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James Gilligan: The traditional defense of class stratification and the existence of a "leisure class", ever since the rise of civilization, from both Plato and Aristotle as well as from more recent social thinkers, is that a leisure class is needed in order to have the time and energy for the specialized intellectual development and technological skills that are necessary preconditions for civilization; and "leisure class" has always meant a group with a guaranteed income — i.e. those who did not have to work for a living. Implicit in this argument is the assumption (which I happen to think is correct, as I think the history and development of civilization proves) that when people are freed from the necessity to work — that is, when work is freely chosen rather than slavery or wage-slavery (i.e. "work or starve"), they do not just vegetate in a state of "passivity and dependency." Rather, they engage in much more creative work. Coercion creates an incentive for "passive aggressiveness," because when overpowered and helpless there is no other way to express the minimal degree of autonomy that people need in order to maintain any semblance of self-esteem, dignity, and pride. Furthermore, when work is a means to and end — working in order to eat — then it is, in Marx's terms, "alienated" labor. Labor can only be liberated from alienation when work is an end in itself, entered into freely as the expression of spontaneous and voluntary creativity, curiosity, playfulness, initiative, and sociability — that is, the sense of solidarity with the community, the fulfillment of one's true and "essential" human nature as "social" and "political" animals, to be fulfilled and made human by their full participation in a culture. In short, the contradiction in the old defense of class stratification is that it defends leisure for the leisure class, but not for the underclass. With reference to the underclass, leisure is said to destroy the incentive to work, leads to slothfulness and self-indulgence, and retards cognitive and moral development. When applied to the leisure class, the concept evokes an image of Plato and Aristotle, whose leisure was based on slave labor, creating the intellectual foundations of Western civilization; or patrician slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson laying the foundations of American civilization; or creative aristocrats like Count Leo Tolstoy or Bertrand Ear Russell; or, even closer to home, of our own sons and daughters (or of ourselves, when we were young adults) being freed from the stultifying tasks of earning a living until well into our adult years so that we could study in expensive universities to gain specialized knowledge and skills. wordsmith.social/protestation/…


Mahmoud Darwish: Workers united, a force that can't go wrong, Breaking chains of oppression, pushing for their rights,Their voices echoing, piercing through the nights. wordsmith.social/protestation/…



Friedrich Engels: How is the housing question to be solved then? In present-day society just as any other social question is solved: by the gradual economic adjustment of supply and demand, a solution which ever reproduces the question itself anew and therefore is no solution. How a social revolution would solve this question depends not only on the circumstances which would exist in each case, but is also connected with still more far-reaching questions, among which one of the most fundamental is the abolition of the antithesis between town and country. As it is not our task to create utopian systems for the arrangement of the future society, it would be more than idle to go into the question here. But one thing is certain: there are already in existence sufficient buildings for dwellings in the big towns to remedy immediately any real “housing shortage,” given rational utilization of them. This can naturally only take place by the expropriation of the present owners and by quartering in their houses the homeless or those workers excessively overcrowded in their former houses. Immediately the proletariat has conquered political power such a measure dictated in the public interests will be just as easy to carry out as other expropriations and billetings are by the existing state. wordsmith.social/protestation/…


Marie Curie: You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. wordsmith.social/protestation/…



George Orwell: There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. wordsmith.social/protestation/…



Karl Marx: We must announce to the governments: We know you are the armed power which is directed against the proletarians; we will move against you in peaceful way where it is possible, and with arms if it should become necessary. wordsmith.social/protestation/…



Grace Blakeley: Free markets aren't really free. Record corporate pro­fits don't trickle down to everyone else. And we aren't empowered to make our own choices – they're made for us every day. wordsmith.social/protestation/…


Stalin: Communist parties ought to be made independent, instead of sections of the CI. They should turn into national Communist parties with various names—the Workers’ Party, the Marxist Party, etc. The name does not matter. What matters is that they put down roots in their own peoples and concentrate on their own proper tasks. They ought to have a Communist program; they should proceed on a Marxist analysis, but without looking over their shoulders at Moscow; they should resolve the concrete problems they face in the given country independently. And the situation and problems in different countries are altogether different. In England there are certain ones, in Germany there are different ones, and so forth. Once the Communist parties have become stronger in this way, then reestablish their international organization. wordsmith.social/protestation/…








Charles Sillem Lidderdale


Charles Sillem Lidderdale (28 septembre 1830 à Saint-Pétersbourg - 7 juin 1895 à Hampstead, Londres) était un portraitiste britannique.

