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Property and Socialism
essays, pieces, articles, stories, commentaries, discourses
Image: From "Power" Gallery
from RadicalGraphics.org
Description: Your thought processes are going to be influenced by everything you hear, see, and feel. Within Capitalism, that means thousands of the persistent voices of the marketing and advertising firms.
Quote: "No longer does the system tell its people that they must obey because god has ordained it, or that they must submit because the glory of their nation and people depend upon it. Such lies can hardly be swallowed in this age of thought."
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Description: A long piece, covering the abuse of the Capitalist system on the worker, an ideal socio-economic organization, and the principles and essentials that will help us change the current system.
Quote: "My appeal here, then, for the American people, is an appeal for a Communist economy, as much as it is an appeal for an Anarchist society."
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Description: Your life is spent under the thumb of a capitalist. And even though you could change your master, you can't change your condition.
Quote: "Your master is exactly that: someone who determines your situation for you. They might be your factory floorman, your manager, your supervisor, or just your boss."
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Description: In Capitalism, a very few people own everything, and they dispose of it like they are monarchs tending to their empire. And we, the workers, are their exploited serfs.
Quote: "Now the question is... are you really benefiting from powerful monarchs having isolated control of all of society's industries?"
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Description: To oppose the wage exploitation of the Capitalist system necessarily comes with an embrace of a different system. An organization where all individuals have an equal opportunity to work and benefit from a land -- a Socialist organization.
Quote: "In Socialism, the laborer is the direct manager of their means of production, and receives the whole of their production. In Capitalism, the laborer is dominated by a Capitalist, who directs production and sets wages."
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Description: The family and community ask you to cherish what is good and what creates happiness for all. They do not give you selfishness, greed, hate, or fear. They do not ask you to dominate, but to cooperate.
Quote: "It is not just our clothing and our bread that is tainted with this blood money. Our paychecks, too, because the profit of our bosses is made with tools made in sweatshops and forced labor camps."
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Description: The system of property has work, but is it good work? Even if you can get a job, is it going to be something that satisfies you individually as a person?
Quote: "Everyone wants to feel useful and to be part of the greater social order. We value and cherish things according to the ideas we have taken from the people around us...."
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Description: Masters of the economy are always appealing to the governors and senators to make the laws in their favor. They are always using force, law, violence, and poverty to dominate society.
Quote: "This is why Capitalism is barbaric! It takes lives, it finally closes the eyes of hungry children every night, it reaps its harvests by looting the dead!"
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Description: When the land and productive property is held by a very few, it will always be directed against the interests of the majority of society's happiness.
Quote: "If we believe in human happiness as an ultimate end of society, then necessarily, it is within our duty to work towards the equalizing of bargaining power for all participants of society."
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Description: An Anarchist-Capitalist and an Anarchist-Collectivist debate on what type of economy would be necessary for the stateless world.
Quote: "The state is the greatest of all evils in society, as it has suppressed everyone from reaching their fullest potential."
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Description: A correspondence between myself and the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism.
Quote: "In the 1800's, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, it was not a glorious time, nor was it even a pleasant time, unless you were one of the few abusive Capitalists."
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Description: A short piece describing the importance of the regulation of economics in regards to humane goals.
Quote: "The mistrusted government officials shook the hand of hypocrisy and brought corruption to an entirely new level."
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Description: Poverty and unemployment, the police state and civil rights violations. All of this drives back to a society that is controlled, dominated, and exploited by a very few. It all drives back to Capitalism.
Quote: "Every Capitalist will expect the same out of you: to sacrifice the greater part of your labors to satisfy their profit. To disempower so many and to absolutely empower so few must naturally be the cause of our social ills."
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Description: The system of Capitalism produces the ailment and a shotty cure; Consumer Culture has masterfully refined this system to maximum efficiency.
Quote: "They ask us to seek satisfaction in cooperation with each other in order to secure their interests. That is the principle effect of Consumer Culture."
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Description: If Socialism is going to succeed and win the hearts of the people, it must be cooperative. It must be voluntary, free, and mutual.
Quote: "Even where this Socialist government adopts a very broad program, there will always be complaints. There will always be individuals who feel themselves sacrificed or exploited or dispossessed."
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Description: Explanation behind the motives and the causes that result in criminal behavior, particularly focusing on crimes of greed.
Quote: "Out of sight. Out of mind. The police and soldiers take on the 'insurgent' masses while the media convinces the rest that slavery is freedom."
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Description: Capitalism has reached its height, where it can pay people just to act sorry as a luxury to the rich. The customer service business depends on it.
Quote: "You're not here to labor, you're here to satisfy. You're here to make people feel good about doing business with the person who signs your paychecks."
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Description: Everyone has demanded democracy and self-rule of politics, but why do we not have the same spirit in economics? Why do we still tolerate the exploiting tyrants of Capitalism?
Quote: "The individual must want to possess some right over how they live when they are at their place of work. If we want to be self-ruled in society, then we must naturally want to be self-ruled in our own homes and at our jobs."
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Description: Today, everyone fights for the right of self-rule in politics and in society, but why has this struggle not extended into the sphere of your working conditions? Why are you free from a king but not free from a boss?
Quote: "I ask for Democracy of industry, just in the same manner as all freedom-loving people ask for Democracy of political institutions and Democracy of social institutions."
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Description: Many claim that immigrants are responsible for lowering the standards of wages and working conditions, but what is really at the core of the economic problem? What is the real question to be asking in terms of the economics of immigration?
Quote: "Well, one could either say that wages decline because of the influx of labor into a market that has no change in demand for labor. Or, you could say that it's actually the present situation between the owning class and the working class that alienates the workers from their own labor."
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Description: Everyone who works has a manager, a supervisor, or a boss. But is that person really doing anything to improve your standard of life and work? This is the question you need to ask yourself as a laboring member of society.
Quote: "The defining aspect of the relationship is that of authority: a single person, or a group of persons, demands that you do something, and you do it. The result is necessarily submission toward what is demanded of you, and you accept this just to get your paycheck."
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Description: Should the means of production be under the management and control of all people, or should just a few be in charge? Should our economy be run democratically, or like a tyranny?
Quote: "Economic Democracy translates to the same idea, but applied to economy. It seeks to give an equal voice to all workers in determining the organization of land and work..."
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Description: An economic dissertation on how Free Enterprise will result in a very real slavery of the workers.
Quote: "Competition may be properly defined as individuals each giving an offer of their product, each trying to be better so that the consumer will make the decision to purchase their product."
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Description: In this age of revolutionary technology, there is a need for a revolutionary ideology. Here it is.
Quote: "They are attacking P2P networks today, because it is no longer fashionable to burn down libraries. A free society is a threat to corporations, especially when these corporations gain their power from us needing them."
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Description: All Socialist theory is based on certain premises, such as the relationship of work and life, the inequality of the worker and the capitalist, and the way of changing that inequality.
Quote: "Bargaining power: this is what it all returns to when it comes to determining the wages that we live upon, the income that feeds us and our families."
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Description: All parts of our present social order are governed and commanded by the Capitalists. No matter where you look, you can see the domination and control of a few over many -- everywhere you look, you can see the victims.
Quote: "No sweatshop could live without military and police intervention. And no tyranny could sustain itself without the funds of some privileged class. Government and Capitalism."
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Description: A theory, an ideology, and a plan for the working class to effectively organize and satisfy their interests in the social world.
Quote: "In one word or two, we can describe the activities of the wealthy class as exploitive; they all seek, in one way or another, to make men labor and create vast quantities of wealth for their economic masters."
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Description: The history of the working class is one of exploitation. It is only just that today's workers are protected from the destruction of health that killed their ancestors.
Quote: "Something invaluable was taken from the most innocent ranks of humanity. It is only fair that something invaluable be indebted upon those who committed the first crime."
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Description: For there to be a true prosperity, everyone must have opportunity. But Capitalism has never produced full employment for the people. If that is true, how can we actually create productive jobs?
Quote: "There is enough land for each person to work, and to be fed by their labors. There are enough factories, enough gears and cogs, enough iron presses and refineries and assembly lines and storefronts for everyone!"
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Description: Everything you could want to accomplish, anything you could want to be known for, is determined by social conditions imposed by rulers. And society's rulers are the property owners.
Quote: "You could've really contributed something unique to civilization, you could have genuinely advanced humanity as a whole -- but instead, you're dancing like a puppet."
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Description: The history of the working class is one of exploitation. It is only just that today's workers are protected from the destruction of health that killed their ancestors.
Quote: "Something invaluable was taken from the most innocent ranks of humanity. It is only fair that something invaluable be indebted upon those who committed the first crime."
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Description: Wars are waged by the wealthy and the powerful classes, because that gives them greater power in lands, in profits, in contracts, in weapons merchandising, and in new workers to exploit.
Quote: "War has been an effort to gain massive amounts of wealth. And not wealth that can be used to make the common people self-sufficient, but only vast quantities that can be hoarded up by the few."
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Description: Society cannot be improved by just helping one or two people. If all we do is help one or two people, we're just helping them take more from the others. Everyone must be improved, together, in order for society to move forward.
Quote: "To improve one worker's condition will only degrade the other workers. The only way to help the individual is to help the collective."
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Description: Tyrannical capitalism produces the same grievances and social disturbances as tyrannical state power. They are both forms of authority, and if you oppose one, you should oppose the other.
Quote: "If the acts of government are to be detested, then certainly the acts of capitalism are equally brutal and inhumane. For every war, there is someone to profit off of it."
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Description: An examination of a fluctuating pre-planned economy, and the role of the people in producing and consuming the wealth of their labor.
Quote: "Economics is a siocological study: it seeks to grasp and understand the fluctuation and mechanics of the interaction between people of the same society."
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Description: An examination of a fluctuating pre-planned economy, and the role of the people in producing and consuming the wealth of their labor.
Quote: "Economics is a siocological study: it seeks to grasp and understand the fluctuation and mechanics of the interaction between people of the same society."
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Description: Can we reduce our workday today, while maintaining our standard of living? If technology is getting more and more productive, why are we working more and more?
Quote: "Today, like several decades ago, the standard working-day is eight hours. But since those several decades have past, productivity has skyrocketed."
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Description: Labor produces everything, all necessities and all luxuries. It is from the worker and the working class that we have all that we possess. But what does that mean?
Quote: "There is not one thing of value that came about without the expense of labor -- there is not one object we endear which came about without the purchase of the body's blood and the mind's devotion. Everything of value only has that value because of the labor that went into it. This is what I intend to prove beyond any doubt."
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Description: The landlords are exploiters, and while we labor in miserable conditions, they live idly in weath. It is for the benefit of all that they are disempowered of their right to the land!
Quote: "Whether Capitalist or landlord, they live not by working, but by title; they live not by contributing, but by some artificial claim that excludes all humanity a right to live."
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Description: The right to inhabit unoccupied buildings must be guaranteed for every just democracy. It is essential.
Quote: "Until all governments are abolished in favor of a just, mutual, and cooperative relationship between all civilizations, until that day, all states, governments, and councils should legalize squatting; that is, they should allow people to sleep in unused buildings, even if privately owned."
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Description: The most genuine expression of dissatisfaction is the refusal of the masses to have anything to do with their exploiters. That can be accomplished through the General Strike.
Quote: "While every General Strike has its own conditions and historical setting, they are all in agreement on this single point: the mass refusal to work under any boss."
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Description: By isolating wealth into the hands of a few, capitalists become monopolists. They make it easier to create profit, at the cost of famine -- to create wealth, at the cost of human want and suffering.
Quote: "You're not unemployed because there's no productive labor left. It's because someone who owned the land knew they could benefit from making you want more -- from making you desperate."
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Description: Advertising is used by capitalism to encourage you to submit to their orders and to buy more useless products. And who is there to help them? The celebrity.
Quote: "There must also be a resentment or disgust for the public from these celebrities. They must know that they have no real knowledge or background in the product that they are selling."
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Description: The economy can be given to the nation, where a nationally elected body decides what happens, or the economy can be given to society, where local communities have the decision-making power.
Quote: "The purpose of establishing any public control over industry, whether it is nationalizing or socializing, is to avoid a monopoly from falling into possession of those against either the nation or society."
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Description: Early piece with thoughts and ideas on the necessity of regulation of economy for humane standards.
Quote: "The working class have a right to Socialism..."
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Description: Some thoughtful questions and linear answers to the economic, social, and political consequencs that comes with restrictive regulating laws.
Quote: "Regulatory law is where Socialism meets Liberalism; or what might be called the highest form of Liberalism, the lowest form of Socialism."
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Description: What is the cause of crime? Is it the individual and their particular failings, or is it the environment and its lack of resources?
Quote: "It is easier to attach blame to a single, living, breathing human being with a face and voice than it is to blame social situations that effect millions of individuals. A law-breaking citizen is a single person with a single name...."
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Description: Examination of the principles of profit and their influence on the behavior of man, in the fields of economics, sociology, and political theory.
Quote: "The greatest irony of our world is that we will curse anyone who wants to enslave another man for his race, but we praise those who enslave another man because of his class."
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Description: To be able to really scare those in power, we need to withdraw their ability to give commands and orders -- we need to unionize and strike.
Quote: "But for those on top, work is their source of power, control, domination, and a freedom from both labor and poverty. For those who live by owning factories, mines, and farms, it is our work that brings all the things they need and want."
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Description: Economies are driven by consumption, because without spending on industry, there cannot be employment at that industry. Ultimately, then, it is a question of how consumption redistributes wealth throughout society.
Quote: "Society would function in a far more organic way than it has ever before. No longer would entire masses be enslaved to an eight-hour standard that binds them to some monotonous and useless labor."
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Description: Everywhere, Capitalists and governments try to get the workers to celebrate their labor day in September. They want to hide from you the history and the truth behind the real labor day -- May First.
Quote: "It is a tragedy with the two most characteristic individuals of the century -- a police officer who shoots into crowds and openly claims that this is the expected behavior, and a working-class individual, marching with others in a collective, against the tyrannies of the Capitalist system."
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Description: It is almost everywhere assumed that Democrats are pro-labor while Republicans are anti-labor, but very few people investigate the actual voting record of these parties on the issues. There is cause to question the utility of organized labor supporting the state.
Quote: "Why not make a general strike against the conditions that would strip unions of their rights? Well, the Democratic Party technically made that illegal, by overriding Truman's veto in 1947."
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Description: Everyone has a right to the ground that they are born onto. Everyone has a right to the earth they breath, the water they drink, and the food they eat.
Quote: "But everyone has a right to the earth, to benefit from society, to the industrial production of past ages. And if we don't have that right, then every other right is a lie."
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Description: A treatise on behalf of those without the wealth of the world or the custom of the higher class.
Quote: "There are empty buildings occupied by no person. There are people with no place to live. This is not a liberal or conservative matter. It is matter of justice."
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Description: Society today suffers from unemployment and underemployment, but why can't we find work for everyone? Can't it have something to do with the productivity of machinery?
Quote: "What would happen if all of the machines were smashed? Wouldn't that create many more jobs and much more employment?"
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Description: Explaining the fundamental and essential reasons for promoting Socialism, while answering arguments against such a theory.
Quote: "The rights of the people under Capitalism have long been asserted long ago by the philosopher John Locke. Among the rights of men, he said we are entitled to life, liberty, and property."
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Description: Governments and corporate marketing agencies are trying to convince you not to download programs off of the internet. But all of those programs are in the public domain. That is the legal requirement of patenting.
Quote: "All software bytecode is in the public domain. What do I mean by that? I mean, explicitly, that these anti-piracy organizations are going after people who are distributing public domain material."
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Description: Trade unions in the United States, like around the world, have been growing conservative, traditional, and part of the established order. There must be a way to make the labor movement revolutionary again.
Quote: "In 1968, when 10 million workers in France seized their industries, all of the popular trade unions came out in opposition to them. In contrast, they chose a less democratic alternative: supporting the 5 million workers in France who still obeyed their masters."
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Description: Our new, revolutionary society can be based on collective management, or communal distribution. It can be a society where each is rewarded according to want, or according to contribution.
Quote: "All of the machinery and the fields, the mines and the warehouses, shall become the common property of everyone. It will be up to the people themselves to manage and operate these productive forces as they see fit."
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Description: When you organize as workers, you are organizing as the force that as been exploited and oppressed by Capitalism. You are organizing as a force that can challenge and question that authority.
Quote: "Labor activists fight in the workplace, where they are capable of really improving the standards of the workers. The toilers, in strike and boycott action, are radicalized by their experience."
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Description: If society is formed by the efforts and labors of each individual, then the strike can hold the greatest threat to the status quo.
Quote: "Syndicalism is more than just a style of unionism; it is a theory of how to create a true Democracy without authority."
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Description: You do the work, your boss manages it; you build the wealth, your boss takes its inventory; you do the job, your boss gets wealthy for it. How much do they really understand you?
Quote: "They don't do the job, but they'll judge you about it; they can't stand the labor you do, but they'll still criticize you about it. This is your boss, and it is the same in all businesses."
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Description: Over the past few centuries, humanity has increased its productive output by a thousand times. Why is it, then, that we are living in worsened conditions and more exploited?
