The flies in the market-place

Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.

Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with you. Resemble again the tree which you love, the broad-branched one - silently and attentively it overhangs the sea.

Where solitude ends, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there begins also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.

In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those showmen, the people call great men.

Little, do the people understand what is great - that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all showmen and actors of great things.

Around the inventors of new values revolves the world: - invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.

Spirit, has the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He believes always in that which he believes most strongly - in himself!

Tomorrow he has a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Sharp perceptions has he, like the people, and changeable humours.

To upset - that means with him to prove. To drive mad - that means with him to convince. And blood is counted by him as the best of all arguments.

A truth which only glides into sensitive ears, he calls a lie and nothing. Truly, he believes only in gods that make a great noise in the world!

Full of ceremonial clowns is the market-place, - and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.

But the hour presses them; so they press you. And also from you they want Yes or No. Alas. you would set your chair between For and Against?

On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, you lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one.

On account of those abrupt ones, return into your security: only in the market-place is one assailed by Yes? or No?

Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what has fallen into their depths.

Away from the market-place and from fame takes place all that is great: away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee there, where a rough, strong breeze blows!

Flee into your solitude! you have lived too closely to the small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards you they have nothing but vengeance.

Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not your lot to shoo flies.

Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.

You are not stone; but already have you become hollow by the numerous drops. you will yet break and burst by the numerous drops.

Exhausted I see you, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see you, and torn at a hundred spots; and your pride will not even upbraid.

Blood they would have from you in all innocence; blood their bloodless souls crave for - and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.

But you, profound one, you suffer too profoundly even from small wounds; and ere you had recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over your hand.

Too proud are you to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be your fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!

They buzz around you also with their praise: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want to be close to your skin and your blood.

They flatter you, as one flatters a God or devil; they whimper before you, as before a God or devil; What does it come to! Flatterers are they, and whimperers, and nothing more.

Often, also, do they show themselves to you as amiable ones. But that has ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yes! the cowardly are wise!

They think much about you with their circumscribed souls - you are always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious.

They punish you for all your virtues. They pardon you in their inmost hearts only - for your errors.

Because you are gentle and of upright character, you say: "Blameless are they for their small existence." But their circumscribed souls think: "Blamable is all great existence".

Even when you are gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by you; and they repay your beneficence with secret maleficence.

Your silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once you be humble enough to be frivolous.

What we recognize in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!

In your presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleams and glows against you in invisible vengeance.

Saw you not how often they became dumb when you approached them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire?

Yes, my friend, the bad conscience are you of your neighbor; for they are unworthy of you. Therefore they hate you, and would rather suck your blood.

Your neighbor will always be poisonous flies; what is great in you - that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude - and there, where a rough strong breeze blows. It is not your lot to shoo flies.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Friedrich Nietzsche

1844 - 1900

Libraries

Libraries were very important to your intellectual development when you were a kid, weren't they?

I used to haunt the main public library in dowtown Philadelphia, which was extremely good. That's where I read all the offbeat anarchist and left-Marxist literature I'm always quoting. Those were days when people read, and used the libraries very extensively. Public services were richer in many ways back in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

I think that's one of the reasons why poor, even unemployed people living in slums seemed more hopeful back then. Maybe this is sentimentality, and it involves comparing a child's perceptions ans an adult's, but I think it's true.

Libraries were one of the factors. They weren't just for educated people - a lote of people used them. That's much less true now.

I'll tell you why I asked. Recently I went back to visit the public library I used when I was a kid, on 78th and York in New York. I hadn't been there in thirty-five years, and it's now in one of the richest districts in the country.

I discovered they had very few political books. When the librarian explained that branch libraries carry mostly bestsellers, I told him I'd be happy to donate some of our books.

He expressed mild interest and suggested I fill out a form. When I went over to the desk to get one, I found out that it costs 30$ to recommend a book you think the library should purchase!

It sounds similar to what you find in the publications industry in general, including bookstores. I travel a lot and often get stuck in some airport or other... because it's snowing in Chicago, say. I used to be able to find something I wanted to read in the airport bookstore - maybe a classic, maybe something current. Now it's almost impossible. (It's not just in the US, by the way. I was stuck at the airport in Naples not long ago and the bookstore there was awful too).

I think it's mostly just plain market pressures. Bestsellers move fast, and it costs money to keep books around that don't sell very quickly. Changes in the tax laws have exacerbated the problem, by making it more expensive for publishers to hold inventory, so books tend to get remaindered (sold off a cost and put out-of-print) much sooner.

I think political books are being harmed by this - if your go into the big chains, which pretty much dominate bookselling now, you certainly don't find many of them - but the same thing is true of most books. I don't think it's political censorship.

The right wing is promoting the idea of charging people to use the library.

That's part of the whole idea of redesigning society so that it just benefits the wealthy. Notice that they aren't calling for terminating the Pentagon. They're not crazy enough to believe it's defending us from the Martians or somebody, but they understand very clearly that it's a subsidy for the rich. So the Pentagon is fine, but libraries aren't.

Lexington, the Boston suburb where I live, is an upper-middle-class, professional town where people are willing and able to contribute to the library. I give money to it and use it, and benefit from the fact that it's quite good.

But I don't like the fact that zoning laws and inadequate public transportation virtually guarantee that only rich people can live in Lexington. In poorer neighborhoods, few people have enough money to contribute to the library, or time to use it, or knowledge of what to look for once they're there.

Let me tell you a dismal story. One of my daughters lived in a declining old mill town. It's not a horrible slum, but it's fading away. The town happens to have a rather nice public library - not a wonderful collection, but good things for children. It's nicely laid out, imaginatively designed, staffed by a couple of librarians.

I went with her kids on a Saturday afternoon, and nobody was there except a few children of local professional families. Where are the kids who ought to be there? I don't know, probably watching television, but going to the library just isn't the kind of thing they do.

It was the kind of thing you did if you were a working-class person fifty or sixty years ago. Emptying people's minds of the ability, or even the desire, to gain access to cultural resources - that's a tremendous victory for the system.

Noam Chomsky

The booksellers

Como nos conta Robert Darnton, em seu ensaio O que é a história do livro?, os leitores do século XVIII não apenas davam atenção para a mensagem verbal do livro, mas também para o seu material: 

Os leitores discutiam o grau de brancura, a textura e a elasticidade do papel. Eles empregavam um rico vocabulário estético para descrever suas qualidades, tal como o fazem hoje em relação ao vinho.

Claro, ainda há outros estágios no ciclo de vida de uma edição, como os fenômenos da preservação, da evolução na história do livro e o que os leitores fazem dele.

Em muitos espaços do mundo, lá está a obra, em seu aspecto físico, como elemento essencial no desenvolvimento da cultura.

Junk news

Exposição de fuzis para estudantes é a nova chupeta dos jovens sem futuro. No Paraná, os professores e aposentados não praticam a leitura, porque os pirralhos seriam diferentes? É projeto político afastar a garotada o mais rápido possível do pensamento crítico.

Para que desenvolver a vida da mente se você pode encher o oponente de bala? Não há imagem melhor que retrate o universo dos subdesenvolvidos, dos atrasados intelectualmente.

Porque não me ufano

A tribuna da Câmara dos Deputados virou um ringue de MMA. A hegemonia da pequena política se estabeleceu. É a luta pela predominância fascista: encher de porrada o oponente, caçar comunista (chega a ser patético) e provocar a raiva do populacho subdesenvolvido com objetivo de conquistar likes como se a escória dissesse amém.

Fascisme et grand capital

É preciso retomar a lição de Daniel Guérin para combater o fascismo por meio de pesquisas eruditas:

Quem são os financiadores, as tropas, a demagogia fascista, a tática fascista, a verdadeira doutrina fascista, o fascismo contra a classe trabalhadora, política econômica do fascismo, política agrícola do fascismo, etc.

A hegemonia da pequena política

A palavra "reforma" foi sempre organicamente ligada às lutas dos subalternos para transformar a sociedade e, por conseguinte, assumiu na linguagem política uma conotação claramente progressista e até mesmo de esquerda. O neoliberalismo busca utilizar a seu favor a aura de simpatia que envolve a ideia de "reforma". É por isso que as medidas por ele propostas e implementadas são mistificadoramente apresentadas como "reformas". O que antes da onda neoliberal queria dizer ampliação dos direitos, proteção social, controle e limitação do mercado etc., significa agora cortes, restrições, supressão desses direitos e desse controle. Estamos diante de uma operação de mistificação ideológica que, infelizmente, tem sido em grande medida bem-sucedida.

Carlos Nelson Coutinho

1943 - 2012

Skepticism

One

If we had functioning labor unions, the working class would be concernes with the world. But you should have been out making money or watching TV, going to church, keep you doped. Just being depoliticized.

Changing minds is not easy. Especially when beliefs are deeply held.

Porque não me ufano

A apatia é um fenômeno de massas e um importante fator para a conservação da plutocracia nacional. A direita não precisa mais de coerção para dominar, impõe-se através do consenso passivo: a aceitação resignada das classes subalternas do existente como algo "natural".

Porque não me ufano

O Brasil é como uma sociedade camponesa do século V. Noventa por cento dos periféricos acreditam literalmente em milagres religiosos e acham que o mundo foi criado há alguns milhares de anos. Esse tipo de alienação social não é possível encontrar em sociedades desenvolvidas do primeiro mundo.

A periferia do capitalismo tem uma população muito despolitizada e essa é uma das causas do fundamentalismo religioso. A vida social e política não oferece oportunidades para formar comunidades alternativas e se associar a coisas que sejam realmente significativas. Afogar-se na lamúria cristã é a única saída para o subdesenvolvido, visto que não se pode brindar ao eleitorado fanático algo de concreto e moderno, oferta-se coisas simbólicas como "deus nos ajude" e perpetua-se a miséria. É nesse contexto que mora o perigo, essa grande parcela da população pode facilmente servir de base para qualquer movimento fascista. E é o que irá ocorrer em 2026.

Spectator Sports

In our society, we have things that you might use your intelligence on, like politics, but people really can't get involved in them in a very serious way - so what they do is they put their minds into other things, such as sports. You're trained to be obedient; you don't have an interesting job; there's no work around for you that's creative; in the cultural environment you're a passive observer of usually pretty tawdry stuff; political and social life are out of your range, they're in the hands of the rich folk. So what's left? Well, one thing that's left is sports - so you put a lot of the intelligence and the thought and the self - confidence into that. And I suppose that's also one of the basic functions it serves in the society in general: it occupies the population, and keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter. In fact, I presume that's part of the reason why spectator sports are supported to the degree they are by the dominant institutions.

And spectator sports also have other useful functions too. For one thing, they're a great way to build up chauvinism-you start by developing these totally irrational loyalties early in life, and they translate very nicely to other areas. I mean, I remember very well in high school having a sudden kind of Erlebnis, you know, a sudden insight, and asking myself, why do I care if my high school football team wins? I don't know anybody on the team. They don't know me. I wouldn't know what to say to them if I met them. Why do I care? Why do I get all excited if the football team wins and all downcast if it loses? And it's true, you do: you're taught from childhood that you've got to worry about the Philadelphia Phillies, where I was. In fact, there's apparently a psychological phenomenon of lack of selfconfidence or something which affected boys of approximately my age who grew up in Philadelphia, because every sports team was always in last place, and it's kind of a blow to your ego when that happens, people are always lording it over you.

But the point is, this sense of irrational loyalty to some sort of meaningless community is training for subordination to power, and for chauvinism. And of course, you're looking at gladiators, you're looking at guys who can do things you couldn't possibly do - like, you couldn't pole - vault seventeen feet, or do all these crazy things these people do. But it's a model that you're supposed to try to emulate. And they're gladiators fighting for your cause, so you've got to cheer them on, and you've got to be happy when the opposing quarterback gets carted off the field a total wreck and so on. All of this stuff builds up extremely anti-social aspects of human psychology. I mean, they're there; there's no doubt that they're there. But they're emphasized, and exaggerated, and brought out by spectator sports: irrational competition, irrational loyalty to power systems, passive acquiescence to quite awful values, really. In fact, it's hard to imagine anything that contributes more fundamentally to authoritarian attitudes than this does, in addition to the fact that it just engages a lot of intelligence and keeps people away from other things. So if you look at the whole phenomenon, it seems to me that it plays quite a substantial social role. I don't think it's the only thing that has this kind of effect. Soap operas, for example, do it in another domain-they teach people other kinds of passivity and absurdity. As a matter of fact, if you really want to do a serious media critique right across the board, these are the types of things which occupy most of the media.

Noam Chomsky

Porque não me ufano

O terceiro mundista não tem nenhuma capacidade de potencializar novas experiências que poderiam inclusive levar à construção de uma sociedade culta e letrada. O que se configura como paisagem urbana são forças desorganizadas articuladas ao capital. A desigualdade é econômica e espacial. A diversidade social não existe, as forças homogeneizantes abrangem todos os espaços, capturando a subjetividade das pessoas. A paisagem do periférico do mundo está muito longe de ser moderna e os pobres estão sendo removidos dos centros das cidades e substituídos por uma classe média inculta e perversa. Eis o processo de gentrificação. O conformismo social.

Basta uma volta à esquina para ver que não há renovação urbana. Governo nenhum assegura uma situação melhor para todos. A monotonia estética e da falta de vitalidade são duas características das cidades brasileiras. O tecido físico não apresenta casas bonitas, ruas bonitas, usos variados de cafés, calçadas e ciclovias e, sobretudo, livrarias. O brasileiro não consome beleza em nenhum momento de sua vida, sua "cultura musical" é péssima, seu imaginário pobríssimo, sua cultura letrada zero. A tarefa educativa e formativa de elaboração de novos tipos de humanidade está fora de questão. Outro fator visível é a falta de iniciativa para espaços e projetos alternativos à orientação mercadológica. Incorporadoras imobiliárias visam apenas o lucro. E não existe controle contra o poder do mercado, muito menos luta.

Cultura, justiça social e autenticidade custam a ser prioridades do brasileiro. A criação de espaço urbano novo e autentico não será produto nacional.

45 anos do assassinato de John Lennon

They hate you if you're clever

1971

Acima, um registo do militante e líder dos Beatles segurando uma cópia da revista marxista Red Mole. 

Study of Philosophy

 

A grande política compreende as questões ligadas à fundação de novos Estados, à luta pela destruição, pela defesa, pela conservação de determinadas estruturas orgânicas econômico-sociais. A pequena política compreende as questões parciais e cotidianas que se apresenta, no interior de uma estrutura já estabelecida em decorrência das lutas pela predominância entre as diversas frações de uma mesma classe política (política do dia-a-dia, política parlamentar, de corredor, de intrigas). Portanto, é grande política tentar excluir a grande política do âmbito interno da vida estatal e reduzir tudo a pequena política.

On Communist Education

In bourgeois society education is permeated through and through with hipocrisy, with the mercenary interests of the ruling classes; it is profoundly contradictory character, reflecting the antagonisms of capitalist society.

The ideal of the capitalists is to see in the workers and peasants their obedient servants bearing the burden of exploitation without a murmur. Proceeding from this, the capitalists would prefer not to foster daring and courage in the workers and peasants, would prefer not to give them any education whatsoever. For it is easier to cope with people who are ignorante and downtrodden. But you cannot win wars of conquest with such people.

From the day the workingman is born and until the day he dies is subjected in bourgeois society to the constant influence in such thoughts, sentiments and customs as are advantageous to the ruling class. This effected through innumerable channels, sometimes in barely perceptible forms. The church, the school, art, the press, the cinema, the theatre, organizations of diferent kinds - all these serve as instruments for imbuing the masses with the world outlook, moral, customs, etc, of the bourgeoise.

