Governments will use whatever technology is available to combat their primary enemy - their own population.

You can see it in the worship of [Ronald] Reagan, which portrays him as somebody who saved us from government. Actually he was an apostle of big government.

People are interested in authentic long-term, socialist goals, which is not what is usually called socialism. They should be thinking through carefully how the projected society should work, but not in extensive detail because a lot of things just have to be learned by experiment and we don't know enough to plan societies in detail by any means. But, general guidelines could be worked out and many of the specific problems can be discussed. That should just be part of people's popular consciousness. That's how a transition to socialism could take place.

People who don't accept that doctrinal system, they may try to survive in the media, but they are unlikely to.

Those lucky enough to qualify as "intellectuals" have their own special responsibilities, deriving from their good fortune. Among these is the task that [Edward] Said describes, surely an important one.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

Intellectuals (in the standard sense of the term, not [ Edward] Said's prescriptive sense) are the people who write history.