Darren Lorente-Bull

"Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination." Herbert Marcuse Alienation is something that happens between individual and society; between citizen and government, between man and self. When I think of alienation, I think of otherness and how the other  ( immigrants and minorities) are demonised by the far right. It also brings to my mind ideas such as tedium vitae and ennui. Alienation has elements of tedious repetition for salary workers who are working to make ends meet and perform the same task day after day. It also has elements of boredom and dissatisfaction that are sure to accompany the false sense of self that consumerism creates.  Alienation is originally a Marxist concept. Marx understood alienation as a malaise directly caused by capitalism and prominent  in capitalist societies. Marx argued that workers become alienated from the products of their labor, the labor process, their fellow workers,...

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?" Dorothy Day Communism-  noun "A theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs." Oxford Languages and Google Communism didn't start with the USSR nor with Lenin and the Russian revolution. It didn't start with the Paris Commune or the French Revolution that preceeded it.  Communism, the idea that resources and goods should be communal, is not a monolith.  Sadly, recent communist experiments in the political sphere, have been abominable.  But Communism is not just one thing. It seems that it always fails when it's turned into a political proposition with an elite, an oligarchy, running things. Because communist states don't have space for dissent, even to this da...