What’s even worse, they deign to teach us the “real Marx” but lack the old Moor’s fundamental respect for individual working people and his readiness to become a poor outlaw on their behalf.įinally, plain “socialist” expresses identification with the broad movement and the dream rather than with a particular program or camp. In academia one runs across people who call themselves Marxists and go to lots of conferences but hardly ever march on a picket line, go to a union meeting, throw a brick or simply help wash the dishes after a benefit. Second, “old school” implies putting in work year after year for the good cause. In fact, it is my religion, the values that anchor the commitments that define my life. “First, socialism - the belief that the earth belongs to labor - is my moral being. In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire Nor did they stir the Shias of southern Iraq into revolt, then abandon them to Saddam Hussein’s executioners because George Bush senior calculated that the total destruction of the regime would create an impermissible power vacuum that Iran might rush to fill.” tax dollars the golden throne upon which Mubarak sits like a modern-day pharaoh arm Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and turn a blind eye to his genocide against the communists and Kurds then kill seventeen thousand Iraqi civilians in bombing raids during the Gulf War, including more than four hundred women and children incinerated in the Amariyah bomb shelter.

“They did not overthrow the elected government of Mossadegh in Iran support the genocide of eight hundred thousand leftists in Indonesia intervene on behalf of the fascist Phalange against the Palestinians in Lebanon fight a dirty war against Dhofarian insurgents underwrite absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia, the shah of Iran, Morocco, and the Gulf Emirates build with billions of U.S.

City of Quartz by Mike Davis