Quote: "It is a world where factories and manufacturing plants have poisoned the air, destroyed the atmosphere, and filled the oceans with tons of mercury. Something as simple as a children's toy can give you lead poisoning, and something as common as a car can puts cancerous toxins into your body."
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Description: What is the power of the many when they are organized together for their own self-interests? What is the power of the people when they have cooperated with each other to resist a common oppressor?
Quote: "The one, big union of all workers can only function where it serves the end of all workers -- it cannot make itself an organ of politics, a church that mandates opinions, or dominates by a leadership."
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Description: Examining what it means to be employed, and what it means to be unemployed; what it means to be your own master, and what it means to be subjugated.
Quote: "It is the same as all past revolutions. Collective action to create individual liberty!"
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Description: Your ancestors lived a very different life from how we live today; it is important to examine how your liberty compares with theirs.
Quote: "To stop the tyranny of the few, we need an economy managed collectively by the people themselves."
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Description: If land was managed by society, would society improve or decay? Presently, society is owned by the few, so the few are the only ones to benefit. But if society managed, then all would benefit.
Quote: "Imagine a world where the land and all productive wealth was controlled democratically by the people -- a world where each person had an equal say in how land was organized and how industries operated. Instead of the majority of land operating for the benefit of the few, it would operate for the benefit of all!"
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Description: Investigating where wealth and luxury come from; and then analyzing the idea of rights and justice in terms of property.
Quote: "...we are living on a planet where the few, idle Capitalists own the majority of wealth."
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Description: Society in Capitalism finds a way to exclude people from the basic socializing mechanisms by using privilege and economic domination.
Quote: "To have access to any of these social environments, even for the right to sit and sulk at a bar table, one must have the key that gets them past the gate. In Capitalism, the gate is private property, and money is the key."
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Description: Examines the original owner of the land, all of humanity, and then examines the history of these rights.
Quote: "If you want to make your right to the land real, then we need to organize!"
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Description: Millions cannot find work, even though they throw in their best strength and effort. Why is this the situation, when there is enough land for everyone to make enough to feed themselves?
Quote: "With this picture of the economy's cyclic motions, are we really closer to understanding a legitimate answer to why you may have become unemployed?"
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Description: The productivity of the laborers and machinery has produced a tremendous amount of wealth. But there are still those without bread, or housing, even though their labor could make enough for a thousand. Why?
Quote: "Why does world hunger exist? Because what produces it, private ownership of the land, benefits the Capitalist. How are we going to end it? By directing social wealth according to the interests of society."
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Description: Industry must be organized according to some principle, whether it is the dictatorship of the employer, or the democracy of the workers. Some force must make the necessary decisions of economic life.
Quote: "Society is just an organization of people who are working together mutually for the improvement of every participant. Now we have a choice -- what is better in meeting the needs and desires of every member of society?"
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Description: Brief explanation of the interests of the workers versus the interests of the capitalists. Those who live in a community, value it, but those who live off of it, only exploit it.
Quote: "If the workers owned the places where they worked, it would create social harmony."
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Description: Everyone is constantly thinking about their culture and their material well-being, but how is it that these thoughts are compatible with the means of culture and wealth owned by a very few?
Quote: "There is one way the Capitalists could make control be completely inoffensive, and that is by completely abolishing it."
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Description: From exploitation to poverty, environmental destruction to crime, discrimination to democratic government, Capitalism is always a threat to what is good for the hwole of society.
Quote: "If there is an initial displeasure with Capitalism, it is this: the many who work receive very little, while those few who do not labor receive the greatest income."
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Description: Every political theory has some criticism of Capitalism. But even though they all see the same problem, they don't see the same solution. But Anarchism, in understanding authority, is capable of understanding its solution.
Quote: "Worker self-management is the ideal solution Capitalism, and the only real alternative. The other possible solutions only recreate the same social organization, putting the worker under the command of a small class of possessors."
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Description: When you're employed, that determines your relationship with work. It determines the relationship with the sustenance that you need everyday.
Quote: "You're the worker -- everything in society has been built by us! We can dig mines to the center of the earth, and build towers that reach into space; managing and organizing industries for ourselves will be easy!"
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Description: When you work more, it means that people get laid off. And ultimately, there has never been a form of Capitalism that did not subsist off of armies of the unemployed.
Quote: "But why is it that there are still so many who want work, so many who are begging to cultivate the land beneath their feet?"
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