Take the cinema, for example. A certain bourgeoise movie director has writen about American films: 

Many present-day films are something in the order of a narcotic designed for people who are so tired that all they wants is to sit in armchairs and be spoon-fed.

Such is the essence of bourgeois education.

System of education wich took centuries to elaborate and is designed to consolidate the position of the ruling, capitalist class and to reconcile the opressed to their position.

Communist education differs fundamentally from bourgeois education not only as regards its tasks, a point that is understandable without adducing proof, but also as regards methods. Communist education is bound up indissolubly with the development of political consciousness and culture in general, with the raising of the intelectual level of the masses.

Mikhail Kalinin

1875 - 1946

Book towns

 

Na Europa é possível encontrar diversas livrarias independentes e especializadas na mesma rua. Existem bairros e cidades famosas pela concentração de bookshops. Em Buenos Aires e Santiago idem. Na periferia do capitalismo, bairros e cidades do interior não possuem um mísero sebo. É desolador para os amantes de livros. O gigante está narcotizado.

FOOD

Artist-run restaurant in SoHo

 | New York | 1970 |

Founded by artists Carol Goodden, 

Tina Girouard and Gordon Matta-Clark.

Liquid modernity

Quoting Mike Davis's City of Quartz (1990), Sharon Zukin describes the new look of Los Angeles public spaces reshaped by the security concerns of the residents and their elected or appointed custodians:

"Helicopters buzz the skies over ghetto neighbourhords, police hassle teenagers as putative gang members, homeowners buy into the type of armed defense they can afford or have nerve enough to use". The 1960s and early 1970s were, Zukin says, "a watershed in the institutionalization of urban fear".

Voters and elites - a broadly conceived middle class in the United States - could have faced the choice of approving government policies to eliminate poverty, manage ethnic competition, and integrate everyone into common public institutions. Instead, they chose to buy protection, fuelling the growth of the private security industry.

The most tangible danger to what she calls "public culture" Zukin finds in "the politics of everyday fear" The blood-curdling and nerve-breaking spectre of "unsafe streets" keeps people away from public spaces and turns them away from seeking the art and the skills needed to share public life.

"Getting tough" on crime by building more prisons and imposing the death penalty are all too common answers to the politics of fear. "Lock up the whole population", I heard a man say on the bus, at a stroke reducing the solution to its ridiculous extreme. Another answer is to privatize and militarize public space - making streets, parks, and even shops more secure but less free.

Community defined by its closely watched borders rather than its contents; "defence of the community" translated as the hiring of armed gatekeepers to control the entry; stalker and prowler promoted to the rank of public enemy number one; paring public areas down to "defensible" enclaves with selective access; separation in lieu of the negotiation of life in common, rounded up by the criminalization of residual difference - these are the principal dimensions of the current evolution of urban life.

Zygmunt Bauman

1905 - 2017

Porque não me ufano

Ex-aliado do miliciano fundamentalista acabou de ser contratado pelo governo federal. O telecomunicador representa a expressão máxima dos discursos de ódio. A comunicação pública definitivamente carece de um projeto consistente de informação e conhecimento.

Porque não me ufano

Supersalários do funcionalismo reforçam privilégios e acabam por rachar o abismo da desigualdade na periferia do capitalismo. A desigualdade afeta o coletivo, afetando não apenas materialmente mas prejudicando a psicologia dos homens e das mulheres e distorcendo sentimentos de igualdade e solidariedade. No Brasil, não há espaço para a construção de uma boa sociedade para todos.

Prostitution and ways of fighting it

Prostitution continues to exist and threatens the feeling of solidarity and comradeship between working men and women, the members of the workers’ republic. It is time that we faced up to this problem. It is time that we gave thought and attention to the reasons behind prostitution. It is time that we found ways and means of ridding ourselves once and for all of this evil.

Prostitution is a phenomenon which is closely linked with unearned income, and it thrives in the epoch dominated by capital and private property. Prostitutes, from our point of view, are those women who sell their bodies for material benefit – for decent food, for clothes and other advantages; prostitutes are all those who avoid the necessity of working by giving themselves to a man, either on a temporary basis or for life.

Our Soviet workers’ republic has inherited prostitution from the bourgeois capitalist past, when only a small number of women were involved in work within the national economy and the majority relied on the “male breadwinner”, on the father or the husband. Prostitution arose with the first states as the inevitable shadow of the official institution of marriage, which was designed to preserve the rights of private property and to guarantee property inheritance through a line of lawful heirs. The institution of marriage made it possible to prevent the wealth that had been accumulated from being scattered amongst a vast number of “heirs”. But there is a great difference between the prostitution of Greece and Rome and the prostitution we know today. In ancient times the number of prostitutes was small, and there was not that hypocrisy which colours the morality of the bourgeois world and compels bourgeois society to raise its hat respectfully to the ‘lawful wife” of an industrial magnate who has obviously sold herself to a husband she does not love, and, to turn away in disgust from a girl forced into the streets by poverty, homelessness, unemployment and other social circumstances which derive from the existence of capitalism and private property. The ancient world regarded prostitution as the legal complement to exclusive family relationships. Aspasia [the mistress of Pericles] was respected by her contemporaries far more than the colourless wives of the breeding apparatus.

The hypocritical morality of bourgeois society encourages prostitution by the structure of its exploitative economy, while at the same time mercilessly covering with contempt any girl or woman who is forced to take this path.

All forms of prostitution flourish like a poisonous flower in the swamps of the bourgeois way of life.

The world of the bourgeoisie does not even spare children, forcing young girls of nine and ten into the sordid embraces of wealthy and depraved old men. In the capitalist countries there are brothels which specialise exclusively in very young girls. In this present post-war period every woman faces the possibility of unemployment. Unemployment hits women in particular, and causes an enormous increase in the army of “street women”. Hungry crowds of women seeking out the buyers of “white slaves” flood the evening streets of Berlin. Paris and the other civilised centres of the capitalist states. The trade in women’s flesh is conducted quite openly, which is not surprising when you consider that the whole bourgeois way of life is based on buying and selling. There is an undeniable element of material and economic, considerations even the most legal of marriages. Prostitution is the way out for the woman who fails to find herself a permanent breadwinner. Prostitution, under capitalism provides men with the opportunity of having sexual relationships without having to take upon themselves the responsibility of caring materially for the women until the grave.

Bourgeois science and its academics love to prove to the world, that prostitution is a pathological phenomenon, i.e. that it is the result of the abnormalities of certain women, just as some people are criminal by nature, some women, it is argued, are prostitutes by nature. Regardless of where or how such women might have lived, they would have turned to a life of sin. Marxists and the more conscientious scholars, doctors and statisticians have shown clearly that the idea of “inborn disposition” is false. Prostitution is above all a social phenomenon; it is closely connected to the needy position of woman and her economic dependence on man in marriage and the family. The roots of prostitution are m economics. Woman is on the one hand placed in an economically vulnerable position, and on the other hand has been conditioned by centuries of education to expect material favours from a man in return for sexual favours – whether these are given within or outside the marriage tie. This is the root of the problem. Here is the reason for prostitution.

If the bourgeois academics of the Lombroso-Tarnovsky school were correct in maintaining that prostitutes are born with the marks of corruption and sexual abnormality, how would one explain the well-known fact that in a time of crisis and unemployment the number of prostitutes immediately increases? How would one explain the fact that the purveyors of “living merchandise” who travelled to tsarist Russia from the other countries of western Europe always found a rich harvest in areas where crops had failed and the population was suffering from famine, whereas they came away with few recruits from areas of plenty? Why do so many of the women who are allegedly doomed by nature to ruin only take to prostitution in years of hunger and unemployment?

It is also significant that in the capitalist countries prostitution recruits its servants from the propertyless sections of the population. Low-paid work, homelessness, acute poverty and the need to support younger brothers and sisters: these are the factors that produce the largest percentage of prostitutes. If the bourgeois theories about the corrupt and criminal disposition were true, then all classes of the population ought to contribute equally to prostitution. There ought to he the same proportion of corrupt women among the rich as among the poor. But professional prostitutes, women who live by their bodies, are with rare exceptions recruited from the poorer classes. Poverty, hunger, deprivation and the glaring social inequalities that are the basis of the bourgeois system drive these women to prostitution.

Or again one might point to the fact that prostitutes in the capitalist countries are drawn, according to the statistics, from the thirteen to twenty-three age-group. Children and young women, in other words. And the majority of these girls are alone and without a home. Girls from wealthy backgrounds who have the excellent bourgeois family to protect them turn to prostitution only very occasionally. The exceptions are usually victims of tragic circumstances. More often than not they are victims of the hypocritical “double morality”. The bourgeois family abandons the girl who has “sinned” and she – alone, without support and branded by the scorn of society – sees prostitution as the only way out.

We can therefore list as factors responsible for prostitution: low wages, social inequalities, the economic dependence of women upon men, and the unhealthy custom by which women expect to he supported in return for sexual favours instead of in return for their labour.

Relations between the sexes are being transformed. But we are still bound by the old ideas. Furthermore, the economic structure is far from being completely re-arranged in the new way, and communism is still a long way off. In this transitional period prostitution naturally enough keeps a strong hold. After all, even though the main sources of prostitution – private property and the policy of strengthening the family – have been eliminated, other factors are still in force. Homelessness, neglect, had housing conditions, loneliness and low wages for women are still with us. Our productive apparatus is still in a state of collapse, and the dislocation of the national economy continues. These and other economic and social conditions lead women to prostitute their bodies.

The correct slogan was formulated at the first All-Russian Congress of Peasant and Working Woman: “A woman of the Soviet labour republic is a free citizen with equal rights, and cannot and must not be the object of buying and selling.” We know that we can only overcome chaos and improve industry if we harness the efforts and energies of the workers and if we organise the available labour power of both men and women in the most rational way.

And what, after all, is the professional prostitute? She is a person whose energy is not used for the collective; a person who lives off others, by taking from the rations of others. Can this sort of thing be allowed in a workers’ republic? No, it cannot. It cannot be allowed, because it reduces the reserves of energy and the number of working hands that are creating the national wealth and the general welfare, from the point of view of the national economy the professional prostitute is a labour deserter. For this reason we must ruthlessly oppose prostitution. In the interests of the economy we must start an immediate fight to reduce the number of prostitutes and eliminate prostitution in all its forms.

