Against Empire Quotes

“The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“The diseconomies of capitalism are treated as the public's responsibility. Corporate America skims the cream and leaves the bill for us to pay, then boasts about how productive and efficient it is and complains about our wasteful government.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Designed to leave the world's economic destiny at the mercy of bankers and multinational corporations,
Globalization is a logical extension of imperialism, a victory of empire over republic, international finance capital over democracy.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“We are asked to believe that it always existed, that poor countries are poor because their lands have always been infertile or their people unproductive. In fact, the lands of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have long produced great treasures of foods, minerals, and other natural resources. That is why Europeans went through so much trouble to steal and plunder them. One does not go to poor places for self-enrichment. The Third World is rich. Only its people are poor—and it is because of the pillage they have endured.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“In sum, the myth of a self-reliant, free-market, trickle-down economy is just that, a myth. In almost every enterprise, government provides business with supports, protections, and opportunities for private gain at public expense.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“In fact, the lands of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have long produced great treasures of foods, minerals, and other natural resources. That is why Europeans went through so much trouble to steal and plunder them. One does not go to poor places for self-enrichment. The Third World is rich. Only its people are poor—and it is because of the pillage they have endured.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“On the contrary, to lay down the sword and use our labor and national treasure for the peaceful reconstruction so desperately needed at home and abroad is not to become a weak nation but a truly great one.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“The depressive economic effects of ridding ourselves of a war economy could be mitigated by embarking upon a massive conversion to a peace economy”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Health policy is formulated by people who never have to sit for hours in a public clinic. Transportation policy is made by people who never have to wait for a bus or search for a parking space. Our education system is legislated by people who have never had to send their children or grandchildren to public schools. Our daycare policy is devised by people who have au pairs and nannies. Public recreational policy is in the hands of people who vacation on private country estates and never have to visit a crowded”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“In sum”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“One goal of any teacher should be to introduce students to bodies of information and analysis that have been systematically ignored or suppressed in the press”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Thus”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Within a few years the entire school came under fire from SUNY administrators because two-thirds of its thirty faculty members took a radical approach to their work. Some of their courses used Marxist books and reached over one thousand students”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Crossing the line from a liberal complaint to a radical analysis”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“In reality”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“A key reason why the United States is becoming increasingly like the Third World is because corporate America is going Third World”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Today”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Value added” is a capitalist term meaning roughly the same as what Marxists mean by “surplus value.” It is the value that workers create by their labor in excess of what they are paid.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Conditions in the United States in 1893 were not unlike what they are today through much of the Third World. But for the capitalists of that era”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“At least 50 cents of every tax dollar goes for servicing the national debt and the military.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“the civilian loss of scientific talent to the arms industry,”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“The last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“In 1945”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Even the establishment Washington Post (April 14”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“In 1994”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“In 1962 Appalachia was referred to as “the shame of the nation” because of its poverty. But Appalachia is a rich region not a poor one. Ask the Mellons”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Conservatives denounce liberals in Congress for their “tax”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“While insisting that they want to get government “off our backs,” conservative supply-siders do not hesitate to use government to intrude upon our private lives and our most intimate moral choices”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

“Voodoo economics is really supply-side economics”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire