quotations about socialism
Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.
THOMAS MANN
New York Times, June 18, 1950
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
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
In socialism of the future ... what counts is the whole, the community of the Volk. The individual and his life play only a subsidiary role. He can be sacrificed--he is prepared to sacrifice himself should the whole demand it.
ADOLF HITLER
attributed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant
Either this organisation of injustice with its entire machine of oppressive laws and privileged institutions, must disappear, or else the proletariat is condemned to eternal slavery. This is the quintessence of the Socialist idea, whose germs can be found in the instinct of every serious thinking worker.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
The Policy of the Internationl: to which is added an essay on "The Two Camps"
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
Stripped down to its essence, and returned to its roots, socialism is an ideology of radical democracy. In an era when liberties are under attack, it seeks to empower civil society to allow participation in the decisions that affect our lives. A huge state bureaucracy, of course, can be just as alienating and undemocratic as corporate boardrooms, so we need to think hard about the new forms that social ownership could take.
BHASKAR SUNKARA
"Socialism's Future May Be Its Past", New York Times, June 26, 2017
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)"
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
'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"
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
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"
Democrat Socialism, like Nationalist Socialism, is nothing more than Marxist Socialism repackaged.
MARK ALEXANDER
"Tear Down the University of Virginia!", The Patriot Post, August 14, 2017
We can't ignore socialism's loss of innocence over the past century. We may reject the version of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as crazed demons and choose to see them as well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis, but we must work out how to avoid their failures.
BHASKAR SUNKARA
"Socialism's Future May Be Its Past", New York Times, June 26, 2017
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
Democracy is the road to socialism.
KARL MARX
attributed, Communism
Real socialism is inside man. It wasn't born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can't say it is finished.
DARIO FO
London Times, April 6, 1992
Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean--power over people, power to the State.
MARGARET THATCHER
speech to Conservative Central Council, March 15, 1986
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
RONALD WRIGHT
America & Americans
If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.
VLADIMIR LENIN
speech at Peasant's Congress in Petrograd, November 27, 1917