quotations about socialism
It wasn't idealism that made me, from the beginning, want a more secure and rational society. It was an intellectual judgement, to which I still hold. When I was young its name was socialism. We can be deflected by names. But the need was absolute, and is still absolute.
RAYMOND WILLIAMS
Loyalties
In essence, socialism is a system in which others are forced to pay your bills no matter how irresponsible you may be.
RICHARD W. RAHN
"The Insurance Compulsion", Washington Times, August 7, 2017
A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.
TERRY EAGLETON
Ideology: An Introduction
I pass the test that says a man who isn't a socialist at 20 has no heart, and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.
WILLIAM CASEY
attributed, Washington Post, May 7, 1987
In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
interview, St. Austin Review, February 2003
It may be said that the power of officials is much less dangerous than the power of capitalists, because officials have no economic interests that are opposed to those of wage-earners. But this argument involves far too simple a theory of political human nature--a theory which orthodox socialism adopted from the classical political economy, and has tended to retain in spite of growing evidence of its falsity. Economic self-interest, and even economic class-interest, is by no means the only important political motive. Officials, whose salary is generally quite unaffected by their decisions on particular questions, are likely, if they are of average honesty, to decide according to their view of the public interest; but their view will none the less have a bias which will often lead them wrong. It is important to understand this bias before entrusting our destinies too unreservedly to government departments.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Pitfalls of Socialism", Political Ideals
People came from far and near
To buy poison and tears
The decor was delectable
The service impeccable
It was expensive -- what isn't?
It sold black plague and socialism
There was no reason to exist
If you weren't on the mailing list
FUTURE BIBLE HEROES
"Death Opened a Boutique"
But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Alarms and Discursions
Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.
JOSE ANTONIO VIERA GALLO
foreword, Energy and Equity
There is no other limit to the size of the Socialist party than the number of workers and wage-earners.
LEON BLUM
speech at the Socialist Party Congress at Tours, 27 December 1920
The basic problem I really have is that whenever I meet leftists in the socialist and Marxist movements, I'm called a petit-bourgeois individualist. I'm supposed to shrink after this. Usually I'm called petit-bourgeois individualist by students, and by academicians, who've never done a days work life [sic] in their entire biography, whereas I have spent years in factories and the trade unions, in foundries and auto plants. So after I have to swallow the word petit-bourgeois, I don't mind the word individualist at all!
MURRAY BOOKCHIN
attributed, Anarchism in America
The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Essays of Oscar Wilde
The whole problem with Communism and Socialism is summed up in this old Polish proverb: "If I lie down , I get 1000 kopeks a month. If I stand up I get 1000 kopeks a month. Why stand up?"
REVELGEN
"A reply to Tiietso Makhele -- in reality, Socialism is a dead duck in SA", News24, August 10, 2017
The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.
SIMONE WEIL
Oppression and Liberty
Well I came across Marx rather late in life actually, and when I read him, two things: first of all I realised that he'd come to the conclusion about capitalism which I'd come to much later, and I was a bit angry he'd thought of it first; and secondly, I see Marx who was an old Jew, as the last of the Old Testament Prophets, this old bearded man working in the British Library, studying capitalism, that's what 'Das Kapital' was about, it was an explanation of British capitalism. And I thought to myself, 'Well anyone could write a book like that, but what infuses, what comes out of his writing, is the passionate hostility to the injustice of capitalism. He was a Prophet, and so I put him in that category as an Old Testament Prophet.
TONY BENN
interview with John Cleary, February 23, 2003
I am opposed to Socialism because I believe that it attempts to do by legislative enactment, what must come through an evolutionary process. I believe that we are now ready for a long evolutionary jump, but not so far forward as some of our Socialist brethren would like to jump. I desire to go as far toward human justice and good will toward men, as anyone, but I do not feel that we should start and stop, because we are not ready to go the whole distance. I would start and go but one day's journey at a time.
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
Socialism is a political vision of religious and moral import, whereas capitalism is a self-regulating system, deploying a means-end rationality. The two are in different orders of reality.
CHARLES DAVIS
"The End of Socialism?", After Socialism?: The Future of Radical Christianity
I am a Socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, Socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for co-operation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality, not because it wants people to be the same but because only through equality in our economic circumstances can our individuality develop properly.
TONY BLAIR
maiden speech as MP for Sedgefield, July 6, 1983
The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shall not covet," and "Thou shall not steal," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.
JOHN ADAMS
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government
Socialism accepts... the principles, which are the cornerstones of democracy, that authority to justify its title , must rest on consent; that power is tolerable only so far as it is accountable to the public; and that differences of character and capacity between human beings, however important on their own plane, are of minor importance when compared with the capital fact of their common humanity. Its object is to extend the application of those principles from the sphere of civil and political rights, where, at present, they are nominally recognized, to that of economic and social organization, where they are systematically and insolently defined.
R. H. TAWNEY
Equality