Category: Asides

“We are conspiring to prevent the making of profits on labor power in any industry. We are conspiring against the dividend makers. We are conspiring against rent and interest. We want to establish a new society, where people can live without profit, without dividends, without rent and without interest if it is possible; and it is possible, if people will live normally, live like human beings should live. I would say that if that is a conspiracy, we are conspiring.” — by Bill Haywood

and

“There are three phases of a general strike. They are:

* general strike in an industry;
* general strike in a community;
* general national strike.

The conditions for any of the three have never existed. So how any one can take the position that a general strike would not be effective and not be a good thing for the working class is more than I can understand. We know that the capitalist uses the general strike to good advantage. Here is the position that we find the working class and the capitalists in. The capitalists have wealth; they have money. They invest the money in machinery, in the resources of the earth. They operate a factory, a mine, a railroad, a mill. They will keep that factory running just as long as there are profits coming in. When anything happens to disturb the profits, what do the capitalists do? They go on strike, don’t they? They withdraw their finances from that particular mill. They close it down because there are no profits to be made there. They don’t care what becomes of the working class. But the working class, on the other hand, has always been taught to take care of the capitalist’s interest in the property. You don’t look after your own interest, your labor power, realizing that without a certain amount of provision you can’t reproduce it. You are always looking after the interest of the capitalist, while a general strike would displace his interest and would put you in possession of it.

That is what I want to urge upon the working class; to become so organized on the economic field that they can take and hold the industries in which they are employed. Can you conceive of such a thing? Is it possible? What are the forces that prevent you from doing so? You have all the industries in your own hands at the present time. There is this justification for political action, and that is, to control the forces of the capitalists that they use against us; to be in a position to control the power of government so as to make the work of the army ineffective, so as to abolish totally the secret service and the force of detectives. That is the reason that you want the power of government. That is the reason that you should fully understand the power of the ballot.” — by Bill Haywood

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.”

Here is the great city
Of Mexico-Tenochtitlán,
In this place that is renowned,
In this place that is exemplary,
Where the wild cactus fruit grows,
In the middle of the waters,
Where the eagle screeches,
Where the eagle spreads its wings,
Where he tears apart the serpent,
Where the fish swim in the blue waters,
In the yellow waters,
Where the boiling waters are found,
Where feathers drown in tule fields,
Where we are found,
Where all the peoples of the four directions
Of the world will return.
– Aztec poem, translation by Miguel León Portilla

Growth is a quantitative accumulation. Development is the liberation of creative possibilities. Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. You are not growing anymore, nor he nor me. But we continue developing ourselves. Otherwise we wouldn’t be dialoguing here now. So development has no limits. Growth has limits. And that is a very big thing, you know, that economists and politicians don’t understand. They are obsessed with the fetish of economic growth. — Manfred Max-Neef on DemocracyNow!

He who envies happiness of others derives from it only evil, like the spider which, from a flower, derives poison – Inca Pachacutec