“In our present society the masses themselves are kneaded by the same mode of production as the arti-craft material foisted upon them. The customers of musical entertainment are themselves objects or, indeed, products of the same mechanisms which determine the production of popular music. Their spare time serves only to reproduce their working capacity. It is a means instead of an end. The power of the process of production extends over the time intervals which on the surface appear to be ‘free.’ They want standardized goods and pseudo-individualization, because their leisure is an escape from work and at the same time is molded after those psychological attitudes to which their workaday world exclusively habituates them. Popular music is for the masses a perpetual bus man’s holiday. Thus, there is justification for speaking of a pre-established harmony today between production and consumption of popular music. The people clamor for what they are going to get anyhow.” – Theodor W. Adorno, “On Popular Music”
Category: Economics
“All manner of valuable things lack a price tag not because they have no value, but because it is illegal to sell them.” – United States Attorney Damian Williams, “Sentencing Memorandum of the United States of America,” United States of America v. Stephen M. Calk, December 22, 2021
“We rise at sunrise, / We rest at sunset, / Dig wells and drink, / Till our fields and eat;— / What is the strength of the emperor to us?” – “Song of the peasants in the time of Yaou”, The She King, or, The Book of Poetry (trans. James Legge)
“Bureaucracy was not invented by anti-capitalists. It began with the ancient empires of Egypt, Persia, Rome and China, and it necessarily accompanies most large institutions, from churches to armies to corporations. ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”,’ Ronald Reagan famously said. He must have led a sheltered existence, but in any case it is worth asking when this has ever happened to anyone. The closest most of us come to opaque, arbitrary and unwieldy bureaucracy is with insurance or telecommunications companies. The scariest nine words might actually be spoken by the faceless operatives of my far from local and earth-sprung health insurer: ‘I’m going to transfer you to the correct department.’ ” – Jonny Thakkar, “Why Conservatives Should Read Marx”
“Only in a vague way can we conceive the character of ant-society, and the nature of ant-morality; and to do even this we must try to imagine some yet impossible state of human society and human morals. Let us, then, imagine a world full of people incessantly and furiously working,—all of whom seem to be women. No one of these women could be persuaded or deluded into taking a single atom of food more than is needful to maintain her strength; and no one of them ever sleeps a second longer than is necessary to keep her nervous system in good working-order. And all of them are so peculiarly constituted that the least unnecessary indulgence would result in some derangement of function. The work daily performed by these female laborers comprises road-making, bridge-building, timber-cutting, architectural construction of numberless kinds, horticulture and agriculture, the feeding and sheltering of a hundred varieties of domestic animals, the manufacture of sundry chemical products, the storage and conservation of countless foodstuffs, and the care of the children of the race. All this labor is done for the commonwealth—no citizen of which is capable even of thinking about ‘property,’ except as a res publica;—and the sole object of the commonwealth is the nurture and training of its young,—nearly all of whom are girls. The period of infancy is long: the children remain for a great while, not only helpless, but shapeless, and withal so delicate that they must be very carefully guarded against the least change of temperature. Fortunately their nurses understand the laws of health: each thoroughly knows all that she ought to know in regard to ventilation, disinfection, drainage, moisture, and the danger of germs,—germs being as visible, perhaps, to her myopic sight as they become to our own eyes under the microscope. Indeed, all matters of hygiene are so well comprehended that no nurse ever makes a mistake about the sanitary conditions of her neighborhood. In spite of this perpetual labor no worker remains unkempt: each is scrupulously neat, making her toilet many times a day. But as every worker is born with the most beautiful of combs and brushes attached to her wrists, no time is wasted in the toilet-room. Besides keeping themselves strictly clean, the workers must also keep their houses and gardens in faultless order, for the sake of the children. Nothing less than an earthquake, an eruption, an inundation, or a desperate war, is allowed to interrupt the daily routine of dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, and disinfecting.” – Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
“Did feudalism and chattel slavery reside within the nascent globalizing frame? Did Kant drink coffee? The second question answers the first. Yes, and there’s no reason why we have to choose between these modes of production when thinking macrohistorically, as long as we are specific about what makes both so different. In this effort, it’s especially important to understand that consumption as the auratic telos of ‘trade’—the sweets you eat, the tobacco you smoke—has a pesky habit of mystifying differences in modes of production and unevenness in history (and thus in human lives), with the result that the vast distances between regions are closed into one airtight global space. The movement of commodities like sugar, tobacco, coffee, and cotton from colonies to nation-states; the transformation of European aesthetics to suit the colonial imperial imagination in all its overreach; the emergence of entire legal systems to try to eradicate feudalism (unsuccessfully); the parliamentary decisions to withdraw from the slave trade (unsuccessfully)—these all will disclose the total frame of their own possibility as long as we adopt a version of difference that remains deeply critical and enables us to think the abstract identities through which globalization itself obliquely appears.” –Andrew Cole, “The Function of Theory at the Present Time”
“India was the most populous region of the world at the time of the Periplus, as it was the most cultivated, the most active industrially and commercially, the richest in natural resources and production, the most highly organized socially, the most wretched in the poverty of its teeming millions, and the least powerful politically. The great powers of India were the Kushan in the far northwest, the Saka in the Cambay country, the remains of the Maurya in the Ganges watershed, the Andhra in the Deccan, and the Chera, Pandya and Chola in the South. The economic status of the country made it impossible that any one of these should possess political force commensurate with its population, resources and industries. It was made up of village communities, which recognized the military power only so far as they were compelled to do so; and they were relatively unconcerned in dynastic changes, except to note the change in their oppressors.” – The Periplus of the Erythaean Sea (Wilfred H. Schoff, trans. & ann.)
