Deimage

All images by Deimage.

[deimage]

Capitalism and the "Housing Crisis": "Whence then comes the housing shortage? How did it arise? As a good bourgeois, Dr. Sax is not supposed to know that it is a necessary product of the bourgeois social order; that it cannot fail to be present in a society in which the great masses of the workers are exclusively dependent upon wages, that is to say, on the sum of foodstuffs necessary for their existence and for the propagation of their kind; in which improvements of the existing machinery continually throw masses of workers out of employment; in which violent and regularly recurring industrial vacillations determine on the one hand the existence of a large reserve army of unemployed workers, and on the other hand drive large masses of the workers temporarily unemployed onto the streets; in which the workers are crowded together in masses in the big towns, at a quicker rate than dwellings come into existence for them under existing conditions; in which, therefore, there must always be tenants even for the most infamous pigsties; and in which finally the house owner in his capacity as capitalist has not only the right, but, in view of the competition, to a certain extent also the duty of ruthlessly making as much out of his property in house rent as he possibly can. In such a society the housing shortage is no accident; it is a necessary institution and it can be abolished together with all its effects on health, etc., only if the whole social order from which it springs is fundamentally refashioned."- Frederick Engels, The Housing Question

[deimage]

On Globalization and the Environment: "Never before did mankind have such formidable scientific and technological potential--such extraordinary capacity to produce riches and well-being--but never before were disparity and inequity so profound in the world. Technological wonders that have been shrinking the planet in terms of communications and distances co-exist today with the increasingly wider gap separating wealth and poverty, development and underdevelopment. Globalization is an objective reality underlining the fact that we are all passengers on the same vessel, that is, this planet where we all live. But, passengers on this vessel are traveling in very different conditions. Trifling minorities are traveling in luxurious cabins furnished with Internet, cell phones, and access to global communication networks. They enjoy a nutritional, abundant, and balanced diet as well as clean water supplies. They have access to sophisticated medical care and to culture. Overwhelming and hurting majorities are traveling in conditions that resemble the terrible slave trade from Africa to America in our colonial past. That is, 85 percent of the passengers on this ship are crowded together in its dirty hold suffering hunger, diseases, and helplessness. Obviously, this vessel is carrying too much injustice to remain afloat and it pursues such an irrational and senseless route that it cannot call on a safe port. This vessel seems destined to clash with an iceberg. If that happened, we would all sink with it." - Fidel Castro, on Globalization

[deimage]

On Technology and Labor: "Technology discloses man’s mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them." - Marx, Capital Vol. 1

[deimage]

On Art and Competition: "All forms of life, such as the cultivation of land, the planning of human habitations, the building of theatres, the methods of socially educating children, the solution of scientific problems, the creation of new styles, will vitally engross all and everybody. People will divide into 'parties' over the question of a new gigantic canal, or the distribution of oases in the Sahara (such a question will exist too), over the regulation of the weather and the climate, over a new theatre, over chemical hypotheses, over two competing tendencies in music, and over a best system of sports. Such parties will not be poisoned by the greed of class or caste. All will be equally interested in the success of the whole. The struggle will have a purely ideological character. It will have no running after profits, it will have nothing mean, no betrayals, no bribery, none of the things that form the soul of 'competition' in a society divided into classes. But this will in no way hinder the struggle from being absorbing, dramatic and passionate." - Leon Trotsky, "Communist Policy Toward Art"

[deimage]

On Recessions and "Recoveries": "As we have seen, the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of capitalism and which exists in the general environment of capitalism, commodity production and competition, in permanent and insoluble contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly, it inevitably engenders a tendency of stagnation and decay. Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappears to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibility arises of deliberately retarding technical progress." -- V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

[deimage]

Food and Health: "As regards food, quality rather than quantity is the vital consideration: plenty is of little use if that plenty is no good. Quality is greatly improved by the way food is cooked. The preparation of food must be conducted as scientifically as all other human activity if it is to afford the best results." - August Bebel, Society of the Future

[deimage]

On Time and Wages: "Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him." - Karl Marx, "The Limits of the Working Day," Capital Vol 1.

