NM's blog

The irrational and planless character of society must be replaced by a planned economy that represents the planned and concerted effort of society as such. Society must master the social problem as rationally as it has mastered nature. One condition for this is the elimination of the secret rule of those who, though few in number, wield great economic power without any responsibility to those whose fate depends on their decisions. We may call this new order by the name of democratic socialism but the name does not matter; all that matters is that we establish a rational economic system serving the purposes of the people. Today the vast majority of the people not only have no control over the whole of the economic machine, but they have little chance to develop genuine initiative and spontaneity at the particular job they are doing. We must replace manipulation of men by active and intelligent co-operation, and expand the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the peo...

That is my question to Google AI.  Answer: Erich Fromm's  Escape From Freedom  remains highly relevant because it explains how the psychological burden of autonomy leads people to embrace authoritarianism, conformity, and populism. His insights into modern loneliness, the loss of individual identity, and the surrender of free will accurately mirror contemporary societal crises .  The Core Mechanisms of Escape Fromm argued that while modern society gives us "freedom from" traditional constraints, it creates profound isolation and anxiety. To cope with this, individuals try to escape the burden of freedom in three ways that are highly visible today. Authoritarianism:  Submitting to strong leaders or adopting rigid ideologies to regain a sense of security and purpose. Automaton Conformity:  Blending entirely into the crowd or adopting the prevailing beliefs of one's culture to avoid standing out or taking personal responsibility. Destructiveness:  Pr...

The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism but that what we believe to be individualism has become an empty shell. The victory of freedom is possible only if democracy develops into a society in which the individual, his growth and happiness, is the aim and purpose of culture, in which life does not need any justification in success or anything else, and in which the individual is not subordinated to or manipulated by any power outside of himself, be it the State or the economic machine; finally, a society in which his conscience and ideals are not the internalization of external demands, but are really his and express the aims that result from the peculiarity of his self. These aims could not be fully realized in any previous period of modern history; they had to remain largely ideological aims, because the material basis for the development of genuine individualism was lacking. Capitalism has created this premise. The prob...

“Social media continues to rapidly evolve at a blistering pace that forces society to adapt to the growing distractions. The pertinent question, as ever in history, remains: How did we get here, and where do we go from here? ” My comment: Your 'solution' is vague. Who is the educator? How would you propagate education? Social media platforms owned by big business. What margin do you have to influence the content, the people involved, in spaces you do not own or have control over? Take the example of those social media warriors who have been creating counter-misinformation clips and posts on Facebook or the BBC’s Fact Check. They have not prevented the continuous growth of the far right. 

“How can the Islamic Republic justify such strict enforcement of mandatory veiling when even the Quran does not explicitly require women to cover their hair?” —  Sedigheh Vasmaghi The “broad spectrum of civil disobedience—from women’s public unveiling to the drafting of charters and statements of solidarity in the post-Jina era—reflects a significant shift in public consciousness and a growing commitment to radical democratic change, despite an unyielding state. Many protesters hope that these cumulative acts of resistance will continue to gain momentum , ultimately paving the way for transformative change.”

“On one hand, we have the symbolic violence of intellectual gatekeeping, where certain voices—usually elite, often Western—decide which suffering is legitimate and which resistance is ‘too Western’, ‘too liberal’, or ‘not authentic enough’. On the other, we have the remnants of Orientalism living on in reverse: an unwillingness to confront tyranny when it wears traditional clothes or speaks the language of anti-imperialism. “Bourdieu showed us how elites define what counts as legitimate knowledge. Said exposed how empire produces false knowledge in order to rule. But what neither could have fully foreseen is this third form: where knowledge cloaked in anti-imperialist jargon becomes a tool to delegitimize resistance .” Here is an example: Tariq Ali cannot being himself to go beyond 'geopolitics' to sociology . There is not a single mention of the Iranian society, power relations, repression, etc., and how all that is related to 'geopolitics'. 

An excellent piece

You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats... — Wilhelm Reich,  Listen, Little Man!

A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire. — Nelson Mandela , Long Walk to Freedom, 1994/95

  "A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire." –From Nelson Mandela's book, "Long Walk to Freedom"* *Mandela was unfortunately delusional: “ Mister President, we accept this great honor bestowed upon us today as a symbol of how  South Africa  and the  United States ,  Africa  and the West, the developing and the developed world, are reaching out and joining hands as partners in building a world order that equally benefits all the nation sand people of the world. ” ( Mandela speaking at  Harvard  after receiving an honorary doctorate from the university in 1998).   The state of South Africa today proves that delusion. The bankruptcy, sell out and complicity of the Palestinian Authority is a major factor in exacerbating the plight of the Pale...

Tech-mythologies

It takes Cristiano Ronaldo around  3 minutes  to earn the weekly salary of  a Saudi worker on the average annual salary of £58,000,  90 seconds  to earn the weekly salary of  a British worker on the average annual salary of £26,000. Ronaldo earns £3.6 million per week.

A liberal with a different colour. Some countries are not mature, global capitalism, uneven development, imperialism, etc. have nothing to do with the plights of these countries. Thus, Robert Kaplan in this article echoes what some of my white Western students once said: “a benevolent dictator is a good thing for countries the Middle East and Africa,” or what a Canadian suggested when she said “we should stop talking about democracy in those countries.” What those students and Kaplan have in mind when they speak about ‘democracy’ is ‘democracy’ within capitalist social property relations. Capitalism for them is not the fundamental determiner and the fundamental problem.  Some countries are just unfit or ‘we’ – major Western regimes, corporations, international financial institutions, colonial and neocolonial powers - have not played any role in the predicaments of those countries. Furthermore, the arrogant ignores that the historical processes of Western Europe,  industrialisa...

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries— the realists of a larger reality . Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art.  We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.  … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. ...  The name of our beautiful reward is ...

It must be clearly established ... that the government of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of its own population.     —Che Guevara, from a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations, 11 December 1964

Cristiano Ronaldo’s annual salary is 31 million EUR. He currently plays in Italy. When an Italian earns 32,000 EUR after tax a year, Ronaldo earns that sum in 8 minutes. Like a few other things, this has been normalised and generally accepted and unquestioned by the general population. When a system succeeds in instilling such consent or acquiescence, it is those who question such injustice are looked at as old-fashioned, utopian, or people with extremist ideas about social justice and freedoms. Who are going to vote for in the next election in order to preserve the “democracy” and “freedoms” of the “free market”?

Donald Rumsfeld, US protests and the neoliberal hypocrites

Free ebook from Verso How to be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century By Erik Olin Wright