Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 85

Ernst Jünger: “Art can help the overcoming of fear. Such is also the task of architecture which, like art, transcends mere necessity. If it fails to do so, and becomes totally subordinated to pure pragmatism and economy, in the best cases with aesthetic superfluities, fear will necessarily increase"
Ernst Jünger. Annäherungen.

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"Is it possible to downgrade the living standards of rich countries and prop up the poor ones to even slightly reduce global inequality? One may well doubt this, especially considering that for most of humanity, it is the quality of life in the developed countries that really matters,  not the tyranny of averages. Everyone in the world dreams of a Lexus, not a Zaporozhets."

—Egor Kholmogorov, 'Socialism Not Dead - Paradoxes of an Unsolved Problem' (April 2016)

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Brilliant essay by Eugene McCarraher :

"....‘disenchantment’ is more of a fable, a mythology that conceals the persistence of enchantment in ‘secular’ disguise.

Money is what anthropologists might call the mana of capitalism: the spirit that inhabits all material things...

Commodity fetishism is the equivalent, in capitalism, of the Roman Catholic sacramental system: where the latter conveys divine power and grace through material objects and rituals, the former channels the power of money through the pecuniary transubstantiation of objects.

Simone Weil...offered an explanation for the continuing failure of Marxism...Because it envisioned socialism as the dialectical culmination of capitalism, Marxism, in her words, represented ‘the highest spiritual expression of bourgeois society’.

Weil observed that, like the industrial bourgeoisie and both its religious and secular ideologues, Marx and his followers subscribed to a disenchanted conception of matter....one that rejected out of hand any possibility that matter could convey any spiritual import or power to historical action.

‘The true knowledge of social mechanics,’ she wrote in Oppression and Liberty  involved a conviction that ‘there exist certain material conditions for the supernatural operation of the divine that is present on earth’.

In other words, because matter was capable of conveying the supernatural, she saw Marx’s disenchanted materialism as, in a sense, not materialist enough.

By reducing the world to inanimate stuff that could be understood and manipulated only by experts, ‘disenchantment’ or ‘objective consciousness’ served the interests of business and professional elites – ‘the technocracy’, in Roszak’s shorthand. It allowed them to establish what he called a deadly ‘monopoly of the sacramental powers’. ‘

Disenchantment’ disempowered the people...

https://aeon.co/essays/capitalism-is-modernitys-most-beguiling-dangerous-enchantment?fbclid=IwAR2YjXydT8sFDrLfP4GDRodIbyoceGAFHC-i1oXiVPt6jXtyuqLq_Li4Ksw

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Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 84

The European Union is the biggest neoliberal experience in the world, and NATO is their lapdog.

Neoliberalism is all about dissociating the economic policy from the democracy, and any countries that adhere to the Euro gives up of its own economical policy sovereignty.

Not only a country must give up, but also adhere to liberal principles, which takes precedence during economic turmoil.

The austerity measure is to reduce the spending so a county can service its public debt, which represents the value of the Euro.

So, if Greece and another Eurozone country defaults, this currency might be in jeopardy, so is the well-being of the bourgeoisie.

Inside the European Union there are Imperialist countries, who enforce their Imperialists' goals by ruining the working class of another country.

Take a look at Greece and, more recently, the UK. The working class of those countries will pay dearly for propping up the bourgeoisie's well being.

So the Troika, the focal point of this neoliberal experience, will put stiff resistance and beat those countries into submission.

Even worse, the population of the countries that are not under fiscal restraints will approve this behaviour, as they are led to believe that a to-be defaulted country is riding on their backs.

Even the working class is led to this erroneous believe.

Not only, if those countries are successful, it will be a very painful hit on neoliberalism, one that the bourgeoisie isn't willing to pay, and they'll punish the working class.

So, even amongst the workers, they sow competition: the German worker will pay dearly if the Greeks default, if the Britons succeed, and the German worker is led to believe that they should enforce the neoliberalism type of governance over others, as they are subjected to this policy themselves.

It's cruelty.

To defend the European Single Market, as a neoliberal experience, is to be blind to the suffering of the working class, is to sow competition between the working class.

It's diametrically opposed to a very dearly lesson of Marx for a communist: "workers of the world, unite!".

NATO is their lapdog, it's the same as the army is to a capitalistic country: a bunch of expendable young persons.

I feel nothing but sadness when I see their soldiers dying as they're fellow workers dying for the interest of those who wouldn't think twice about abandoning them.

For the bourgeoisie, soldiers, policeman, firemen are expendable.

The bourgeoisie only praise the sadists and the cowards, after all, those are the ones who are willing to torture people. A very dearly held instrument of capitalism, as we all know.

Bernardo Barrabaz

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Today, October 20th, marks the anniversary of Gaddafi’s assassination. Let us recall the words of his will and testament:

I call on my supporters to continue the resistance, and fight any foreign aggressor against Libya, today, tomorrow and always.

Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour.

Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise.

Eugene Montsalvat

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In October 8, 1997 Kim Jong Il was elected General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea. This was an occasion for the Korean people to be single-heartedly united around him more solidly.

Single-hearted unity was his revolutionary philosophy.

He gave a new explanation of the absolute position and decisive role of leader as the top brain of socio-political integrity and the centre of a socio-political collective and on this basis, formulated the theory that the leader is in the centre of the masses of the people and decides everything.

He gave a comprehensive answer to the theoretical basis for achieving the single-hearted unity of society. In other words, full light was given on the driving force and factor of the victorious advance of revolution.

Kim Jong Il raised the single-hearted unity of the Korean society onto a high level.

He believed that comradely love and obligation is none other than unity and that the sincerer and warmer the comradely love is, the purer and solider the single-hearted unity gets. From this viewpoint he defined the revolutionary love as the basis for single-hearted unity. He united all the people across the country into a single family by administering benevolent, all-embracing politics, saying that it was his invariable political philosophy to bring up people with trust and love and turn the whole society into a community of comrades. He explained that a ruling socialist party exists for the good of the people and the mission of the WPK is to work for the people's demand for independence and interests, and paid special attention to rallying broad sections of people around the WPK and developing the WPK into a motherly party which takes responsible care of their destiny. He regarded "The people are my God" as his lifetime motto which now constitutes the fundamental principle of the WPK.

Today the WPK forms a harmonious whole with the masses at the highest level.

Entering the mid-1990s, the manoeuvres to stamp out socialist Korea by the imperialist forces reached the extreme. To cope with this situation, Kim Jong Il enforced Songun politics on a full scale. He named the noble and strong-willed ideo-spiritual traits manifested among the service personnel of the Korean People's Army the revolutionary soldier spirit and on this basis, led the army and people to achieve oneness in their ideology and way of work. Thanks to his leadership, the DPRK achieved the great unity of the army and the people—aiding the army and aiding the people. Consequently, it has displayed its dignity as a country which achieved single-hearted unity of the WPK, the army and the people behind their leader.

The DPRK always emerged victorious in the revolution and construction on the strength of its single-hearted unity under Kim Jong Il's guidance.

It is not a thing in the remote past that the international community was deeply concerned about the "collapse" of socialist Korea. Korea fought alone in confrontation with the allied imperialist forces led by the United States, the "sole superpower" in the world, defending its socialism, and brought about a new epochal turn in its efforts to build a thriving country. The secret behind this miracle is that it has a mighty weapon of single-hearted unity. As it is based on that unity, the DPRK became already an ideological and political power as well as a military power any formidable forces could not dare to attack it. The united strength of its army and people is a decisive cause for propelling forward the country's economic progress.

For the DPRK the closing years of the previous century were the most trying period unprecedented in its history. The Korean army and people, however, braved through the challenges they faced, sharing the same ideology, purpose and way of work. They built hydraulic power stations of various sizes, built or renovated stock-breeding and poultry farms and industrial establishments in great number and face-lifted the appearance of the country by carrying out large-scale land realignment project. In addition, a lot of new villages and streets sprang up in urban and rural areas as befits a socialist paradise.

Today the Korean people are making strenuous efforts to hasten the drive to build an economically powerful, civilised  socialist  nation, rallied  single-heartedly  behind  Kim  Jong  Un  who  is  on a  par  with Kim Jong Il in ideology, leadership and virtues.

DPRK Video Archive
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A discredited elite, suspicious and even paranoid in an age of decline, will see enemies everywhere. The array of instruments created for global dominance-wholesale surveillance, the evisceration of civil liberties, sophisticated torture techniques, militarised police, the massive prison system, the thousands of militarised drones and satellites-will be employed in the homeland. The empire will collapse and the nation will consume itself within our lifetimes if we do not wrest power from those who rule the corporate state.

Chris Hedges

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 83

The Marshall Plan is the etymological act of our modernity. Its role is fundamental. In the immediate post-war era, it transplanted an economy of abundance in an economy of scarcity, even misery. And it transplanted the American cultural model in a traditional, rural society. This radical acculturation thus authorized a radically new phenomenon; the immanence of the economic and the cultural. While in a traditional society, the two terms keep themselves at the greatest possible distance and conserve a certain relative autonomy, modernity is the immanence of their relations of expression. The culture will be the expression of the ideological needs of the market. It’s the definition of civil society foreseen and denounced by Hegel.

— Michel Clouscard, Le Capitalisme de la séduction (1981)

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Marx and Engels considered that the proletariat should build itself as a national class, should become the nation. Michel Aflak's idea that the arab bourgeois is no longer part of the nation, and that it is up to the hard class to carry the arab national project is therefore absolutely compatible with a dogmatic vision of the world. The Arab nationalism of the BA ' as is part of the world fight for the proletarian revolution, it is positively progressive.

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Watch "Claimants 'tricked' out of benefits, says Jobcentre whistleblower" -Guardian Videos on YouTube
https://youtu.be/0XLgg75stn4

"Avoid Universal credit sanctions- deny access to your Find a Job Account-bye bye big brother." on YouTube
https://youtu.be/pza_JUz8Lmw

Watch "Universal Credit agents 'encouraged' to get claimants off phone" - SKY NEWS on YouTube
https://youtu.be/97dHLJFLTJc

 Warwick Alderman

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ES LEBE DIE DEUTSCHE DEMOKRATISCHE REPUBLIK!

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic.  The DDR was born on the 7th October 1949 as the free sovereign remnant of Germany, the majority of which being made into a vassal state of the US global capitalist empire.  The geographical territory of the DDR was occupied by the western liberal nightmare which uses the name Germany with no moral justification for doing so, but the people remain and the day when the capitalist tyranny falls will be the day when the DDR returns and there is once again a free Socialist Republic in the heart of Europe. 

The Socialist Motherland Party salutes the heroes of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, who forged a nation from the ruins of a land devastated in a brutal world war - a nation which still inspires Socialists worldwide.  Let the Trotskyites, liberals and other capitalist rats tremble at the reawakening of the DDR and of the march to real Socialism across the globe.

Vorwärts Immer, Rückwärts Nimmer!

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 82

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https://youtu.be/0T0a_jXHiDo

https://youtu.be/xTz1EJGpMmU

https://youtu.be/mgd6ElkmTWc

https://youtu.be/0raP5-Bzwgk

https://youtu.be/V4fjmrVYm0U

https://youtu.be/l800cg4-VOw

https://youtu.be/b3HDHef3YTI

A story about Karl Marx and his controversial love for Jenny, his almost-missed friendship with Engels, the evolution of his philosophy, his world-changing thoughts about political economy and his contribution for working class revolution.

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“All peoples will come to socialism, that is inevitable, but they will not all get there in exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own character to this or that form of democracy, to this or that variety of proletarian dictatorship, to this or that pace of the socialist transformation of the various aspects of social life. In this respect nothing would be more miserable from the viewpoint of theory, or more pathetic from that of practice, as to paint a vision of the future in monotonous grey ‘in the name of historical materialism.’” 

(Lenin, Collected Works, volume 19, page 281)

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"“In our society a poor man is not the one who lacks money but knowledge.”

"“Getting rid of the proclivity to import is also a battle to defend socialism.”

KIM JONG UN

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"The basis of socialism is the people. Our politics, which regards the interests of the people as the foremost concern, is genuine socialist politics and the politics of infinite love for and trust in the people, that is, noble, benevolent politics.

Every line and policy of our Party and the government of our Republic reflects the opinions and demands of the masses and is successfully implemented by their voluntary zeal and struggle. In our country, promoting the people’s well-being is regarded as the supreme principle in the activities of the Party and the State, the slogan “We serve the people!” is fully incorporated in State activities, and the infringement of the people’s interests and lording it over them by the abuse of authority and bureaucratic behaviour are never tolerated."

KIM JONG IL

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"The destruction of the life-world for the benefit of instrumental reason, (economic) growth, and material development have resulted in an unprecedented impoverishment of the spirit, and the generalisation of anxiety related to living in an always uncertain present, in a world deprived both of the past and the future.

Thus, modernity has given birth to the most empty civilisation mankind has ever known: the language of advertising has become the paradigm of all social discourse; the primacy of money has imposed the omnipresence of commodities; man has been transformed into an object of exchange in a context of mean hedonism; technology has ensnared the life-world in a network of rationalism — a world replete with delinquency, violence, and incivility, in which man is at war with himself and against all, i.e., an unreal world of drugs, virtual reality and media-hyped sports, in which the countryside is abandoned for unlivable suburbs and monstrous megalopolises, and where the solitary individual merges into an anonymous and hostile crowd, while traditional social, political, cultural or religious meditations become increasingly uncertain and undifferentiated."

Alain de Benoist

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 “[Modern] technology presupposes destruction, since its development depends upon destruction, it cannot be fitted into any healthy economic system; one cannot look at it from an economic point of view. The radical consumption of oil, coal, and ore cannot be called economy, however rational the methods of drilling and mining. Underlying the strict rationality of technological methods, we find a way of thinking which cares nothing for the preservation and saving of the substance”

Friedrich Georg Jünger. The Failure of Technology . Die Perfektion der Technik, 1946

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