104 quotes
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.
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)
Margaret Thatcher, who we all know is Ronald Reagan in drag.
The mass media are class media.
Dirty truths (1996)
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.
Contrary Notions (2007)
The withholding of labor by workers is called a strike, but not the withholding of capital by employers. The latter is never treated as a controversial disruption of the production process.
Inventing Reality (1986)
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.
Contrary Notions (2007)
The few remaining communist governments, such as North Korea and Cuba, were no longer portrayed as instruments of Moscow, but as evils in their own right.
Against Empire (1995)
The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather than undermined democratic forces.
Democracy for the Few (2010)
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.
History as Mystery (1999)
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.
Contrary Notions (2007)
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 left anti-communists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it.
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)
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.
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)
To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
Dirty truths (1996)
Seizing upon anything but class, U.S. leftists today have developed an array of identity groups 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.
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)
At the same time, the rise in pollution and population has given us acid rain, soil erosion, silting of waterways, shrinking grasslands, disappearing water supplies and wetlands, and the obliteration of thousands of species, with hundreds more on the endangered list.
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)
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.
Contrary Notions (2007)
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.
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)
In sum, the Nobel Peace Prize often has nothing to do with peace and too much to do with war. It frequently sees "peace" through the eyes of the western plutocracy. For that reason alone, we should not join in the applause.
The Nobel Peace Prize for War (2014)
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.
History as Mystery (1999)
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.
Contrary Notions (2007)