Cynthia Kauffman Inspirational Quotes (7)

You build movements and keep people in a struggle when it feels productive. Anti-capitalists have typically been the people in movements who have declared every gain to be a trick of the capitalist class to buy us off. That line isn't very inspiring, and it shows no sensitivity to how social movements actually succeed.

The main argument is that capitalism is constituted by a varied of different practices, and so challenging capitalism needs to be about a variety of struggles. I draw on the important work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, who argues that we should model anti-capitalist struggle on feminist struggles.

I often refer to myself as a radical, reminding people that the word radical comes from the Latin word radix, meaning root. I think we need to get to the roots of problems as we try to solve them. I also like the word anti-capitalist.

Yes it is true that pro-capitalist forces have a lot of power. But so did slave-holding racists. We give ourselves hope when we conceptualize capitalism as a set of practices that can be challenged by fighting the piece of the puzzle we feel most compelled to fight.

I tend to not use the word socialist, because even though more young adults in the United States in a poll say they support socialism than do capitalism, the word socialism doesn't have a lot of meaning in this country.

States can be more or less democratic, and so can socialism. I think any ideal society that exists on a large scale, which is what we most likely have in store for us as a human race, will involve some aspects of socialism.

I think there is a legitimate critique of reformism, as a politics that is content with making small changes in society without asking for bigger and deeper changes. And revolutionary reforms, meaning actions that we take in small ways to make the world a better place and disrupt some of the ways that capitalism is reproduced.