It is time we understood that the existence of prostitution contradicts the basic principles of a workers’ republic which fights all forms of unearned wages.

We can only build a new communist economy if all adult citizens are involved in productive labour. The person who does not work and who lives off someone else or on an unearned wage harms the collective and the republic. We, therefore, hunt down the speculators, the traders and the hoarders who all live off unearned income. We must fight prostitution as another form of labour desertion.

The correct organisation of sexual education for young people is especially important. We must arm young people with accurate information allowing them to enter life with their eyes open. We must not remain silent any longer over questions connected with sexual life; we must break with false and bigoted bourgeois morality.

Prostitution is not compatible with the Soviet workers’ republic for a third reason: it does not contribute to the development and strengthening of the basic class character and of the proletariat and its new morality.

What is the fundamental quality of the working class? What is its strongest moral weapon in the struggle? Solidarity and comradeship is the basis of communism. Unless this sense is strongly developed amongst working people, the building of a truly communist society is inconceivable. Politically conscious communists should therefore logically be encouraging the development of solidarity in every way and fighting against all that hinders its development – Prostitution destroys the equality, solidarity and comradeship of the two halves of the working class. A man who buys the favours of a woman does not see her as a comrade or as a person with equal rights. He sees the woman as dependent upon himself and as an unequal creature of a lower order who is of less worth to the workers’ state. The contempt he has for the prostitute, whose favours he has bought, affects his attitude to all women. The further development of prostitution, instead of allowing for the growth of comradely feeling and solidarity, strengthens the inequality of the relationships between the sexes.

Prostitution is alien and harmful to the new communist morality which is in the process of forming. The task of the party as a whole and of the women’s departments in particular must he to launch a broad and resolute campaign against this legacy from the past. In bourgeois capitalist society all attempts at fighting prostitution were a useless waste of energy, since the two circumstances which gave rise to the phenomenon – private property and the direct material dependence of the majority of women upon men – were firmly established. In a workers’ republic the situation has changed.

the new morality is created by a new economy, but we will not build a new communist economy without the support of a new morality. Clarity and precise thinking are essential in this matter

Behaviour that is harmful to the collective must he rejected and condemned by communists.

It cannot be doubted that the poor and inadequate wages that women receive continue to serve as one of the real factors pushing women into prostitution.

The political backwardness of women and their lack of social awareness is a second reason for prostitution. The best way to fight prostitution is to raise the political consciousness of the broad masses of women and to draw them into the revolutionary struggle to build communism.

Alexandra Kollontai

1872 - 1952

Struggle with the religious prejudices of the masses

It has been comparatively easy for the proletarian authority to effect the separation of the church from the State and of the school from the church, and these changes have been almost painlessly achieved. It is enormously more difficult to fight the religious prejudices which are already deeply rooted in the consciousness of the masses, and which cling so stubbornly to life. The struggle will be a long one, demanding much steadfastness and great patience. Upon this matter we read in our programme: "The Russian Communist Party is guided by the conviction that nothing but the realization of purposiveness and full awareness in all the social and economic activities of the masses can lead to the complete disappearance of religious prejudices". What do these words signify?

Religious propaganda, belief in god and in all kinds of supernatural powers, find their most grateful soil where the institutions of social life are such as to incline the consciousness of the masses towards supernatural explanations of the phenomena of nature and society. The environment created by capitalist methods of production has a strong tendency in this direction. In capitalist society, production, and the exchange of products, are not effected with full consciousness and in accordance with a preconceived plan; they proceed as if they were the outcome of elemental forces. The market controls the producer. No one knows whether commodities are being produced in excess or in deficiency. The producer does not fully understand how the great and complicated mechanism of capitalist production works; why crises occur and unemployment suddenly becomes rife; why prices rise at one time and fall at another; and so on. The ordinary worker, knowing nothing of the real causes of the social happenings amid which his life takes place, readily inclines to accept the "will of god" as a universal explanation.

N. Buharin & E. Preobrazhensky

Anos de formação

Que tipo de imagem temos do jovem Mozart? Como chega a existir um talento tão extraordinário quanto o de Mozart? Como surge um talento criativo singular?

Mozart com doze anos escreveu sua primeira opera buffa, La finta semplice, na primavera e verão de 1768. No verão do mesmo ano, escreveu Bastien und Bastienne.

Existentialism is a Humanism

Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means — as the christians do — any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of god. It declares, rather, that even if god existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe god does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of god.

Jean-Paul Sartre

1905 - 1980

Mozart - sociologia de um gênio

 

O pináculo da criação artística é alcançado quando a espontaneidade e a inventividade do fluxo-fantasia se fundem de tal maneira com o conhecimento das regularidades do material e com o julgamento da consciência do artista, que as fantasias inovadoras surgem como por si mesmas, satisfazendo as demandas tanto do material, como da consciência.

Mozart é um representante deste tipo em sua forma mais clara. Em seu caso, a espontaneidade do fluxo-fantasia em grande parte permanecia íntegra quando convertida em música. Muitas vezes as invenções musicais fluíam dele como os sonhos emanam de uma pessoa que dorme.

O fato de que em tais momentos uma obra se componha por si mesma, por assim dizer, não resultava apenas da fusão de seu fluxo-fantasia com seu conhecimento artesanal do timbre e do alcance dos instrumentos de sua época ou das formas tradicionais de música. Surgia também da união de ambos, conhecimento e fantasia, a uma consciência artística altamente desenvolvida e sensível. O que sentimos ser a perfeição de muitas de suas obras deve-se igualmente à sua rica imaginação, ao seu conhecimento muito amplo dos componentes da música e à espontaneidade de sua consciência musical. Não obstante sejam muitas as inovações de sua fantasia musical, nunca escolheu uma nota errada. Conhecia com "certeza sonâmbula" quais figuras sonoras — dentro da estrutura do padrão social em que trabalhava — se ajustavam à dinâmica imanente da música que estava escrevendo, e quais devia rejeitar.

Um amplo conhecimento musical e uma consciência altamente desenvolvida estavam indissoluvelmente ligados a sua criação musical.

Norbert Elias 

1897 - 1990

Porque não me ufano

Irregularidades e contradições nos controles da sociedade, imensas flutuações em sua severidade ou leniência, instrução péssima e animalidade estão entre os aspectos estruturais e psicológicos recorrentes do subdesenvolvido.

A "música" do terceiro mundista não está despojada de sua animalidade e feiura. Não tem um extraordinário poder intelectual e transformador. E jamais terá. As ideias do artista alienado estão ligadas à sua sociedade arcaica.

Em sociedades menos modernas a arte em geral não assume uma forma mais complexa. A linguagem chula é importante para uma compreensão do subdesenvolvido não como ser humano mas como animal, como um primitivo, como um provinciano que não amadurece. O sujeito infantilizado e/ou imbecilizado não possui as capacidades cognitivas para criar inovações no campo do som e mesmo comunicar uma mensagem potencialmente edificante para os outros. Não há inteligência e criatividade no meio marcado por intensa disparidade social, mas confusão e vícios para satisfazer os impulsos momentâneos. O terceiro mundista custa para sublimar a sua irracionalidade. Muito provável que nunca veremos um povo culto e educado no Brasil.

De la musique

Mozart for your mind 

Música profunda, sensível, sublime, criativa, inovadora e misteriosa. Uma força natural enérgica, complexa e altamente especializada do primeiro mundo. Séculos depois, a obra-prima de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart continua tocando e estimulando as fantasias e os sentimentos das pessoas.

Book reviews

It is the economic and political system under which we live - capitalism - that is responsible for the enormously high level of mental health problems which we see in the world today.

Ferguson argues for a radical, humane, social and dialectical approach:

A model for mental distress which recognises – and provides empirical evidence for – the causal role played by early life experience, poverty, inequality, racism, sexism and other forms of oppression in the genesis of mental health problems is a huge step forward from a model which locates such problems primarily in faulty genes or biochemical deficiencies. The fact also that the new paradigm does not discount genes, brains and biochemistry but rather emphasises the interaction between our brains and our environments... allows for a much more dialectical understanding of mental distress.

The key Marxist concept for thinking about mental distress, Ferguson argues, is alienation: alienation from the products of our labour, alienation from the labour process and alienation from each other. The real value of the Marxist concept of alienation is that it helps to trace the impact of capitalism on social relations and on individual consciousness. The societal impact of four decades of neoliberalism has not only deepened economic inequality, it has induced profound sense of powerlessness disconnection and precarity. Ferguson argues that we need more than a revolution in mental health services, to counter these conditions, and concludes that:

…the priority for all of us who wish to improve our own mental health and the mental health of those around us is both to participate in collective struggles for more and better mental health services – to support the shift back from “worry lines to picket lines”– and also to fight for a world where such services are no longer required.

 

Porque não me ufano

Uma personalidade só revela seu desenvolvimento quando pronuncia palavras sábias, elabora uma abrangente visão filosófica do mundo bem como desenha uma boa sociedade. A periferia do capitalismo, no entanto, está carente de personalidades cultas e honestas.

Goth

I want you to look beautiful 

at my funeral.

A barbárie social

De um lado a estrutura pública continua a remunerar o maior criminoso do Brasil, que deve estar babando no travesseiro da "sala de Estado maior" com a certeza de que um dia estará solto; e de outro lado a lumpenização do proletariado brasileiro e a perpetuação da extração colonial-escravista. Ambos são um subproduto da ignorância cultural atávica de um capitalismo atrófico, que oculta a profunda carência da construção de uma boa sociedade para todos.

We will not allow bad work!

Os cartazes da URSS davam uma verdadeira aula de camaradagem e arte. Muito diferente do Brasil, onde a comunicação política é desastrosa e infantil. 

Na terra dos papagaios não há distinção entre o que é público e privado e a cultura democrática de responsabilização não existe. Na periferia do capitalismo vale tudo: fazer qualquer coisa para ganhar dinheiro fácil, falar merda (a experiência de linguagem da caboclada é péssima, vulgar, hostil), e não possuir o mínimo de educação em termos de conhecimento científico e humanístico. As condições de vida são baixíssimas. A ética se refere ao descomprometimento com a seriedade e o rigor e se tolera qualquer trabalho mal feito.

A sociedade de gente letrada é uma utopia irrealizável. A barbárie social é a sua única forma.

