Political Influence Quotes

“In terms of "quiet" bourgeois democracy two fundamental possibilities are open to the industrial worker: identification with the bourgeoisie, which holds a higher position in the social scale, or identification with his own social class, which produces its own anti-reactionary way of life. To pursue the first possibility means to envy the reactionary man, to imitate him, and, if the opportunity arises, to assimilate his habits of life. To pursue the second of these possibilities means to reject the reactionary man's ideologies and habits of life. Due to the simultaneous influence exercised by both social and class habits, these two possibilities are equally strong. The revolutionary movement also failed to appreciate the importance of the seemingly irrelevant everyday habits, indeed, very often turned them to bad account. The lower middle-class bedroom suite, which the "rabble" buys as soon as he has the means, even if he is otherwise revolutionary minded; the consequent suppression of the wife, even if he is a Communist; the "decent" suit of clothes for Sunday; "proper" dance steps and a thousand other "banalities," have an incomparably greater reactionary influence when repeated day after day than thousands of revolutionary rallies and leaflets can ever hope to counterbalance. Narrow conservative life exercises a continuous influence, penetrates every facet of everyday life; whereas factory work and revolutionary leaflets have only a brief effect.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

“There's now a worldwide industry of companies that offer rewards to political actors - politicians, lobbyist, think-tanks, activists - who show greater loyalty to maximising corporate profits than they do to principles of equality, let alone the public good. It's parasitic capitalism, and it's the economic model that the opponents of fairness prefer.”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness

“The greater, darker, unforeseen consequences of privatisation are its corrupting effect on social fairness and opportunity more broadly. Corporations that acquire state assets depend on the election of governments with policies that will feed their business, rather than diminish it. It is in the interest of corporations that are paid to supply sub-contracted services to government projects, for example, to lobby hard against political parties mooting a return to better-paid, more secure, direct employment models. ... A powerful incentive to corruption, hard and soft, exists in the dynamics of these economic and political relationships. Big corporations have a direct interest in politics and the political system; their political donations reward those who promise them favourable conditions, and neither the community benefit nor the national interest comes into it.”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness