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Socialism Quotes

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Socialism Quotes

“Blue Blood & Blue Collar (The Sonnet) I have nothing against blue blood, any more than I'm against blue collar. But blue blood think honor is an heirloom, while blue collar earn their rightful honor. That's what I call true human character, unreliant on some fictitious identity. Every human must earn their admittance, into the civilized realm of humanity. I can still accept any blood, blue or otherwise, if they have the decency to acknowledge atrocity. Otherwise, all blue blood are canine incarnate, unworthy of acknowledgment of their existentiality. King and president, ceo and janitor, all are equal, only behavior merits honor.”

EqualitySocialismSocialistWorking ClassRoyaltyAristocracyRoyal FamilyAbolish MonarchyBlue Collar WorkerBlue Blood
Book:Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations
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“All Nazi champions insist again and again that Marxism and Bolshevism are the quintessence of the Jewish mind, and that it is the great historic mission of Nazism to root out this pest. It is true that this attitude did not prevent the German nationalists either from coöperating with the German communists in undermining the Weimar Republic, or from training their black guards in Russian artillery and aviation camps in the years 1923–1933, or— in the period from August, 1939, until June, 1941—from entering into a close political and military complicity with Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, public opinion supports the view that Nazism and Bolshevism are philosophies—Weltanschauungen—implacably opposed to each other.”

SocialismSecond World WarNazisUssrBolshevismNational SocialismSoviets
Book:Omnipotent Government
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“In insisting that peasant activity contrary to Communist policies could be defined as kulak while at the same time maintaining that his approach to the peasantry was based on scientific Marxist class analysis, Lenin provided his successors with conceptualizations that would be used in collectivization when Stalin launched a war against all peasants.”

SocialismCommunismUssrStalinLeninSovietsCollectvization
Book:Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance
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“I think, ladies and gentlemen, and I particularly address those of you who have a socialist outlook, that we should at least permit this socialist economy to prove its superiority. Let's allow it to show that it is advanced, that it is omnipotent, that it has defeated you, that it has overtaken you. Let us not interfere with it. Let us stop selling to it and giving it loans. If it's all that powerful, then let it stand on its own feet for ten or fifteen years. Then we will see what it looks like. I can tell you what it will look like. I am being quite serious now. When the Soviet economy will no longer be able to deal with everything, it will have to reduce its military preparations. It will have to abandon the useless space effort and it will have to feed and clothe its own people. And the system will be forced to relax. Thus, all I ask of you is that as long as this Soviet economy is so proud, so flourishing, and yours is so rotten and so moribund—stop helping it. When has a cripple ever helped along an athlete?”

TradeSocialismArms RaceSpace RaceSoviet Economy
Book:Warning to the West
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“A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.”

RussiaSocialismCommunismCensorshipTotalitarianismGeorge OrwellNineteen Eighty Four
Author:Czesław Miłosz
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“The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.”

DemocracyEconomicSocialismMarketJohnStuartMillCo OperativeMarket Socialism
Book:Principles of Political Economy: And Chapters on Socialism
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“The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority — that is the way the road runs.”

RevolutionSocialismCommunismMarxismDialecticsSocial RevolutionOpportunismDialectical MaterialismParliamentary Cretinism
Book:The Russian Revolution,: And Leninism or Marxism?
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“Actually, in its essence, democracy is a totalitarian ideology, though not as extreme as Nazism, fascism or communism. In principle, no freedom is safe in a democracy, every aspect of the individual's life is potentially subject to government control. At the end of the day, the minority is completely at the mercy of the whims of the majority. Even if a democracy has a constitution limiting the powers of the government, this constitution too can be amended by the majority. The only fundamental right you have in a democracy, besides running for office, is the right to vote for a political party. With that solitary vote you hand over your independence and your freedom to the will of the majority.”

WarGovernmentPoliticsFreedomLibertyViolenceSocietyLibertarianSocialismCommunismAnarchyMafiaCoercionFree SocietyVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAncapMob RuleThugs
Book:Beyond Democracy: Why democracy does not lead to solidarity, prosperity and liberty but to social conflict, runaway spending and a tyrannical government
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“Even the richest person, provided the riches comes from mutually beneficial exchange, does not need to give anything "back" to the community, because this person took nothing out of the community. Indeed, the reverse is true: Enterprises give to the community. Their owners take huge risks, and front the money for investment, precisely with the goal of serving others. Their riches are signs that they have achieved their aims.”

GovernmentPoliticsFreedomBusinessCompanyLibertyViolenceCommunicationCapitalismEntrepreneurLibertarianSocialismEntrepreneurshipAnarchyTaxationFree MarketTheftMafiaCoercionCollectivismStatismParasitesVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismThugs
Author:Jeffrey Tucker
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“Velizy. All those shepherds in the Pyrenees who are being fitted out with fibre optics, radio relay stations and cable TV. Obviously the stakes are pretty high! And not just in social terms. Did these people think they were already living in society, with their neighbours, their animals, their stories? What a scandalously underdeveloped condition they were in, what a monstrous deprivation of all the blessings of information, what barbaric solitude they were kept in, with no possibility of expressing themselves, or anything. We used to leave them in peace. If they were called on, it was to get them to come and die in the towns, in the factories or in a war. Why have we suddenly developed a need for them, when they have no need of anything? What do we want them to serve as witnesses of? Because we'll force them to if we have to: the new terror has arrived, not the terror of 1984, but that of the twenty-first century. The new negritude has arrived, the new servitude. There is already a roll-call of the martyrs of information. The Bretons whose TV pictures are restored as soon as possible after the relay stations have been blown up . . . Velizy . . . in the Pyrenees. The new guinea pigs. The new hostages. Crucified on the altar of information, pilloried at their consoles. Buried alive under information. All this to make them admit the inexpressible service that is being done to them, to extort from them a confession of their sociality, of their 'normal' condition as associated anthropoids. Socialism is destroying the position of the intellectual. Unlearn what they say. Either they don't believe in it themselves or the violent effort they make to believe in it is disagreeable.”

SocialismGlobalizationBrainwashingUnlearningPop Culture ReferencesHuman Experimentation
Book:Cool memories
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“Copyright: a system of monopoly privilege over the expression of ideas that enables government to stop consumer-friendly economic development and reward uncompetitive and legally privileged elites to fleece the public through surreptitious use of coercion.”

GovernmentPoliticsForceFreedomLibertyViolenceCapitalismTradeLibertarianSocialismAggressionFreeLaw EnforcementFree MarketCoercionStateLawsStatismVoluntaryismMarketsLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAustrian School Of EconomicsInitiation Of Force
Author:Jeffrey Tucker
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“As times change and social mechanisms evolve, it seems to me, different survival instincts come into play. In social terms the Cultural Revolution was a simple era whereas today's society is complex and chaotic. One of Mao Zedong's remarks sums up a basic characteristic of the Cultural Revolution. 'We should support whatever the enemy opposes,' he said. 'and oppose whatever the enemy supports.' The Cultural Revolution was an era when everything was painted in black and white, when the eney was always wrong and we were always right; nobody had the courage to suggest that the enemy might sometimes be right and we might be sometimes be wrong. Deng Xiaoping, in turn, said something that captures the zeitgeist of our current age: 'A cat that catches the mouse is a good cat, no matter whether it is black or white.' In so saying, he overturned Mao's system of values and pointed out a fact long evident in Chinese society: right and wrong often coexist in a single phenomenon and interact in a dynamic of mutual displacement. At the same time, his comment put an end to the argument about where socialism and capitalism belong in China's economic development. So China moved from Mao Zedong's monochrome era of politics-in-command to Deng Xiaoping's polychrome era of economics above all.”

EconomicsSocialismMao ZedongChina In Ten WordsDeng Xiaoping
Author:Yu Hua
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“As times change and social mechanisms evolve, it seems to me, different survival instincts come into play. In social terms the Cultural Revolution was a simple era whereas today's society is complex and chaotic. One of Mao Zedong's remarks sums up a basic characteristic of the Cultural Revolution. 'We should support whatever the enemy opposes,' he said. 'and oppose whatever the enemy supports.' The Cultural Revolution was an era when everything was painted in black and white, when the enemy was always wrong and we were always right; nobody had the courage to suggest that the enemy might sometimes be right and we might be sometimes be wrong. Deng Xiaoping, in turn, said something that captures the zeitgeist of our current age: 'A cat that catches the mouse is a good cat, no matter whether it is black or white.' In so saying, he overturned Mao's system of values and pointed out a fact long evident in Chinese society: right and wrong often coexist in a single phenomenon and interact in a dynamic of mutual displacement. At the same time, his comment put an end to the argument about where socialism and capitalism belong in China's economic development. So China moved from Mao Zedong's monochrome era of politics-in-command to Deng Xiaoping's polychrome era of economics above all.”

EconomicsSocialismMao ZedongChina In Ten WordsDeng Xiaoping
Author:Yu Hua
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“Great are the tasks of the National Government in the sphere of economic life. Here all action shall be governed by one law: the Volk does not live for the economy, and the economy does not exist for capital, but capital serves the economy and the economy serves the Volk!”

PhilosophyEconomyEconomicsSocialismNationalismNational Socialism
Book:Hitler Speeches and Proclamations 1932-1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship. Vol. I: 1932-1934
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“But the subordination must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited, of all the toilers, i.e., to the proletariat. Measures must be taken at once, overnight, to substitute for the specific methods of "official administration" by state officials the simple functions of "workmen and managers," functions which are already fully within the capacity of the average city dweller and can well be performed for "workmen's wages.”

WorkersSocialismCommunismStalinVanguard
Book:The State and Revolution
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“We ourselves, the workers, will organize large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created; we shall rely on our own experience as workers, we shall establish strict, iron discipline supported by the state power of the armed workers, we shall reduce the role of the state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, moderately paid "managers" (of course, with the aid of technicians of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian task, this is what we can and must start with in carrying out the proletarian revolution. Such a beginning, on the basis of large-scale production, will of itself lead to the gradual "withering away" of all bureaucracy, to the gradual creation of an order, order without quotation marks, which will be different from wage-slavery, an order in which the functions of control and accounting—becoming more and more simple—will be performed by each in turn, will then become a habit and will finally die out as the special functions of a special stratum of the population.”

ManagementSocialismCommunismStateVanguard
Book:Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings
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“If you demand the collective to pay for your medical expenses, then be prepared for the collective to demand to make your medical decisions for you.”

FreedomLibertyLibertarianSocialismCommunismHealthcareLibertarianismSocialized MedicineCommunistsSocialistsSocialized HealthcareSingle Payer Healthcare
Book:H.H. Laughlin: American Scientist, American Progressive, Nazi Collaborator
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“But the principles of laissez-faire have had other allies besides economic textbooks. It must be admitted that they have been confirmed in the minds of sound thinkers and the reasonable public by the poor quality of the opponent proposals - protectionism on one hand, and Marxian socialism on the other. Yet these doctrines are both characterised, not only or chiefly by their infringing the general presumption in favour of laissez-faire, but by mere logical fallacy. Both are examples of poor thinking, of inability to analyse a process and follow it out to its conclusion. The arguments against them, though reinforced by the principle of laissez-faire, do not strictly require it. Of the two, protectionism is at least plausible, and the forces making for its popularity are nothing to wonder at. But Marxian socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of opinion - how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men and, through them, the events of history. At any rate, the obvious scientific deficiencies of these two schools greatly contributed to the prestige and authority of nineteenth-century laissez-faire.”

SocialismMarxismLaissez FaireProtectionismMarxian SocialismKeynesism
Book:End of Laissez Faire
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“Our political vagueness divides men, it does not fuse them. Men will walk along the edge of a chasm in clear weather, but they will edge miles away from it in a fog. So a Tory can walk up to the very edge of Socialism, if he knows what is Socialism. But if he is told that Socialism is a spirit, a sublime atmosphere, a noble, indefinable tendency, why, then he keeps out of its way; and quite right too.”

PoliticsSocialismToryPolitical Divisions
Author:G.K. Chesterton
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“In addition to the emotive appeal of its eschatological promise, there was the tremendous attraction of Marxism as a cognitive framework for the interpretation of history and reality. With a largely justified reputation, Marxism functioned as a modern-day theology in the sense that it offered the best of minds a doctrine of very high level of intellectual sophistication with which to grapple, work, and identify.”

ReligionSocialismIdeologyCommunismMarxismCastrismoChavismAdoctrination
Book:Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars
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“Socialism in Africa today tends to lose its objective content in favor of a distracting terminology and in favor of a general confusion. Discussion centers more on the various conceivable types of socialism than upon the need for socialist development.”

SocialismCommunismMarxismPan Africanism
Book:Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Development
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“It is no idle boast of the vermin Socialists that their system is Christianity, and no other is genuine. And look at them! To a man […] they are atheists and in favor of Free Love—whatever that may mean. I have talked with many Socialists, but never with one who understood his subject. Empty babblers they are, muddle-headed philanthropists. They read a shilling abridgement of John Stuart Mill, and settle all economic problems over a --sirloin of turnips-- in some filthy crank food dive. Ask them any question about detail, and the bubble is pricked.”