[deimage]

On Representation and the Real: "Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when, and for what class it is made use of...We shall not restrict ourselves to speaking of realism in cases where one can smell, look, feel whatever is depicted, where 'atmosphere' is created and stories develop in such a way that the characters are psychologically stripped down...Realist means: laying bare society's causal network/showing up the dominant view point as the viewpoint of the dominators/writing from the standpoint of the class which has prepared the broadest solutions for the most pressing problems afflicting human society/emphasizing the dynamics of development/concrete and so as to encourage abstraction" - Bertolt Brecht, "The Popular and the Realistic"

[deimage]

On Science and Labor: "The overwhelming majority of inventors, researchers, scientists and doctors could never perform their functions if hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of workers had not produced the laboratories, buildings, machines, apparatuses, instruments and materials with which they operate; if the social surplus product, produced by the total mass of the producers, had not ensured them the necessary working-time free from the constraint of reproducing their immediate existence, without which they could not pursue their scientific work" - Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism

[deimage]

On Superstitions and Capitalism: "Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and savagery" - Leon Trotsky, "What is National Socialism?"

[deimage]

On Seeing and Ideology: "When we speak of ideology we should know that ideology slides into all human activity, that it is identical with the 'lived' experience of human existence itself." - Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy

[deimage]

On Poverty and Violence: "When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains." - Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England

[deimage]

On Property and Agriculture: "Alongside with the means of production and communication, land — the primary material of all human effort and the basis of all human existence — belongs to society. At its advanced stage society takes back what it originally possessed. Among all peoples that have reached a definite level of culture land is communal property. Communal property form the basis of every primitive socialisation, which would be impossible without it. It is only through the rise and development of private property and the forms of domination connected with it, that communal property is abolished in the face of grim struggle and is usurped as private property. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property constituted the prime cause of the bondage that has passed through all possible stages, from slavery to the 'freedom' of the wage-worker in our century, until, finally, the enslaved, after thousands of years of development, re-convert the land into common property"- August Bebel, Society of the Future

[deimage]

On Property and Nature: "From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition." - Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3

[deimage]

On the Fight for Justice in Dark Times: "It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives. After its victory, the proletariat has to make most strenuous efforts, even the most painful, so as to 'liberate' itself from such pseudo-revolutionaries. It is far more difficult—and far more precious—to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist, to be able to champion the interests of the revolution (by propaganda, agitation and organisation) in non-revolutionary bodies, and quite often in downright reactionary bodies, in a non-revolutionary situation, among the masses who are incapable of immediately appreciating the need for revolutionary methods of action. To be able to seek, find and correctly determine the specific path or the particular turn of events that will lead the masses to the real, decisive and final revolutionary struggle—such is the main objective of communism in Western Europe and in America today." -- V.I. Lenin, "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder"

[deimage]

On the freedom of "choice": "Industry is interested in people merely as consumers and employees, and has in fact reduced mankind as a whole and each of its elements to this all-embracing formula. According to the ruling aspect at the time, ideology emphasizes plan or chance, technology or life, civilization or nature. As employees, men are reminded of the rational organization and urged to fit in like sensible people. As customers, the freedom of choice, the charm of novelty, is demonstrated to them on the screen or in the press by means of the human and personal anecdote. In either case they remain objects...All are free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as they have been free, since the historical neutralization of religion to join any of the innumerable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology--since ideology always reflects economic coercion--everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same." -- Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry"

[deimage]

On History and Philosophy: "The history of philosophy, like that of art and literature, is never simply a history of philosophical ideas or even personalities, as its bourgeois historians think. Problems, and the directions in which they may be resolved are posed in philosophy by the evolution of forces of production, by social developments and the development of class struggles. Only the observation of these primary motive forces can serve as a basis for tracing the decisive, fundamental lines of any philosophy." - Georg Lukacs, The Destruction of Reason