Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.

Labor has been severely undermined, but that's happened before. In the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually crushed, in large part by Wilson's Red Scare, but it dramatically revived in the 1930s. It spearheaded the social-democratic New-Deal style changes which were beneficial to the country - not sufficient, but beneficial. That could happen again.

If kids are studying for a test, they're not going to learn anything. We all know that from our own experience.

Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

It turned out that [Bill] Clinton had authorized Texaco to illegally ship oil to the military junta [in Haiti] during a time when we were supposedly opposing the military junta and supporting democracy instead.

The people we call the prophets I think are the earliest dissident intellectuals, and they're treated like most dissident intellectuals - very badly. They're imprisoned, driven into the desert. King Ahab, the epitome of evil in the Bible, condemned Elijah as a "hater of Israel." This is the first self-hating Jew, the origin of the term. It goes right up to the present. That's the history of intellectuals.

People don't have knowledge and understanding about the outside world, or about history [in the USA].