ChristianityAtheismSocialismFree Love19101985John Stuart Mill
Book:The World's Tragedy
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“The fusion of economics and politics is a critical part of this model and is something early liberal theorists missed. States consistently seek to protect 'their' capitalists all over the world. Whether in the form of taxation, trade policy, or foreign policy, capitalists always rely on politicians to provide them with opportunities for profit-making abroad. Lenin, who in 1917 wrote that imperialism was the 'highest stage' of capitalism, realized that this fusion of state and corporate power would make it even harder for poor states to catch up with rich ones. While this fusion of corporate and political power is largely hidden within modern capitalist economies, historically it was understood to be a central component of imperial power. We have already seen how early capitalist states sought to govern the world economy through corporate sovereigns like the East India Company. The Nazi Party also encouraged the creation of 'trusts, combines and cartels' on the basis that doing so would support the German state's imperial power at home and abroad. Unions, and any other threats to corporate power, were destroyed, and a law was passed to 'force industries to form cartels where none existed.' Unchecked corporate power -fused with that of the state- was a key component of Nazism.”

DemocracySocialismColonialismImperialismPolitical ScienceCapitalismeNeocolonialism
Book:Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
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“Seen from that future time, when every commodity the human mind could imagine would flow from the industrial horn of plenty in dizzy abundance, this would seem a scanty, shoddy, cramped moment indeed, choked with shadows, redeemed only by what it caused to be created. Seen from plenty, now would be hard to imagine. It would seem not quite real, an absurd time when, for no apparent reason, human beings went without things easily within the power of humanity to supply and lives did not flower as it was obvious they could.”

CapitalismEconomicsSocialismMarxismPlanned Economy
Book:Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties’ Soviet Dream
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“Finally, as 9/11 fell on December 7, 1941, America entered World War II, and wouldn’t you know it, the US actually recovered from the Depression. It turned out that with state control of production and jobs for all, a nation could spend its way out of misery. Of course, this proof of concept of planned economies was instead interpreted as a reason to constantly go to war.”

WarPoliticsEconomicsSocialismWwiiPlanned Economy
Book:The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason
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“Neither Fascist Italy nor Spain adopted eugenics as an ideology central to their form of government the way the National Socialist did. However, socialist and progressive nations such as Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway did adopt and implement eugenics. This is because eugenics is the safety valve of a centrally planned economy. Central planners like John Maynard Keynes fear a population that is not as meticulously planned as the economy. They fear the unproductive sectors out-breeding the productive sectors of the population. This is also why Keynes was a lobbyist for the British eugenics movement both before and after The Holocaust.”

SocialismProgressiveFascismHolocaustNaziWwiiEugenicsProgressivismWwii HistoryCentral PlannersPlanned EconomyJohn Maynard Keynes
Author:A.E. Samaan
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“Bakunin's warnings about the "Red bureaucracy" that would institute "the worst of all despotic governments" were long before Lenin, and were directed against the followers of Mr. Marx. There were, in fact, followers of many different kinds; Pannekoek, Luxemburg, Mattick and others are very far from Lenin, and their views often converge with elements of anarcho-syndicaIism. Korsch and others wrote sympathetically of the anarchist revolution in Spain, in fact. There are continuities from Marx to Lenin, but there are also continuities to Marxists who were harshly critical of Lenin and Bolshevism. Teodor Shanin's work in the past years on Marx's later attitudes towards peasant revolution is also relevant here. I'm far from being a Marx scholar, and wouldn't venture any serious judgement on which of these continuities reflects the "real Marx," if there even can be an answer to that question.”

SocialismMarxismMarxistMarxLeninLeninismMarxist Leninism
Book:Chomsky On Anarchism
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“Universal healthcare, free education, access to decent and affordable housing, safe working conditions, and occupations that provide a sense of fulfillment and meaning are all pretty basic and fundamental concerns, yet, for far too many of us, what are really relatively unambitious requirements have become aspirations we can only dream of.”

CommunityRaceRacismHuman RightsSocialismWhite SupremacyCommunity EmpowermentUniversal Healthcare
Book:What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition – An Empowering Guide to Interrogating Whiteness and Creating Justice
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“Surprising as it may seem today, classical ideas of creating a free market were to be achieved by “socialist” reforms. Their common aim was to protect populations from having to pay prices that included a non-labor rent or financial tax to pay landlords and natural resource owners, monopolists and bondholders. The vested interests railed against public regulation and taxation along these lines. They opposed public ownership or even the taxation of land, natural monopolies and banking. They wanted to collect rent and interest, not make land, banking and infrastructure monopolies public in character.”

InterestCapitalismSocialismDebt BondageRentier ClassMichael HudsonEconomic Rent
Book:J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception
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