“A tax is not an assessment of benefits. It is a means of distributing the burden of the cost of government. The only benefit to which the taxpayer is constitutionally entitled is that derived from his enjoyment of the privileges of living in an organized society, established and safeguarded by the devotion of taxes to public purposes. Any other view would preclude the levying of taxes except as they are used to compensate for the burden on those who pay them, and would involve the abandonment of the most fundamental principle of government—that it exists primarily to provide for the common good.” – Justice Garman, Arangold Corp. v. Zehnder, 204 Ill. 2d 142 (Ill. 2003) (internal cites and quotations omitted).
“You will be much more in control, if you realize how much you are not in control.” – Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor
“Risk only money. Never your freedom. Better to wash dishes. It will do less harm to your élan than four days in prison.” – Walter Serner, Last Loosening: A Handbook for Imposters and Those Who Aspire to Be (trans. Lydia Davis)
“The ideal of the simple yeoman living close to nature, applying himself with loving care to the soil, and supplying virtually all his modest needs with his own labor and that of his family was an ideal first of the educated elite who read pastoral poetry and later of agrarian ideologues and politicians who wanted to claim a moral superiority for the farmer. It was never an ideal of the yeoman farmers themselves. They might pride themselves on being able to meet the demands of self-sufficiency, but they were in haste to get out of their original lean-tos and log cabins into comfortable frame houses which they might hope to furnish with a respectable share of the world’s comforts.” – Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750: A Social Portrait
“Sumer, its rise and fall, provides the historian with the most ancient example of the poignant irony inherent in man’s fate. As the Sumerian literary documents make amply manifest, it was the competitive drive for superiority and preeminence, for victory, prestige, and glory, that provided the psychological motivation sparking the material and cultural advances for which the Sumerians are justifiably noted: large-scale irrigation, technological invention, monumental architecture, writing, education, and literature. Sad to say, this very passion for competition and success carried within it the seed of destruction and decay. In the course of the centuries, Sumer became a ‘sick society’ with deplorable failings and distressing shortcomings: it yearned for peace and was constantly at war; it professed such ideals as justice, equity, and compassion, but abounded in injustice, inequality, and oppression; materialistic and short-sighted, it unbalanced the ecology essential to its economy; it was afflicted by a generation gap between parents and children, and between teachers and students. And so Sumer came to a cruel, tragic end, as one melancholy Sumerian bard bitterly laments: Law and order ceased to exist; cities, houses, stalls, and sheepfolds were destroyed; rivers and canals flowed with bitter waters; fields and steppes grew nothing but weeds and ‘wailing plants.’ The mother cared not for her children, nor the father for his spouse, and nursemaids chanted no lullabies at the crib. No one trod the highways and the roads; the cities were ravaged and their people were killed by the mace or died of famine. Finally, over the land fell a calamity ‘undescribable and unknown to man.’ – Samuel Noah Kramer, “Sumerian History, Culture, and Literature”
“One thing about officers is they always get paid.” – Paulette Jiles, “Dune Trek”
“We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and
unemployment;
• The right to a good education.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Second Bill of Rights,” January 11, 1944
“Judges must keep in mind that poverty is not a crime; it is a condition, and every day presents a struggle for the poor to survive, to cope, to get by until tomorrow. When one is poor, drifting into petty crime can become an option, despite its undeniable risks.” – Justice Michael B. Hyman, The People of the State of Illinois v. Harley Busse (Illinois Appellate Court, First District, December 17, 2016)
“Seaports should defend themselves; the sphere of the fleet is on the open sea, its object offence rather than defence, its objective the enemy’s shipping wherever it can be found.” – Captain A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
“The remission of debts was peculiar to Solon; it was his great means for confirming the citizens’ liberty; for a mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich. A yet more extraordinary success was, that, although usually civil violence is caused by any remission of debts, upon this one occasion this dangerous but powerful remedy actually put an end to civil violence already existing,” – “Comparison of Poplicola with Solon,” Plutarch’s Lives (trans. A. H. Clough)
“The trading temper, independent and insubordinate, is absolutely opposed to the military spirit.” – Admiral comte Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez, bailli de Suffren, Letter to Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix de Castries, marquis de Castries, baron des États de Languedoc, comte de Charlus, baron de Castelnau et de Montjouvent, seigneur de Puylaurens et de Lézignan, Autumn 1782
“The middle of a great and unsuccessful war is no time to begin preparations. ‘Better late than never’ is not so safe a proverb as ‘In time of peace prepare for war.’ “ – Captain A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
“War, with its many acknowledged sufferings, is above all harmful when it cuts a nation off from others and throws it back upon itself. There may indeed be periods when such rude shocks have a bracing effect, but they are exceptional, and of short duration, and they do not invalidate the general statement.” – Captain A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
“Neither individual nations nor men can thrive when severed from natural intercourse with their kind; whatever the native vigor of constitution, it requires healthful surroundings, and freedom to draw to itself from near and from far all that is conducive to its growth and strength and general welfare. Not only must the internal organism work satisfactorily, the processes of decay and renewal, of movement and circulation, go on easily, but, from sources external to themselves, both mind and body must receive healthful and varied nourishment.” – Captain A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
“There really is no reason / for much of anything humans do / once you get past hunting and fishing, / farming and shelter building. / Oh, sure, art makes sense too / if you look at the cave drawings. / Everything else is an agreed-upon / arrangement we promise / not to make fun of each other for— / sitting at desks making up stuff— / then we exchange pieces of paper / we agreed upon has value, / sometimes we laugh, / sometimes we cry, depending. / Nowdays everybody wants me to / buy a lot of gold but I would rather / have some dirt and a few seeds.” – Greg Kosmicki, “The Lucky Ones” (spelling in original)
“Men may be discontented at the lack of political privilege; they will be yet more uneasy if they come to lack bread.” – Captain A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
“In these three things—production, with the necessity of exchanging products, shipping, whereby the exchange is carried on, and colonies, which facilitate and enlarge the operations of shipping and tend to protect it by multiplying points of safety—is to be found the key to much of the history, as well as of the policy, of nations bordering upon the sea.” – Captain A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
“Even one war in space will create a battlefield that will last forever, encasing the entire planet in a shell of whizzing debris that will thereafter make space near the earth highly hazardous for peaceful as well as military purposes. With enough orbiting debris, pieces will begin to hit other pieces, whose fragments will in turn hit more pieces, setting off a chain reaction of destruction that will leave a lethal halo around the Earth.” – Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams, “Star Wars Forever?—A Cosmic Perspective”
“This system is a fucking circle of doom. Produce more and more cheaply, and make the consumer swallow faster and faster. And the key to keeping the goddamn assembly line moving, you know what it is? That nothing that’s consumed is real; what’s real is expensive, and gets consumed slowly. That’s why the ultimate solution is: nothing can be real. None of the food or the clothes or the music or the books or the drugs are real. It seems like food, like clothes, like music, but it’s all just something like those things, made to be devoured immediately. It’s a perfect system. A magnificent, gigantic, super-efficient piece of machinery that produces nothing, totally and absolutely nothing.” – Andrés Ressia Colino, “Scenes from a Comfortable Life” (trans. Katherine Silver)
“I like buying new technology because it takes me quite a long time to realize it is pointless. I read the instructions, hit the keys, connect a cable here and another there, and feel as if I’m confronting a huge mystery I have to solve. And I enjoy it. Then there is no mystery, only a useless gadget I jettison in any old drawer.” – Alberto Olmos, “Eva and Diego” (trans. Peter Bush)
“Spending is about the fear of dying. Everything I’ve ever bought is a bet I place that I’ll keep on living. . . . We buy because we want to be here for a lot longer, because what we acquire needs us alive. Things make claims on us. The meaning of life is simply that everything we buy is meaningless if we are dead. Spending implies a future.” – Alberto Olmos, “Eva and Diego” (trans. Peter Bush)
“If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions; but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of those groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.” – Richard Wright, Black Boy
“Among the topics that southern white men did not like to discuss with Negroes were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; Frenchwomen; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U. S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the part of the Negro.” – Richard Wright, Black Boy