I think the other side of this is that while the contradictions matter, one of the things that you cannot lose sight of is that even with a guy like [George] Soros the thing that he doesn't question, which does unify that class, is that they don't want to get rid of the capitalist system, they don't see an alternative.

Young people refuse the notion that financialization defines the only acceptable definition of exchange, one that is based exclusively on the reductionist notion of buying and selling.

Public values are not only under attack in the United States and elsewhere but appear to have become irrelevant just as those spaces that enable an experience of the common good are now the object of disdain by right-wing and liberal politicians, anti-public intellectuals and an army of media pundits.

What social safety net does is provide a glimmer of hope for what a democratic socialist society might look like. It makes the claim that without social provisions, without a welfare state, without a social contract, society can't survive. We need a foundation for people - economically, politically, and socially - where what the Right considers "entitlements" are really rights.

Getting ahead cannot be the only motive that motivates people. You have to imagine what a good life is.

The pessimism of the intellect is the starting point for struggle. It's not the end point, it's the starting point. You have to make something critical to make it meaningful, to make it transformative.

What they [ ruling elite] understand is that matters of desire, subjectivities, identities matter. And they take the cultural apparatuses that they control enormously, enormously, in an enormously important way.