Socialism . . . Seriously Quotes

“Capitalism is a bad idea. Imagine if we start a society on an uninhabited tropical island, and I propose that the people who do all the work will be paid as little as possible while the people who don’t do anything but own stocks will have more money than they could possibly spend in their lifetimes. You would all be looking at each other and shaking your heads. “Wait, wait, hear me out,” I might say. “We’ll also treat air, water, plants, minerals, and other animals as objects to be exploited even more ruthlessly than workers!” Now you’d slowly back away because there’s obviously something not right with me, even as I continue on: “Wait, don’t go! We can maintain peace by creating massively destructive weapons and violent prisons. Why is everybody leaving?”
― Danny Katch, Socialism . . . Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation

“Is my socialism a religious faith? That’s a longstanding critique, most famously expressed in The God That Failed, a book written by disillusioned former Communist Party supporters after World War II. I’m not sure why socialism was the only god singled out by the authors for failure. What grade did the regular God get in the wake of the Nazis and the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a C+?”
― Danny Katch, Socialism . . . Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation

“I am an atheist, but I would never call myself a nonbeliever. I believe in higher powers inside people that can only be activated in a society designed to bring them out. My belief in these powers is so strong that I have organized my life around them, despite the fact that I cannot prove their existence.”
― Danny Katch, Socialism . . . Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation

“[E]ven on the issues that are put up to democratic vote, we are saddled with a two-party system in which the liberal democratic party might be one of the most criminal orginizations in modern history. If you think I am exaggerating, consider that it's the democrats who: Fought the civil war on the side of slavery, created Jim Crow segregation after they lost that war, dropped the only nuclear weapons on a civilian population in history, stole a third of Mexico's land, and forced the Cherokee and other tribes on the infamous Trail of Tears, killed millions in the wars of Korea and South East Asia, doubled the country's prison population under Bill Clinton, deported over 2 million immigrants under Barrack, you get the picture. The point is not that there's anything better about Republicans: Many of whom probably look at the list above and sigh with envy, but that both major US parties are completely devoted to the priorities of the tiny class that runs this country. Each party may be paid to look out for a particular industry, republicans get lots of oil money, while democrats are preferred by the tech industry. But sometimes they propose different strategies to achieve the same ends: such as whether the United States should destroy Middle-Eastern countries with or without the approval of the United Nations. More often, their differences are even less substantial and are almost entirely about how to get a different voting block to support the same policies.”
― Danny Katch, Socialism . . . Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation

“Liberals deny the existence of ghosts—the pale hints of a world beyond the one we can see in our daily lives—because they lack imagination and are so constrained by what is “realistic” and “possible” that they can’t grapple with the crying need for revolutionary change.”
― Danny Katch, Socialism . . . Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation