Paul Mason QUOTES

21 " By this definition we are in the middle of a revolution: something wider than a pure political overthrow and narrower than the classic social revolutions of the twentieth century. Out of the very values and practices of free-market capitalism—individualism, choice, respect for human rights, the network, the flattened hierarchy—the masses have developed a new collective practice. They can bypass and supersede the machinery of power via, as Gorz predicted, an ‘alternative network of relations’. "

― Paul Mason , Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

23 " The root cause, simply put, is globalization, and the resulting monopolization of wealth by a global elite. "

― Paul Mason , Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

25 " depletion and climate change. For the older generation it’s easy to misunderstand the word ‘student’ or ‘graduate’: to my contemporaries, at college in the 1980s, it meant somebody engaged in a liberal, academic education, often with hours of free time to dream, protest, play in a rock band or do research. Today’s undergraduates have been tested every month of their lives, from kindergarten to high school. They are the measured inputs and outputs of a commercialized global higher education market worth $1.2 trillion a year—excluding the USA. Their free time is minimal: precarious part-time jobs are essential to their existence, so that they are a key part of the modern workforce. Plus they have become a vital asset for the financial system. In 2006, Citigroup alone made $220 million clear profit from its student loan book.2 "

― Paul Mason , Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

27 " In continental Europe,’ wrote a distraught John Maynard Keynes, shortly after storming out of the British delegation at Versailles, ‘the earth heaves and no one but is aware of the rumblings. There it is not just a matter of extravagance or “labour troubles”; but of life and death, of starvation and existence, and of the fearful convulsions of a dying civilization.’24 "

― Paul Mason , Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

29 " He calls the resulting phenomenon ‘capitalist realism’, defined as the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it … a pervasive atmosphere conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining action.11 "

― Paul Mason , Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

31 " A track on iTunes costs next to zero to store on Apple’s server, and next to zero to transmit to my computer. Whatever it cost the record company to produce (in terms of artist fees and marketing costs) it costs me 99p simply because it’s unlawful to copy it for free. The "

― Paul Mason , Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

33 " Con la infotecnología (o tecnología de la información), sin embargo, grandes tramos del proyecto socialista utópico han pasado a ser posibles: "

― Paul Mason , Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

35 " By creating millions of networked people, financially exploited but with the whole of human intelligence one thumb-swipe away, info-capitalism has created a new agent of change in history: the educated and connected human being. "

― Paul Mason , Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

37 " La historia de los ciclos largos demuestra que el Estado solo se siente forzado a actuar cuando el capital fracasa en su empeño por impulsar los salarios a la baja y cuando los nuevos modelos de negocio se ven anegados bajo una avalancha de condiciones negativas; "

― Paul Mason , Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future