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Tom London

@TomLondon6

Jan 7

EXTRACTS from
WHY SOCIALISM? by Albert Einstein, an article published in the US magazine May 1949

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Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

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But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society

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Tom London

@TomLondon6

Dec 30, 2024

Extracts from "Exterminate All the Brutes" by Sven Lindqvist

The title comes from "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Book is about genocides carried out by European colonialists who (despite their high-flown rhetoric) considered indigenous peoples inferior or non-human
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Hannah Arendt showed how racism is central to imperialism, colonialism, occupation

#Gaza #WestBank

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Arendt: "wild murderings" & "terrible massacres" of European imperialists were responsible for "the triumphant introduction of such means of pacification into ordinary, respectable foreign policy"

Lindquist: "European shameless defence of extermination"

#GazaGenocide

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Tom London

@TomLondon6

Nov 26, 2024

"When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles, or the Irish, or any white man in the world says “give me liberty, or give me death,” the entire white world applauds.
When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n____ so there won't be any more like him"
- James Baldwin

"The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world"
- James Baldwin

"It's no credit to this enormously rich country that there are more oppressive, less decent governments elsewhere. We claim superiority of our institutions. We ought to live up to our own standards, not use misery elsewhere as an endless source of self-gratification and justification. Of course, people tell me all the time in the West that they are trying, they are trying hard. Some have tears in their eyes and let me know how awful they feel about the way our poor live, our blacks, or those in dozens of other countries. People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street"
- James Baldwin

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Tom London

@TomLondon6

Apr 24, 2024

Extracts from "Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims" by Edward Said (1979)

Very little is said about what Zionism entailed for non-Jews who happened to have encountered it; for that matter, nothing is said about where (outside Jewish history) it took place, and from what in the historical context of nineteenth-century Europe Zionism drew its force. To the Palestinian, for whom Zionism was somebody else's idea imported into Palestine and for which in a very concrete way he or she was made to pay and suffer, these forgotten things about Zionism are the very things that are centrally important.

Edward Said (continued)

Present political and cultural actualities make...an examination extraordinarily difficult, as much because Zionism in the postindustrial West has acquired for itself an almost unchallenged hegemony in liberal "establishment" discourse, as because in keeping with one of its central ideological characteristics, Zionism has hidden, or caused to disappear, the literal historical ground of its growth, its political cost to the native inhabitants of Palestine, and its militantly oppressive discriminations between Jews and non-Jews.

Edward Said (continued)

The special, one might even call it the privileged, place in this discussion of the US is impressive, for all sorts of reasons. In no other country, except Israel, is Zionism enshrined as an unquestioned good, and in no other country is there so strong a conjuncture of powerful institutions and interests-the press, the liberal intelligentsia, the military-industrial complex, the academic community, labor unions-for whom [...] uncritical support of Israel and Zionism enhances their domestic as well as international standing

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Tom London

@TomLondon6

Mar 12, 2024

“It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

“...we can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

“That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. ... the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

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Tom London

@TomLondon6

Feb 24, 2024

"Silence in the face of injustice is complicity"
- Henrik Ibsen

#Gaza

"The measure of a civilised society is how it treats its dissenters"
- Henrik Ibsen

#repressionofprotest

"Fear is the weapon of those who seek to maintain power through oppression"
- Henrik Ibsen

#whippingupIslamophobia

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