Theological-Political Treatise

If men were always able to regulate their affairs with sure judgment, or if fortune always smiled upon them, they would not get caught up in any superstition. But since people are often reduced to such desperate straits that they cannot arrive at any solid judgment and as the good things of fortune for which they have a boundless desire are quite uncertain, they fluctuate wretchedly between hope and fear. This is why most people are quite ready to believe anything.

Benedict de Spinoza

1632 - 1677

Porque não me ufano

O belo não se encontra nos grotões subdesenvolvidos da periferia do capitalismo. A arte e a racionalidade neste contexto não desempenham um papel na vida do terceiro mundista. A vida é desagradável e insalubre, não possui forças para transformar a escola-prisão em um espaço acolhedor, de saber científico e de leitura. Os prédios públicos não são harmoniosos, não são generosos, as crianças barulhentas. Tudo cheira mal. As ruas não emanam saúde e alegria para os desclassificados do mundo desenvolvido e organizado. É tudo feio, sujo, desorganizado, irregular e, sobretudo, desigual. Não existe possibilidade de transformação das cidades. Os homens jamais estarão livres da preocupação perpétua da luta contra a miséria e nunca viverão a vida da mente. Não conseguem abandonar os preconceitos religiosos. A irrupção da alienação tomou conta do dia a dia, do processo de inter-relações, da comunicação, de tudo. Os incompetentes treinados experimentarão apenas as infelicidades que criaram para si e as antipatias porque são incapazes de escrever um programa voltado à beleza e à harmonia na vida cotidiana livre das servidões da exploração.

Plutocracia

A prisão do miliciano fundamentalista provou: a política é uma atividade criminosa na periferia do capitalismo. E a criminalidade irá explodir no próximo ano. Até preso o golpista poderá definir alianças e posições do seu partido. Populacho continuará elegendo homens incultos e fascistas declarados. O Brasil não tem uma cultura democrática da responsabilização. E o eleitor de base não opina, não interage com as direções dos partidos.

Porque não me ufano

O que está por trás de um voto

Fim de ano os oportunistas se multiplicam para distribuir cestas básicas, bolas de futebol e brinquedos de plástico. Nada de dividir livros, criança subdesenvolvida não se alimenta de papel, a inteligência pode atrapalhar posteriormente o planejamento da caridade e a perpetuação da miséria. Um país que opera em pleno século XXI na distribuição de pacote de alimentos e não investe em estrutura. E a falação de merda não para. Não foi a toa que o "gestor" de São Paulo cuspiu recentemente que diploma não tem mais validade. O brasileiro não possui cultura, por isso ganha votos aqueles que fomentam a grosseria e a estupidez e nesse contexto, como expôs o acadêmico, nenhum recurso entra nas regiões sem futuro. Não há pontos de saber e não haverá. Não há sequer prenúncio de desejo de mudança pois ninguém discute, debate e propõe correções nas discrepâncias sociais. O conformismo se tornou a regra. Só está faltando proibir estudar para a teocracia se consolidar definitivamente.

Por que as pessoas se drogam?

 

E falam que nós somos os porcos

The confusion, and above all the imbecility, of our lives, arises chiefly from the constant state of intoxication in which most people live.

L. T.

As pessoas se entorpecem para sufocar a sua miséria, a falta de cultura, por isso o álcool é muito comercializado nos grotões da periferia. E elas intencionalmente entorpecem os outros para cometer ações ilegais. 

Prostituição, cultura do estupro, feminicídio, mentiras teológicas todos esses fenômenos sociais estão ligados ao consumo de álcool. A desorganização na gestão pública tem como um dos objetivos entorpecer todos a fim de privá-los do olhar crítico, da consciência e da organização para construir uma boa sociedade.

Bando de ladrões, estelionatários, prostitutas, policiais corruptos, incompetentes treinados não conseguem viver sem o álcool. Em um país subdesenvolvido e desigual como o Brasil, admite-se que o uso de substâncias entorpecentes é uma consequência da falta de consciência. "Todo mundo bebe", é o lema da caboclada.

A ideologia política da meritocracia necessita do álcool. A religião necessita do álcool. O sistema viciado em indecência não funciona sem o álcool. Como não existe organização para diminuir a desigualdade e promover a igualdade e a qualidade de vida para todos, anestesiar a consciência e o corpo compensa a miséria material e intelectual, faz aumentar a cegueira diante dos problemas sociais e do próprio consumo do álcool que leva à violência, ao sofrimento e ao prejuízo na vida, no trabalho e na saúde física. E ninguém pensa séria e lucidamente em combater o vício. Por que o Estado continua a ser gerenciado por agentes não sóbrios e incultos?

No!

The cause of the world-wide consumption of hashish, opium, alcohol, and tobacco, lies not in the taste, nor in any pleasure, recreation, or mirth they afford, but simply in man's need to hide from himself the demands of conscience.

Why do men stupefy themselves?

Ficou bêbado, estragado, quebrou a árvore. 

Está com vergonha de olhar as pessoas no rosto

When a man is sober he is ashamed of what seems all right when he is drunk. In these words we have the essential underlying cause prompting men to resort to stupefiers. People resort to them either to escape feeling ashamed after having done something contrary to their consciences, or to bring themselves beforehand into a state in which they can commit actions contrary to conscience, but to which their animal nature prompts them.