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"History does not judge with the mentality of manipulated crowds." - Ramiz Alia

As a matter of blueprint logic it is undeniable that the Socialist blueprint is drawn at a higher level of rationality.

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

It's trite to say that 'practice complicates the blueprint'. One would think, however, that the rational response would be to complicate, not abandon, the blueprint!

A centrally planned economy when installed in a situation of limited prior development, as in Albania, is probably the best method to insulate an economy from undesirable external influences, as well as manipulating high priority domestic resource allocation to achieve a desired end.

As ever with such case studies, the challenges are technological lag and iterative flexibility.

While this book is balanced overall, it highlights the utility of a comparative perspective!

For example, overt ideology in education is implicitly contrasted with a more "neutral" content. Yet in a bourgeois ideological state apparatus, ideology is present but *naturalized*.

Similar on balancing of rights/duties (i.e. Canada's "reasonable limits clause" is *ideological*, just couched in technical legal phrasing).

No country whatsoever, big or small, can build socialism by taking credits and aid from the bourgeoisie and the revisionists or by integrating its economy into the world system of capitalist economy. Any such linking of the economy of a socialist country with the economy of bourgeois or revisionist countries opens the doors to the action of the economic laws of capitalism.

- Enver Hoxha

"Generous Soviet aid was responsible for the majority of the large-scale industrialization projects which took place within Albania in this period. In fact, without Soviet help, the economic base may never have been fully constructed in Albania.
Additionally, the alliance with the Soviet Union gave Albania much needed help in terms of maintaining its national sovereignty.

"The Yugoslav position was that Albania was too small and too weak to stand on its own after the war. It could only be a 'tempting morsel' for the imperialist powers. Therefore, it was necessary for Albania to agree to join the Yugoslav federation."

Political-economic pressure on this pretext to incorporate Albania as a 'Seventh Republic', trying to override pro-sovereignty sentiments, has tragic historical lessons.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

- Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

- Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs

In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself.

From Hawthorne and His Mosses

Read the main story I borrowed this for ("Bartleby the Scrivener"). As for the rest? I would prefer not to...but unlike Bartleby, I will anyway!

Althusser presents a "contradictory couple" of the "conditions of existence/conditions of non-existence" of a mode of production in a social formation. In other words, to truly understand the emergence of capitalism for example involves looking at its abortive examples in 'city-states' as much as its successful emergence.
This allows for generative thinking about conditions for socialism prior to its fait accompli.

It is on the basis of the nation-form, hence of the national market, that the 'global', 'international' and 'continental' (Europe) forms of contemporary imperialism are being constituted.

For more on this, see also
Empire of Capital.

The capitalist class will never voluntarily cease to impose its domination even on the working class's theories and ideology in order to wrest from its hands and mind the very weapons it has forged for itself in order to carry its class struggle to a victorious conclusion.

Yet another reminder to order Gabriel Rockhill's "Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism"!

We have 'developments' of Marxism involving one or another 'object' (for example, imperialism, by Lenin), one or another domain (for example, the superstructure, by Gramsci). These 'developments' of Marxism are plainly enrichments of Marxist theory...These developments, however, can by no means be called scientific rectifications [revisions!] of Marx's formulations.

This is how Marx is treated by most bourgeois philosophers...He has to be buried in his own time...

If Marxism [provides] scientific principles for the knowledge of history, it cannot be a historicism -- that is to say, something that would deny it all scientific and, therefore, objective value, and therefore all value theoretically independent of time and temporary circumstances.

From a caricature in an old online game: "Private enterprise is limited to kids selling lemonade on sidewalks, though the government is looking at stamping this out."

The role of squatters on latifundias, informal barrio economics, and "Buhoneros" (street vendors) in both support and tension with Chavismo show that the real dynamics of sustained political revolution are much more complicated.