Michael Parenti Quotes

They have yet to consider that republicanism might largely be a cloak for oligarchic privilege—as it often is to this day—worn grudgingly by the elites as long as it proved serviceable to their interests.

Caesar’s sin, I shall argue, was not that he was subverting the Roman constitution—which was an unwritten one—but that he was loosening the oligarchy’s overbearing grip on it. Worse still, he used state power to effect some limited benefits for small farmers, debtors, and urban proletariat, at the expense of the wealthy few.

You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.

To say that schools fail to produce an informed, critically minded, democratic citizenry is to overlook the fact that schools were never intended for that purpose.

History has many unanswered questions, but it is no mystery as such—except for those who make it so.

Among the institutions of plutocratic culture, our educational system looms as one of the more influential purveyors of dominant values. From the earliest school year, children are taught to compete individually rather than work cooperatively for mutual benefit. Grade-school students are fed stories of their nation's exploits that might be more valued for their inspirational nationalism than for their historical accuracy. Students are instructed to believe in America's global virtue and moral superiority and to hold a rather uncritical view of American politico economic institutions.

The desire to "make it," even at the expense of others, is not merely a wrong-headed at attitude but a reflection of the material conditions of capitalist society wherein no one is ever really economically secure except the superrich.

Countries with ostensibly democratic governments often mani­fest a markedly undemocratic state power.

Seizing upon anything but class, U.S. leftists today have developed an array of centering around ethnic, gender, cultural, and life-style issues. These groups treat their respective grievances as something apart from class struggle, and have almost nothing to say about the increasingly harsh politico-economic class injustices perpetrated against us all.

There is a tradition of popular struggle in the United States that has been downplayed and ignored. It ebbs and flows but never ceases. Moved by a combination of anger and hope, ordinary people have organized, agitated, demonstrated, and engaged in electoral challenges, civil disobedience, strikes, sit-ins, takeovers, boycotts, and sometimes violent clashes with the authorities - for better wages and work conditions, a safer environment, racial and gender justice, and peace and nonintervention abroad. Against the heaviest odds, they have suffered many defeats but won some important victories, forcible extracting concessions and imposing reforms upon resistant rulers.

When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.

Throughout history, in the name of “liberty,” owning classes have opposed political leaders who have sought a more equitable distribution and use of wealth. And in the name of “stability” and “public safety,” they have repeatedly surrendered some of their own power to autocratic leaders dedicated to preserving the privileged socioeconomic order.

It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.

There is no such thing as unbiased or objective reporting of news. All reports and analyses are selective and inferential to some inescapable degree - all the more reason to provide a wider ideological spectrum of opinions and not let one bias predominate. If we consider censorship to be a danger to our freedom, then we should not overlook the fact that the media are already heavily censored by those who own or advertise in them. The very process of selection allows the politico-economic interests of the selector to operate as a censor.

American socialism cannot be modeled on the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, or other countries with different historical, economic, and cultural developments.