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Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist is a comprehensive study that delves into the economic and sociological aspects of socialism. The text examines the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of socialist systems, providing a detailed analysis from The Economist's viewpoint.
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“Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“The prevailing legal and moral views of a time are held not only by those whom they benefit but by those, too, who appear to suffer from them. Their domination is expressed in that fact- that the people from whom they claim sacrifice accept them.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Spiritual movements are revolts of thought against inertia, of the few against the many; of those who because they are strong in spirit are strongest alone against those who can express themselves only in the mass and the mob, and who are significant only because they are numerous.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Against nature and within nature there is no freedom.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“As society is only possible if everyone, while living his own life, at the same time helps others to live; if every individual is simultaneously means and end; if each individual's well-being is simultaneously the condition necessary to the well-being of others, it is evident that the contrast between I and thou, means and end, automatically is overcome.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“It is untrue that some are poor because others are rich. If an order of society in which incomes were equal replaced the capitalist order, everyone would become poorer.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Everything brought forward in favor of Socialism during the last hundred years, in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make socialism workable.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Socialist society is a society of officials.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“In capitalist enterprise there is no secure income and no security of wealth.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“All almsgiving inevitably tends to pauperize the recipient.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Fortunes cannot grow; someone has to increase them.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Society is best served when the means of production are in the possession of those who know how to use them best.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anticapitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties were eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“If, as is generally the case, the heirs are not equal to the demands which life makes on an entrepreneur, the inherited wealth rapidly vanishes.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Liberalism and capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Peace and not war is the father of all things.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“The word "Capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“In the capitalist society there is a place and bread for all. Its ability to expand provides sustenance for every worker. Permanent unemployment is not a feature of free capitalism.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“So far as Feminism seeks to adjust the legal position of woman to that of man, so far as it seeks to offer her legal and economic freedom to develop and act in accordance with her inclinations, desires, and economic circumstances—so far it is nothing more than a branch of the great liberal movement, which advocates peaceful and free evolution.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“In the land of the lotus-eaters there is no action. Action arises only from need, from dissatisfaction. It is purposeful striving towards something. Its ultimate end is always to get rid of a condition which is conceived to be deficient-to fulfill a need, to achieve satisfaction, to increase happiness.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction; of competition, construction.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“All attempts to coerce the living will of human beings into the service of something they do not want must fail”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxes on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Without speculation there can be no economic activity reaching beyond the immediate present.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist