BrianNapoletano's Quotes

What we must guard against the most as we endeavor to address our ecological crisis is the notion that history has in some way reached its end or that there are no genuine alternatives. Such beliefs of received ideology, if followed, would guarantee a barbaric, even apocalyptic, outcome. The real future of humanity, as distinct from this non-future, depends on the nature of our social and environmental movements, and ultimately on our willingness to reinvent human history and our social and ecological relations of production. There are no guarantees in this process. Historical developments are enormously contingent. The only certainty is the reality of the struggle itself: the true realm of human freedom.

Lately, the language of government, always revealing, grows more and more fierce and commanding (due to so many wars lost? so much money wasted), and military metaphors abound as czars lead all-out wars on drugs. Yet, at the risk of causing both offense and embarrassment among even the not-so-faithful, I feel obliged to say that I do not accept the authority of any state---much less one founded as was ours upon the free fulfillment of each citizen---to forbid me, or anyone, the use of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, sex with a consenting partner or, if one is a woman, the right to an abortion. I take these rights to be absolute and should the few persist in their efforts to dominate the private lives of the many, I recommend force as a means of changing their minds.

Are we now to believe that the American Empire is against terrorism? What does one call a man who blows up an airplane killing 73 civilians for political reasons; who attempts assassinations against several diplomats; who fires cannons at ships docked in American ports; who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the US and abroad? Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando Bosch, he's Cuban and he lives in Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The city of Miami once declared a day in his honor--Dr. Orlando Bosch Day.

But these men are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care...the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them...then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wards and who come home--the ones who make it back alive--with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things.

Workers who combine to set up a reserve fund can be freed at least for some weeks from the compulsion to sell their labour-power on a continuous basis at the given market rate. Capitalism does not like that at all. It is contrary to 'nature'; if not to human nature, then at least to the deeper nature of bourgeois society. That is why, under robust nascent capitalism, trade unions were simply banned. That is also why, under senile capitalism, we are gradually returning to a situation in which workers are denied the right to strike--the right to abstain from selling their labour-power at the offered price whenever they like. In this instance, Marx's insight is clearly confirmed by the highest authorities of the bourgeois state: under capitalism, labour is fundamentally forced labour. Whenever possible, capitalists prefer hypocritically to cloak the compulsion under a smokescreen of 'equal and just exchange' on the 'labour market'.

The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century--without exception--has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement--from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador--not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.

Even where there is no prospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to bring before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and making it possible for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is infinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the democracy from the outset comes out resolutely and terroristically against the reaction, the influence of the latter in the elections will be destroyed in advance.

It goes without saying that if capitalism could develop agriculture, which today lags far behind industry everywhere, if it could raise the standard of living of the masses, who are everywhere still poverty-stricken and underfed, in spite of the amazing advance in technical knowledge, there could be no talk of a superabundance of capital. This "argument" the petty-bourgeois critics of capitalism advance on every occasion. But if capitalism did these things it would not be capitalism; for uneven development and wretched conditions of the masses are fundamental and inevitable conditions and premises this mode of production. As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will never be utilised for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists; it will be used for the purpose of increasing these profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries.

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased.

There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media---none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.

The whole Iran-contra affair became a perfect example of the double line of defense of the American Establishment. The first defense is to deny the truth. If exposed, the second defense is to investigate, but not too much; the press will publicize, but they will not get to the heart of the matter.

Once the scandal was out in the open, neither the Congressional investigation committees nor the press nor the trial of Colonel Oliver North, who oversaw the contra air operation, got to the critical questions: What is U.S. foreign policy all about? How are the president and his staff permitted to support a terrorist group in Central America to overthrow a government that, whatever its faults, is welcomed by its own people as a great improvement over the terrible governments the U.S. has supported there for years? What does the scandal tell us about the democracy, about freedom of expression, about an open society?