Lidderdale est né comme fils aîné de John Lidderdale (1752-1845), banquier écossais de la banque Aberdeen travaillant à Saint-Pétersbourg, où il a été baptisé la même année à l'église anglicane de la rive anglaise. Il est parti en Angleterre dans les années 1840. Son père est décédé en 1845 à Saint-Pétersbourg peu après s'être remis de la faillite de la banque.

Lidderdale a commencé sa carrière de portraitiste au milieu des années 1850 et a exposé pour la première fois en 1856 à la Royal Academy of Arts de Londres, où il a exposé 36 tableaux au cours des années suivantes jusqu'en 1893. En 1858, il épousa Kazie Morris à Pancras, à Londres. Le couple eut un fils et trois filles dans les années qui suivirent. Le peintre était membre de l'association artistique British Institution et de la Royal Society of British Artists. Il a été enterré au cimetière londonien de Kensal Green Cemetery.





Milton Friedman: The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power. wordsmith.social/protestation/…




William Gale


William Gale (16 janvier 1823 à Marylebone, Londres - 10 octobre 1909 Sutton, Surrey) était un peintre et un graveur anglais.

Gale était le fils du marchand de bois londonien William Gale et de sa femme Ann Crossley (née Williams, vers 1787-1859). Il avait une sœur aînée, Mary Ann Gale, et est né au 16 Harcourt Street, dans le quartier londonien de Marylebone. Il ne reçut son baptême officiel que le 15 mars 1844. Gale fréquenta la Brompton Grammar School, puis l'Art Academy fondée par Henry Sass dans Charlotte Street, où il apprit la peinture. En 1841, il entra comme élève à la Royal Academy Schools et reçut trois médailles d'argent dans les années qui suivirent pour ses premières peintures de genre historiques. De 1844 à 1893, il a régulièrement alimenté les expositions de la Royal Academy of Arts avec ses œuvres. En outre, à partir de 1867, ses tableaux ont souvent été exposés à la British Institution.

Le 28 août 1851, Gale épousa Mary (née Warner Chubb), la fille d'un marchand de maïs et malteur de Fordingbridge. Ensemble, ils ont ensuite entrepris un long voyage de noces en Italie. Ils séjournèrent notamment longtemps à Rome, où ils réalisèrent un tableau du carnaval et une marche vers la chapelle Sixtine. Pour l'exposition de l'Académie en 1852, il envoya une jeune fille italienne et l'étude d'une tête à Londres. En 1862 et 1867, il fit des voyages en Palestine (Jérusalem) et en Syrie, en 1871 et 1872 en Suisse et en 1876 et 1877 en Algérie.

De tous ses voyages, il rapporta de nombreuses esquisses qu'il utilisa ensuite pour ses peintures à l'huile ultérieures. Il a réalisé de nombreuses histoires bibliques, des tableaux religieux et profanes, des scènes de genre, des paysages et des portraits. La vue de Gale s'est détériorée et il aurait perdu la vue dans les dernières années de sa vie.

Gale et sa femme Mary (1830-28 avril 1891) ont eu quatre enfants:
- Mary Ann Gale est née en 1853.
- William Joseph Gale, né en 1858, partit début 1877 pour Haïfa où il travaillait dans des exploitations agricoles avec M. C. Oldorf de la colonie allemande. Le 14 septembre 1877, il a été assassiné par des voleurs près de Nazareth alors qu'il s'apprêtait à retourner à Haïfa.
- Benjamin Chubb Gale (1867-1936).
- Caroline Gale (1873-1897), n'a vécu que 24 ans.

Le 2 octobre 1905, il épousa Louisa Georgina Chilcott Gale (1858-1936), âgée de 47 ans, qui était probablement sa cousine, ou du moins une proche parente.