From theory, action.

"Fascism, to take a wornout example, is not an external opposite to liberal democracy but has its roots in the liberal democracy’s own inner antagonisms. This is the reason why negativity must be counted twice: to negate the starting point effectively, we must negate its own ‘inner negation’ in which its content comes to its ‘truth’ (fascism, although opposed to liberal capitalism, is not its effective negation but only its ‘inner’ negation: to negate liberal capitalism effectively, we must therefore negate its very negation). This second, self-relating negation, this (as Hegel would put it) otherness reflected into itself, is the vanishing point of absolute negativity, of ‘pure difference’ - the paradoxical moment which is third since it is already the first moment which ‘passes over’ into its own other. What we have here could also be conceptualised as a case of retroactive determination: when opposed to its radical Negative, the first moment itself changes retroactively into its opposite. Capitalism-in-itself is not the same as capitalism-as-opposed-to communism. When confronted with the tendencies of its dissolution, capitalism is forced to negate itself ‘from within’ (to pass into fascism) if it is to survive."

"This new structural unemployment should be conceived as a form of exploitation. Exploited are not only workers producing surplus-value appropriated by capital; exploited are also those who are structurally prevented from being employed."

"Fascism, to take a wornout example, is not an external opposite to liberal democracy but has its roots in the liberal democracy’s own inner antagonisms. This is the reason why negativity must be counted twice: to negate the starting point effectively, we must negate its own ‘inner negation’ in which its content comes to its ‘truth’ (fascism, although opposed to liberal capitalism, is not its effective negation but only its ‘inner’ negation: to negate liberal capitalism effectively, we must therefore negate its very negation). This second, self-relating negation, this (as Hegel would put it) otherness reflected into itself, is the vanishing point of absolute negativity, of ‘pure difference’ - the paradoxical moment which is third since it is already the first moment which ‘passes over’ into its own other. What we have here could also be conceptualised as a case of retroactive determination: when opposed to its radical Negative, the first moment itself changes retroactively into its opposite. Capitalism-in-itself is not the same as capitalism-as-opposed-to communism. When confronted with the tendencies of its dissolution, capitalism is forced to negate itself ‘from within’ (to pass into fascism) if it is to survive."

"On the information sheet in a New York hotel, I recently read: ‘Dear guest! To guarantee that you will fully enjoy your stay with us, this hotel is totally smoke-free. For any infringement of this regulation, you will be charged $200.’ The beauty of this formulation, taken literally, is that you are to be punished for refusing to fully enjoy your stay."

"The way market fundamentalists react to the turmoil that ensues when their ideas are implemented is typical of utopian ‘totalitarians’: they blame the failure on compromise—there is still too much state intervention—and demand an even more radical implementation of market doctrine."

"There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he pushes in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards find nothing; it is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is stealing are the wheelbarrows themselves. The guards were missing the obvious truth, just as the commentators on the riots have done."

"The first conclusion to be drawn from the riots, therefore, is that both conservative and liberal reactions to the unrest are inadequate. The conservative reaction was predictable: there is no justification for such vandalism; one should use all necessary means to restore order; to prevent further explosions of this kind we need not more tolerance and social help but more discipline, hard work and a sense of responsibility. What’s wrong with this account is not only that it ignores the desperate social situation pushing young people towards violent outbursts but, perhaps more important, that it ignores the way these outbursts echo the hidden premises of conservative ideology itself. When, in the 1990s, the Conservatives launched their ‘back to basics’ campaign, its obscene complement was revealed by Norman Tebbitt: ‘Man is not just a social but also a territorial animal; it must be part of our agenda to satisfy those basic instincts of tribalism and territoriality.’ This is what ‘back to basics’ was really about: the unleashing of the barbarian who lurked beneath our apparently civilised, bourgeois society, through the satisfying of the barbarian’s ‘basic instincts’. In the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse introduced the concept of ‘repressive desublimation’ to explain the ‘sexual revolution’: human drives could be desublimated, allowed free rein, and still be subject to capitalist control – viz, the porn industry. On British streets during the unrest, what we saw was not men reduced to ‘beasts’, but the stripped-down form of the ‘beast’ produced by capitalist ideology."