is unlikely to be into a realm of freedom and plenty, but of necessary slow repair.

There is a world to win: won, it must be fixed. This is ‘ruin communism’, or ‘salvage communism’. As part of such project, naive dreams of profligacy have to be set aside.

This is in no way to advocate a new utopian asceticism. But, increasingly, ecosocialists are questioning the productivity paradigm, acknowledging that we are at a pass such that, after a break from capitalism, some constraints on production may be necessary to allow the fullest development of humanity itself. If the liberation of the productive forces of humanity under democratic control means imposing these, it will be as a stage in the salvaging of the world, and for our own liberation.

— A Spectre, Haunting by China Miéville (53%)

The relation between comrades is not the same as the relation between friends. This is a crucial point today given the problems in left milieus that can seem exclusive and cliquish. People who would otherwise be on the same side may not come together because closed and unwelcoming friendship groups prevent them from feeling a sense of commonality and belonging.

— Comrade by Jodi Dean

For some contemporary activists, well versed in the politics of identity, often as a result of their own experiences of sexism and racism online and in the movements, there may be some lingering suspicion that comrade isn’t formal enough or empty enough, and that no expansive account of the inclusion of positive difference can ever suffice. Attention to the negative dimension of comrade may address this concern. Comrade entails taking a side, rather than refusing to acknowledge and avow the existence of sides. Belonging on the same side lends a generic quality to comradeship: Comrades are indifferent to individual difference, and equal and solidary with respect to their belonging. Comradeship thus requires the dissolution of attachments to the fantasy of self-sufficiency, hierarchy, and individual uniqueness. There is no place for such attachments in the comrade.

— Comrade by Jodi Dean

The comrade is also not the same as the neighbor understood in an ethical sense. “Love thy comrade as thyself” makes no sense: Comrades don’t love themselves as uniquely special individuals. They subordinate their individual preferences and proclivities to their political goals. Comrades’ relation to each other is outward-facing, oriented toward the project they want to realize, the future they want to bring into being. They cherish one another as shared instruments in common struggle; comrades are a necessity.

— Comrade by Jodi Dean