Mario Schifano (Italian, 1934–1998), Cartello, 1960, 150 x 130.5 cm

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.

Karl Marx and Fred Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ch 3, 1848.

“One hypothesis of star and planet formation.” Natural history. 1963.

Yo Sugano, Fantasy in Green (1937 - 1969)

Ant trails observed by scientist. Ants, bees, and wasps : a record of observations on the habits of the social hymenoptera. 1882.

Christo, Christo wraps Little Bay, New South Wales, by David Moore, 1969.

The point is simply that huge disparities in wealth, property, and status make a mockery of freedom. The consolidation of wealth and power over the past forty years in the United States, mimicked more recently in many states in the Global South following neoliberal policies, has created a situation that the anarchists foresaw. Cumulative inequalities in access to political influence via sheer economic muscle, huge (statelike) oligopolies, media control, campaign contributions, the shaping of legislation (right down to designated loopholes), redistricting, access to legal knowledge, and the like have allowed elections and legislation to serve largely to amplify existing inequalities. It is hard to see any plausible way in which such self-reinforcing inequalities could be reduced through existing institutions […].

James C Scott - Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play

Joan Miró
Lithograph from Derrière le Miroir N° 164-165, 1967