"Political systems or social formations go through four structural moments that are analogous but never identical. The period of liberation begins with the resistance to oppression ...
"The second period entails the organization of the state and a new mode of production.. Liberation is a time of struggle (because of this, a time of military priority, but of the nonprofessional military)...
"The third phase is the classic epoch, stabilization, the slow ascent...
"The fourth phase is at the same time one of splendor and of decadence. It is in this phase that the state and the social formation jell; the productive forces grow; the domination of the oppressed becomes repression. Again military art acquires a primacy, although not as the valor of the civilian but as the discipline of military bureaucracy, of a profession that must be entrenched. It is the epoch of empires, of bread and circus, of the slaughter of liberators because they are subversives. It is the time of the Pentagon, of control of the frontiers, of not allowing the barbarians to cross the Danube... or the Mexicans to cross the Rio Grande." (77-8)
"In the United States it is possible to work out a philosophy of liberation .... from the ideological manipulation that conceals from the public what "the empire" does to people outside its boundaries to poor peoples that it impoverishes even more... An international division of the philosophical labor, assigning to diverse groups and countries distinct tasks, would permit us to begin a fruitful dialogue where uniformity of themes would not be demanded, nor would certain thematic objects be spurned because they are not relevant to one or another group.." (195-6)
(Philosophy of Liberation, 1980, tr. Aquilina Martinez and Christine Morkovsky)
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