Tom Blackburn

https://newsocialist.org.uk/author/tom-blackburn

https://www.goodreads.com/tomblackburn

Tom’s Bookshelves

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Tom is Currently Reading

Tom Blackburn is currently reading

Fidel Castro Reader

by David Deutschmann

bookshelves: communism, imperialism-and-anti-imperialism, latin-america, marxism, currently-reading

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Jun 27, 2026 11:42AM

“From Marx, I received the concept of what human society is; otherwise, someone who hasn't read about it, or to whom it hasn't been explained, it's as though they were set down in the middle of a forest, at night, without knowing which way north is, or south, east or west. Marx told us what a society is and the history of its evolution. Without Marx, you can't formulate any argument that leads to a reasonable interpretation of historical events - what the tendencies are, the probable evolution of a humanity that has not yet completed its social evolution.”
― Fidel Castro, My Life: A Spoken Autobiography

5 likes

“The right of the labour movement, to be honest, has no ideas of any compelling quality, except the instinct for short-term political survival. It would not know an ideological struggle if it stumbled across one in the dark. The only ‘struggle’ it engages in with any trace of conviction is the one against the left.”
― Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left

tags: labour-movement

6 likes

“This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

tags: america, gun-culture, used-car-salesmen

27 likes

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

tags: civilization, death, democracy, destruction, empire, enlighten, exceptionalism, force, imperialism, intellectuals, misery, mission, mission-civilizatrice

146 likes

“The present condition of the world, if accepted as it is, if approached with anything short of determined impatience to change it utterly, renders every value meaningless. Two-thirds of the people of the world are being robbed, exploited, deceived, constantly humiliated, condemned to the most abject and artificial poverty and denied as human beings. Furthermore, if this condition is accepted – or even more or less accepted with the qualification that there should be a few reforms, a little restraint and a little more foreign aid – it is quite clear from the evidence to date that the condition will become even more extreme. Imperialism is insatiable. It can modify its methods but never its appetite.”
― John Berger, Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny, Endurance, and the Role of the Artist

tags: imperialism

0 likes

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