#marx

Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic—that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them. Neither are ideologies that loosen their grip easily, and people who need the security of adherence to a big dominating ideology, however much they kick and scratch but without daring to leave go, hold on to it every bit as tightly as it holds onto them. The result is of course strangulation, but alas not mutual strangulation: the ideology always wins. ↗

— A.C. Grayling

#eagleton-terry #ideology #marxism #life

Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium. ↗

— Gideon Defoe

#humor #karl-marx #opium #pirates #humor

The only real laughter comes from despair. ↗

— Groucho Marx

#groucho #laughter #marx #letters

The same rightists who decades ago were shouting, 'Better dead than red!' are now often heard mumbling, 'Better red than eating hamburgers. ↗

— Slavoj Žižek

#capitalism #communism #conservatives #hamburgers #marxism

The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl. ↗

— Irving Berlin

#karl-marx #marx-brothers #marxism #communism

The way people get their living determines their social outlook. ↗

— Karl Marx

#communism #marxism #social #socialism #communism

Those who reject Christianity will not be moved by Christ’s statement that poverty is blessed. But here a rather remarkable fact comes to my aid. Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere ‘opiate of the people’ have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor. They regard the poor as the only people worth preserving from ‘liquidation’, and place in them the only hope for the human race. But this is not compatible with a belief that the effects of poverty on those who suffer it are wholly evil; it even implies that they are good. The Marxist thus finds himself in real agreement with the Christian in those two beliefs which Christianity paradoxically demands – that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#communism #marxism #poverty #communism

With the historical radar of Marx’s theories, on whose screen observers who have not swallowed the alcohol of the intoxicating bourgeois ideology cannot read lies, in the fog of the depths off Nantacket, in the dark of the walled tomb of the living in Marcinelle, in the bitterness of the slime of the stagnant ponds of the Arabian Desert, while the forces of the Revolution seem to be hiding and Great Capital carouses in the bright sunlight, we have again found, at his inexhaustible work, the Old Mole who undermines the curse of the infamous social forms, who prepares for the not near, but most certain, destructive explosion. ↗

— Amadeo Bordiga

#left-communism #revolutionary-theory #communism

Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment are part and parcel of our economic order. Without them, capitalism would cease to function effectively, and in order to continue to function, the system itself must produce poverty and an army of underemployed or unemployed people. ↗

— Bob Torres

#economics #marxism #poverty #sociology #sociology

... You can't be with God and be neutral. / True contemplation is resistance. And poetry, / gazing at clouds is resistance I found out in jail. ↗

— Ernesto Cardenal

#marxism #poetry #catholicism