“It is important not to think that pragmatic arguments about inequality always support the status quo. There are also strong pragmatic arguments against high levels of inequality. Excessive inequality can have all sorts of undesirable practical consequences. Two considerations are particularly important here: the impact of inequality on the costs of social control and the... Continue Reading →
"It is very clear which weapons will be used to fight in the country that has emerged from the greatest anti-colonial revolution in history to engage in a long-term process of building a post-capitalist and socialist society. Which side will the Western left take?"
"It is a well-known fact that the Soviet Union has achieved exceptional successes in drawing women into the active construction of the state. This generally accepted truth is not disputed even by our enemies. The Soviet woman is a full and equal citizen of her country. [...] From the very beginning, Soviet law recognized that... Continue Reading →
“THE MONOGAMOUS FAMILY [...] is founded on male supremacy for the pronounced purpose of breeding children of indisputable paternal lineage. [...] Monogamy, then, does by no means enter history as a reconciliation of man and wife and still less as the highest form of marriage. On the contrary, it enters as the subjugation of one sex... Continue Reading →
“. . . As earlier anti-slavery movements eventually went beyond reformist demands for slaves to be treated better to arrive at the fundamental demand to abolish slavery per se, so Marxists go beyond the reformist critics of capitalism to demand its abolition as a class structure. If human beings must be free to be fully... Continue Reading →
Today marks the day where Marx's influential and widely-read book Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1: The Process of Production of Capital (1867) was published 150 years ago: “But machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous.... Continue Reading →
Che Guevara “In capitalist society individuals are controlled by a pitiless law usually beyond their comprehension. The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an invisible umbilical cord: the law of value. This law acts upon all aspects of one's life, shaping its course and destiny. The laws of capitalism, which... Continue Reading →
“I do feel this period is kind of a turning point. […] The only question you can’t answer is how the population is going to react as they get slammed in the face--and they are getting slammed in the face. One way it could go would be like the building of the C.I.O., or the... Continue Reading →
“[L]aw no longer includes obedience among a wife’s duties, and every woman citizen has become a voter; these civil liberties remain abstract if there is no corresponding economic autonomy; the kept woman--wife or mistress--is not freed from the male just because she has a ballot paper in her hands; while today’s customs impose fewer constraints... Continue Reading →
"In order to advance the theory of the State it is indispensable to take into account not only the distinction between state power and state apparatus, but also another reality which is clearly on the side of the (repressive) state apparatus, but must not be confused with it. I shall call this reality by its... Continue Reading →
Sociological Fragments 