quotations about socialism
By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
IAN MCEWAN
City Limits, May 27, 1983
As we know, socialism is calculational chaos. Rational appraisement and allocation are eternally elusive. It is a gigantic negative-sum game in which each player quickly grabs a piece of the pie, and all the while the pie shrinks before the players' eyes.
LARRY J. SECHREST
Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture at the Austrian Scholars Conference in Auburn, Alabama, "The Anti-Capitalists: Barbarians at the Gate", March 15, 2008
Anyone who objects to any government whatsoever as a form of socialism ought not to pull that socialist lever in their home, the one that makes their waste disappear in a whirlpool into the socialized sewage treatment plant.
JOHN MÉDAILLE
The Distributist Review, August 31, 2009
Any fresh survey of men's political actions shows that, in those who have enough energy to be politically effective, love of power is a stronger motive than economic self-interest. Love of power actuates the great millionaires, who have far more money than they can spend, but continue to amass wealth merely in order to control more and more of the world's finance. Love of power is obviously the ruling motive of many politicians. It is also the chief cause of wars, which are admittedly almost always a bad speculation from the mere point of view of wealth. For this reason, a new economic system which merely attacks economic motives and does not interfere with the concentration of power is not likely to effect any very great improvement in the world. This is one of the chief reasons for regarding state socialism with suspicion.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Pitfalls of Socialism", Political Ideals
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
BIBLE
Acts 2:44-45
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
A little socialism
Don't scare me one bit!
We could do a whole lot worse
Than Europe or Canada.
LEN CHANDLER
"Which Side Are You On? (Civil Rights Version)"
'87 socialism gave way to socialising
so put your hands up in the air
once more the North is rising
PULP
"Last Day of the Miners Strike"
We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called socialism.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"To the Rural Poor", Collected Works
The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man.
ERICH FROMM
On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying No to Power
The socialist "revolutionaries" respond the way they always have: they try to save the revolution by exterminating political freedom.
ROBERT TRACINSKI
"Why Is The New York Times Trying To Rehabilitate Communism?", The Federalist, August 3, 2017
Tell me this, if socialism actually is implemented, what do you expect to get, what is going to happen, are you going to get money, a house, a car, what do you hope for? Or are you simply hoping that the rich will be brought down to the level of the poor?
NO OHNO
"A Reply to: Capitalism has failed the world: Socialism is the viable alternative", News24, August 10, 2017
Socialism is like Neil Diamond music. It's not good and belongs in the past, yet there's a group of people who think that it will eventually catch on if only they keep playing it.
JEFFREY EVAN BROOKS
attributed, "Socialism: The Next Social Revolution", Alternate History Discussion Board, October 12, 2013
Socialism is in a way the shadow of capitalism. Nothing guarantees the future of socialism so much as capitalism, because socialism is capitalism's self-criticism.
RICHARD WOLFF
interview, Fox Business, August 2017
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
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
Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Daily Telegraph, June 16, 1992
Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Essays of Oscar Wilde
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
Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse.
LEN DEIGHTON
Funeral in Berlin