12 quotes
Democracy should be as much a system of participation as a method of representation.
To understand today’s politics one must always begin with yesterday’s economics.
Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery (1982)
Where political sovereignty has been conceded but economic power remains untouched, equality remains a myth, social justice proves unattainable and even freedom becomes an ambiguous phenomenon.
Democracy means far more than the right to vote every five years. It means the right to participate in every aspect of national and community life. The people must believe that they can take part.
We believe that the idea of equality is the only enduring principle by which mankind may be guided in the conduct of national and international affairs.
Just as surely history is the product of those forces which seek to dominate in the name of glory or profit, equally is history the product of the forces of those who rebel.”
Any realistic vision of change must be based on the notion of empowerment of people.
The Poverty of Nations: reflections on underdevelopment and the world economy (1991)
The globalisation of the world economy has not led to a more equitable distribution of wealth but is facilitating its further concentration.
The Poverty of Nations: reflections on underdevelopment and the world economy (1991)
In a plural world, it is the right to self-determination, and not its outcome, which is the inalienable right of every man. And it is wherever the absolute right to self-determination is denied that peace is most at risk.
If we look about us we see the lengthening shadows of a thousand small corruptions creeping across the landscape of our nation. This is monstrous, for it is not the evening of our history; it is the morning and the shadows should be forming the other way.
As Hegel divined philosophically, and as every physicist since Newton knows as a matter of course, history is the story of action and reaction. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)
The Politics of Change (1974)
In a macabre way, debt, drugs and development all have a bearing upon each other. All three are incapable of being defeated in the case of drugs; of solution in the case of debt; or of progress in the case of development, if pursued in a purely national context.
The Politics of Change (1974)